U.S. Governors, at Center of Virus Response, Weigh What It Will Take to Reopen States

“What’s going to happen is, you’re going to have people move in that direction,” Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, said. “You’re going to see states inevitably follow, because one or two states does it, you know, the other states are kind of going to be at a disadvantage.”

On Tuesday night, Gov. Mike Dunleavy of Alaska said that he was ready to begin opening parts of his state’s economy, and that he would watch for any signs of a significant rise beyond the state’s 285 known cases. He announced that he was going to start with health care organizations, allowing them to carry out elective surgeries once again. Mr. Dunleavy mentioned retail as a sector he was looking to reopen.

Mr. Dunleavy, a Republican, said his decision was based in part on the stability of the state’s known infection numbers and supplies of personal protective equipment.

In Pennsylvania, as in other states, political leaders are in disagreement about the timeline for reopening. Some Republican lawmakers are considering legislation that would reopen certain businesses, while the state’s health secretary has warned that would be premature, and has spoken instead of a more gradual opening, perhaps county by county.

The state’s Democratic governor, Tom Wolf, said on Tuesday he was in discussions with lawmakers of both parties about reopening plans and on Monday joined several governors of Northeast states to announce they were considering the question regionally. But the governor was firm on who did not have that power: the president.

“We had the responsibility for closing states down, essentially,” Mr. Wolf said, referring to other governors wrestling with the matter. “We also have the responsibility — the feet on the ground here, the people who know best what’s going on in our state — to figure out how we’re going to reopen.”

The plans in the Northeast will be developed by an improvised think-tank-like team with three representatives — the chief of staff, an economic development expert and a health expert — from each state. The governors who formed the coalition, which also includes Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island, said the group would create “a fully integrated regional framework” while weighing economic, scientific and social data.