The large crowds and lack of social distancing on some Jersey shoreline beaches, prompting at least one town to partially close access this weekend, have state officials concerned about the spread of the coronavirus in those settings, Governor Phil Murphy said Monday.
“The capacity for social distance is somewhat related to the number of bodies in a real estate parcel,” Murphy said during his last coronavirus briefing in Trenton. “If we don’t manage capacity on the beaches and we cannot achieve social distancing, we are probably playing with fire.”
With ideal weather, beach lovers flocked to the Jersey shore on Sunday. It got so crowded in Long Branch that local police temporarily blocked access to the beach. Many people crowded less than 6 feet away without masks.
“Some of what we saw … over the weekend worried us,” Murphy said, noting that many New Jersey residents are not vacationing out of state this summer due to the outbreak and are hitting the state’s beaches.
“We have, particularly in good weather, we have many more people who stay home and go to the coast and go to our lakes,” said the governor.
Murphy said he continues to have ongoing conversations with local and county officials about how to implement his guidelines at the state level. She said she spoke to the mayors of Long Branch and Point Pleasant Beach along with Monmouth County officials after seeing reports from a growing crowd.
The governor has left the management of crowd control to local authorities for public beaches and has urged restrictions on parking capacity and the sale of beach tags. The state administers the Island Beach State Park, which regularly closes to new visitors on the weekend after reaching parking capacity.
Murphy also asked residents to maintain social detachment and the use of face masks. New Jersey now requires that people wear masks outdoors in public when they cannot practice social distancing.
“Don’t be a diffuser,” he said. “We must take precautions.”
State officials have repeatedly said there is still no evidence that large outdoor beach gatherings or protests have caused spikes in new cases. And Murphy has repeatedly said that the virus is still more dangerous indoors. But the governor also cautions that does not mean it is harmless outdoors.
New Jersey on Monday reported 22 more deaths attributed to COVID-19 and 231 more positive tests.
The state has now reported 15,560 deaths, 13,613 laboratory-confirmed and 1,947 considered probable, with 175,522 known cases since its first case was announced on March 4.
Once a coronavirus hot spot, New Jersey has seen its daily numbers drop dramatically since peaking in April and has been relatively stable in recent weeks, while dozens of other states have reported significant spikes in new cases. .
But officials were alarmed earlier this month when New Jersey’s transmission rate rose above the key figure of 1, meaning that, on average, each newly infected resident passed COVID-19 to at least one other person.
The number is now below that mark again. The latest rate was 0.91, officials said Monday.
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Still, the state calls on people traveling from 19 states with increasing cases to voluntarily quarantine for 14 days after arriving in New Jersey, including residents returning to their homes.
Meanwhile, Monday marked was the first time since May that a week did not begin with some kind of reopening in New Jersey.
More than 1.3 million New Jersey residents have applied for unemployment benefits as the pandemic continues to wreak havoc on the economy.
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