Maryland Governor Larry Hogan announced a reopening plan for the state on Friday.

The plan is based on recommendations from the White House’s reopening plan released last week, the National Governors Association’s Roadmap to Recovery Report, the advice of public health experts from Johns Hopkins University, and business leaders from various industries. Hogan told reporters in a press conference Friday that he hopes to start the three-phase plan by mid-May.

“It depends on the numbers,” he said. “It’s a moving target. We can’t just flip a switch and expect life to just go back to normal.”

The plan will start once the state has a 14-day downward trend in the number of coronavirus hospitalizations, ICU patients, and deaths, according to the governor.

The first phase of the plan would be to lift stay-at-home orders and reopen some businesses with social distancing measures still in place. This would also mean outdoor recreational activities like golf, fishing, boating, and fitness classes could continue. Local governments could also have the authority to open parks, playgrounds, and libraries.

The second phase would allow for more businesses to reopen and more public activities to take place, including indoor religious gatherings. It would also allow some restaurants to reopen with precautionary measures like six feet spacing between tables, limiting capacity inside restaurants, and having servers wear gloves and masks. The state would increase the number of people that would be allowed to gather in public, but still encourage those who are at risk of contracting the virus to remain at home and away from public gatherings.

The third phase would allow for larger social gatherings and events to take place, including the reopening of entertainment venues.

Each phase could take up to two weeks to complete, Hogan says. And the ability of the state to move forward with the phases depends on the number of cases the state is registering. Should the state see a surge of cases while in phase one, they may have to double back on the stay-at-home order, according to the governor.

Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said he is supportive of the plan.

“It’s clear that if we open the state today, it would risk a fast acceleration in the epidemic to very high numbers,” Ingalsby said. “New daily cases in the past two weeks have been plateauing. If we hadn’t put in social distancing measures in place the numbers in this state would still have been going up rapidly, perhaps doubling every five to six days.”

Before the reopening can begin, the state must have increased testing capacity, an abundance of personal protective gear for hospital staff and others on the frontlines, and a robust contact-tracing system to mitigate the spread, he said. Inglesby also applauded the governor for taking those steps over the past few weeks.

Meanwhile, Inglesby said, businesses should start preparing to reopen with social distancing and other precautionary measures still in place.

“Unfortunately this virus is going to be in our state and our country until we have a vaccine and our population gets immunity,” said Inglesby. He added that even with these phases being implemented, people will still need to keep wearing cloth masks in public, maintain social distancing of six feet or more, and continue to telecommute, if it doesn’t disrupt businesses.

The state’s department of commerce will be assisting and advising businesses to reopen while maintaining precautionary measures.