Former governor and current Senate President Richard J. Codey will serve as acting governor for "certainly several days, possibly a week," said Corzine's chief of staff, Tom Shea.
"We won't know that until we know really what the governor's prognosis for recovery is going to be," Shea said at a Statehouse news conference.
"He certainly needs the ability to concentrate and focus and communicate in order to effectively carry out the duties of his office. And I think only time will tell how long that takes for him to be able to do that again."
Shea added that it was possible that Corzine would be mentally alert and able to work from home or his hospital bed before he is physically able to travel to the Statehouse.
"He has been briefly conscious," Shea said. "I don't expect, and I don't think the doctors would expect, that that would happen with a tremendous amount of frequency over the next couple of days."
Corzine can communicate by nodding his head, Ross said yesterday. But his injuries are "extremely painful," said Ross. "It hurts to breathe."
Corzine also had head lacerations that required stitches, aides said.
An official familiar with the governor's condition said Corzine would likely be in a wheelchair for several months.
The air bags of the 2005 black Chevrolet Suburban did not deploy when it rammed a guardrail on the parkway with Corzine in the front seat. The governor was en route to the governor's mansion in Princeton to host a meeting between the dismissed radio show host Don Imus and the Rutgers University women's basketball team that Imus insulted last week.
Shea said that Corzine apparently was not wearing a seat belt at the time of the crash, though another aide saw him wearing a seat belt earlier in the day.
