Downtown Partnership Participates in Restart St. Pete.

Along with medical experts and other business and community leaders, the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership is participating in Mayor Kriseman’s Restart St. Pete Taskforce.

Mayor Kriseman is working with Pinellas County, Tampa and other mayors through the Harvard Bloomberg City Leadership Initiative and US Conference of Mayors to determine best practices for managing the pandemic. His current ideas for conditions that would allow St. Pete to gradually reopen include:

1)      Percentage of positive tests don’t increase for 14 days. The actual number of cases may continue to rise as more people are tested, but the percentage of positives remains stable or decreases for two weeks.

2)      Continued availability of hospital beds for COVID-19 patients. So far, St. Pete’s hospitals have not faced the capacity challenges that hospitals in other cities have experienced.

3)      Availability of testing is improved. Anyone who is symptomatic should be able to get a test.  Currently only one percent of people in Pinellas County have been tested. 

4)      Public health officials improve the ability to contact trace. We should be able to better determine how the virus is spread and trace back contacts that infected people may have to monitor those they have interacted with for signs of the sickness. 

The Mayor is actively looking for feedback from other industry segments, businesses, faith leaders and community member to help guide local decisions about reopening. If you have additional insight, recommendations or ideas to consider, please do not hesitate to reach out to Jason Mathis at jason@stpetepartnership.org so we can incorporate your thoughts as part of any formal recommendations from the Downtown Partnership. We encourage you to also reach out directly to the Mayor’s office.

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