Western New York is ready to begin reopening.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-NY, was in Buffalo Monday at Roswell Park to make the announcement."

"It's been a long painful period but we start to reopen tomorrow," he said.

The state said by 9 a.m. Tuesday, the Western New York region will have trained at least the 521 contact tracers needed in order to begin Phase 1 of reopening.

"These decisions are being made as a matter of math. It's numbers. It's math. That's all it is at the end of the day," the governor said.

The numbers were a bit of a source of confusion, after Western New York and the Capital Region seemed to abruptly meet two other key metrics over the weekend. The governor's office clarified that regions either had to see a 14 day decline in hospitalization and hospital deaths on a three day rolling average or avoid a net spike of 15 hospitalizations and 5 deaths over the same three day rolling average.

A reset on May 15, coinciding with the end of the governor's first PAUSE order, allowed for the two Upstate regions to meet the second set of conditions.

"It's based on the last three days and what we've been very clear on was that once we hit May 15, as soon as a region met the benchmarks, they could enter Phase I," Melissa DeRosa, secretary to the governor, said.

Phase I includes the reopening of the construction, agriculture, retail, manufacturing and wholesale trade industries with all companies required to complete a coronavirus safety plan.

Cuomo also announced the department of health would offer waivers for Erie County Medical Center to begin elective procedures again, judges and staff in open regions would return to courts this week, and he encouraged professional sports teams to start plans to reopen without fans in stadiums and arenas.

The games could be televised.

"Personal disclosure: I want to watch the Buffalo Bills," Cuomo said.

As for when fans could return to stadiums, or any large gatherings for that matter, that would be part of the fourth phase and the timeline remains murky.

"Nobody can tell you when you'll be ready for that but the answer is everybody will know because if you follow the numbers and you follow the math, you will watch that infection rate and you will see the trajectory of progress," the governor said.

Western New York will be the sixth region to reopen and the Capital Region would be the seventh when it has enough contract tracers.

The state will consider allowing regions to move to the next phases after two weeks have passed on the previous stage.

Additionally, houses of worship with mass gatherings are in Phase 4 of the reopening process.

The state also sent out 320,000 test kits to nursing homes across the state on Monday to assist with a new mandate requiring nursing home staff be tested twice a week.