Oahu residents are naturally aching to bring the latest chapter of the island’s coronavirus management effort to a close, but the city realizes that a rush to the exits can’t be the answer.

That is why the decision on Tuesday to extend the “stay at home, work from home” lockdown for two more weeks, with slight easing of personal restrictions, is a rational move for needed controls.

Individuals will be allowed to more freely access public places of recreation, but only for solo activities, said Mayor Kirk Caldwell. This means that come Thursday, people can go to parks and botanical gardens, linger on beaches and work their plots in community gardens, but only by themselves.

But there also must be clearer guidance in advance of the order’s Sept. 24 expiration to indicate when there could be a further return to regulated economic activity. Businesses need to know what criteria are being used to gauge Oahu’s readiness to reopen more doors, cautiously.

Progress in suppressing the latest surge in COVID-19 infections in Hawaii’s most populous county has been encouraging. Following a Labor Day weekend constrained by the city’s restrictions, the gradual lowering of infection cases signals that imposing the Aug. 27-launched lockdown over the holiday was the right instinct.

The count on Tuesday was 66 cases statewide, a huge improvement over the worrisome spikes to 200-300 new cases a day. Hawaii cannot sustain that kind of case load without putting its health-care network under severe strain. So lockdown or not, everyone must continue the “3 Ws” of wearing masks, washing hands and watching distance at 6 feet apart.

And Caldwell rightly underscored the importance of pairing the city’s gradual reopening with better mechanisms for minimizing the risk of further disease spread. Principal among these would be greater capacity for contract tracing, which, the mayor said, the city wants to boost to a minimum of 250 tracers, using federal funds.

Further, to insulate some struggling households from the worst impact of the pandemic disruptions, it was also good to see more federal money going toward housing and rental relief for lower-income families.

Gov. David Ige on Tuesday announced the launch of the Rent Relief and Housing Assistance Program (www.hihousinghelp.com), providing monthly rent payments of up to $2,000 per qualifying Oahu household, and up to $1,500 on neighbor islands. This limits how much renters will end up owing, and the losses landlords have endured, at least until the program ends Dec. 28.

All of that said, there are firm limits to the fallback supports government can provide to businesses. Nothing will help as effectively as a responsible return to fuller economic activity — including the start of the long-delayed pre-travel testing program, needed for the visitor industry to climb toward recovery.

Ige and Caldwell confirmed Tuesday that the state and counties are collaborating on devising a new model for reopening, given that what has been tried so far clearly lacked sufficient controls. Both said they are waiting to see sustained, reduced case counts over a minimum seven-day period.

Beyond that, Ige said, employers have been asking for more specific health metrics that would “drive the decision” on which businesses could open when.

“We’re looking at what other states have done and what might be modified to fit this state,” he added.

That’s good, but the community needs to know what the road map looks like as soon as possible. Frustrated residents and small-business representatives raised their voices over the weekend, in protests over the shutdown.

That outcry is sure to continue for some time. But seeing a more detailed plan for the way forward beginning to take shape would bring some measure of satisfaction to those who find these restrictions hard to bear.