NJ to review its state COVID-19 response, determine if schools were closed too long

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said this weekend that the state will soon begin its long-promised assessment of its COVID-19 response to determine what could have been done better, and whether schools were shuttered for too long due to the virus.

In an interview with Fox News Sunday over the weekend, Murphy addressed a host of issues, including the update that the state’s COVID-19 review will begin soon.

Murphy first brought up a COVID response assessment two years ago, when the pandemic had just begun. He did not, however, set a time frame for the review, because there was no way to know at the time how long it would persist and to what extent.

This weekend, the governor still does not have an exact timeline for the official review, because he says the pandemic is still very much present in the state, and New Jersey is “not out of the woods” with coronavirus.

“We’ve already taken in June of 2020 a deep dive with an independent firm, but we’re going to do the entire COVID response including long-term care,” Murphy said to Fox News on Sunday. “I want to make sure it’s effective not just in teaching us what went right, what went wrong, but also that it can be a tool for future governors, future administrations. I hope frankly that it’s a trigger for Congress to take a similar look at the national response.” 

New Jersey schools stayed closed until September 2021, and Governor Murphy says the state had no choice.

“I think that is going to be one of those things that folks debate forever and for always. We knew learning loss, we know it’s real. We know about the mental health stress on everybody — kids in particular kids, educators and families,” Murphy said. “Particularly early on, but frankly when the variants — the delta variant and others kept coming back, when we had so little knowledge about this pandemic and about this virus, we had no other choice.”

Governor Murphy said he believes the state is “weeks away” from coming up with a comprehensive review plan.