Right now, the pandemic in New Jersey has slowed as state health officials prepare for the reopening of schools in September and a potential viral resurgence during flu season. According to many of the state’s business leaders, the lull represents an opportunity to roll back restrictions, at least enough to allow business owners the time to work out the kinks in how they will reopen.

“Now is the time to continue to take the next step,” said Michele Siekerka, the president and chief executive officer of the New Jersey Business & Industry Association, in an interview. “[Restaurants] have the opportunity to slowly ease into indoors as they’re still serving [outdoors],” she added.

“All the numbers are in our favor and while the weather is still nice … to have an opportunity to do hybrid,” Siekerka said. “If we have not made revisions now while in the best-case scenario to begin to ramp up, then these restaurants don’t stand a chance in the fall for ever recouping their revenue.”

Shortly before the July Fourth weekend, Gov. Phil Murphy paused Phase 2 of lifting COVID-19 restrictions, meaning the opening of theaters, gyms, indoor dining and other indoor entertainment, with limited capacity, 6-foot physical distancing and face covering requirements would have to wait. The move was precautionary. Indoor dining was slated to resume on July 2 at 25 percent capacity, but Murphy contended that many of the surges being seen in other states could be traced back to indoor dining.

“I have nothing but sympathy for the economic chaos and crushing reality this pandemic has led to with so many small businesses, individuals who are out of work,” Murphy said on Aug. 12, when asked about the push to ramp up the reopening process. “We’ve seen what’s happened in other states. We saw what was beginning to emerge in this state, and we took action. Not with any joy.”

But the state’s rate of transmission has again dipped below 1, after weeks of staying above that level – meaning that the COVID-19 is spreading, but slowly – while the positivity rate among COVID-19 tests has hovered at around 2 percent.

Those promising metrics mean “there is no reason not to proceed to reopen our economy,” reads a letter signed by 100 business advocacy groups, including the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce and the NJBIA. “If ‘data determines dates’ relative to reopening, as Gov. Murphy has consistently said, it is appropriate that as our COVID-19 cases continue to go down, New Jersey’s economic numbers should rise,” the groups said in the Aug. 10 letter.

“Unfortunately, this is not the case, and we find ourselves and our economy in an unnecessary and extenuated ‘pause mode.‘”

One senior administration official contended that talks with business owners have been less about immediately reopening, and more about what their businesses will look like once they reopen. “They’re giving us their safety protocols, how they would do it, what they would need to do, what kind of state support would be necessary,” this official said. “A lot of them talked about ‘what’s the time frame for testing … where is rapid testing available, what’s the turnaround time.’”

The business groups contend that enforcement should be carried out at the local level rather than a blanket statewide approach. “If Salem County meets all the metrics” for a resurgence, “as it trends upwards you can watch it and say ‘hey, if this gets any worse, we’re going to have to start coming up with a resurgence plan,’” Tom Bracken, president and chief executive officer of the New Jersey Chamber, said in an interview. “If we’re driven by the numbers and in a county, let’s say you do have a spike in the transmission rate, and you have people say ‘hey if it doesn’t come down in a week then we’ll take action,’” he added.

But the administration official warned that the regional approach only works in larger states like New York and Pennsylvania. “You can drive the entirety of New Jersey in two and a half hours,” this person said. “The idea that you can open indoor dining in New Brunswick and be closed in Montclair is not practical.”

Murphy has warned that reopening indoor dining remains risky, citing a study that traced an outbreak in China to indoor dining. “Allowing diners to sit maskless for an extended period of time in a restaurant where the air-conditioning unit could silently spread coronavirus is a risk we cannot yet take,” the governor said at an Aug. 10 press conference.

The study was part of a recent report from the Emerging Infectious Disease medical journal.

“The common thread was that all of these patrons were seated in a straight line from an air conditioner,” the governor added. “I think any of us can name any number of restaurants that we go to which have a seating arrangement and air-conditioning situation not unlike the one in this restaurant halfway around the globe.” Murphy has warned that he might tighten restrictions following numerous reports of overcrowding in lines to gain entrance to outdoor bars.

“If there are companies or organizations that are jeopardizing where we are, then they should be penalized,” Bracken said. He cautioned that keeping indoor dining off-limits or threatening to shut down bars was essentially “penalizing an entire group because of the problems created by one or two bad players.”

The tightened restrictions have garnered widespread support in polls. But Republican lawmakers have been critical of the governor’s plans to keep the restrictions in place, while many legislative Democrats have also pressured Murphy to loosen rules.

Chief among those opponents has been Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-3rd District, a sometime political rival of Murphy and a right-leaning Democrat. He’s argued that the governor has rolled back restrictions too slowly.

“We need to come out of this extenuated pause period,” Siekerka said.

The New Jersey Economic Development Authority rolled out a variety of aid programs meant to keep businesses afloat while they stay closed or operate at reduced capacity. These actions include grants and low-interest loans, and most recently a state subsidy to help businesses handle the costs of purchasing personal protective equipment, such as masks, gloves, face shields and hand sanitizer.

The future of the federal forgivable loans from the Paycheck Protection Program is uncertain after it stopped accepting new applications at the start of August. The White House and U.S. Senate remain deadlocked over a new iteration of the federal COVID-19 relief bill – known as the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act – which could include an expansion or extension of the PPP aid.