New York, May 15 (IANS): The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), which was closed in late March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has planned to partially reopen its trading floor on May 26.

"The NYSE trading floor will begin a phased reopening on May 26 and look forward to welcoming home members of our Trading Floor community," Xinhua news agency quoted Stacey Cunningham, president of the exchange, as saying in a tweet on Thursday.

The facility, located in downtown Manhattan, will reopen to "a subset of floor brokers" the day after Memorial Day with "vital new safety measures", Cunningham said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier in the day.

The NYSE closed its trading floor and shifted to fully electronic trading on March 23 as a precautionary step after two people tested positive for the coronavirus.

The announcement came as a growing number of US states have started to ease lockdown restrictions, amid fears of a re-acceleration in COVID-19 cases.

New York state, the epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, is slated to partially reopen on Friday, Governor Andrew Cuomo said earlier this week.