Cuomo COVID curfew goes into effect Friday in New York; City prepares to close schools on Monday – NBC New York

New COVID restrictions will go into effect Friday night in New York state, imposing curfews in restaurants and gyms and limiting gatherings in private homes to 10 people, while schools in New York City are about to close.

Mayor Bill de Blasio told parents on Friday “to have a plan by Monday” in case the rolling positivity rate across town hits the school closing threshold this weekend. By Friday, the rate had climbed to 2.83%, just below the 3% mark to move remotely for some time.

He also reminded New York of the new rules that will take effect across the state on Friday night by order of the governor. Bars and restaurants must discontinue indoor service after 10 p.m., although they may continue curbside food pick-up. Gyms must also close at 10 p.m. Also in effect on Fridays: Social gatherings in private homes are limited to 10 people. These are three “big spreaders” identified by contact tracing in recent weeks, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

Similar measures went into effect in New Jersey on Thursday, while the Connecticut governor held private residential gatherings a full week ago.

Cuomo hopes the new measures will help slow the viral resurgence in New York City, but if it doesn’t, he’s ready to take further action. He said he would likely start with tougher capacity limits for indoor meals. In New York City, Mayor de Blasio said months ago he would re-evaluate the dinner if the city’s seven-day mobile positivity rate exceeded 2%, though he admits it’s the call of the governor.

Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a number of COVID-related restrictions in New York City. Reports by Katherine Creag.

What he intends to stick with, however, is the 3% threshold he set to move all New York schools remotely again for a while. This threshold is near.

New York’s mobile positivity rate was 2.83% on Friday, up nearly 9% from the previous day and on track to hit the cutoff anytime. It has increased daily this week, reflecting the daily increase in cases since the end of October. If it hits 3%, de Blasio says the city’s schools would all move remotely the next day. The city’s education ministry sent a letter to principals on Thursday asking them to prepare for this potential reality.

“Out of prudence and to keep our school communities safe, I ask all schools to prepare for a short period of system-wide distance learning,” Chancellor Richard Carranza said. “And while no decisions have been made about a system-wide transition to distance learning, as all great school leaders know, we need to be prepared for every scenario.

New COVID restrictions have taken effect in New Jersey, some reflecting the limits Governor Andrew Cuomo announced to be imposed on New York a day later, as the Governor of Garden State seeks to push back what he described as a recent “devastating” increase in viral numbers. Report by Checkey Beckford and Ray Villeda of NBC New York.

Schools have been a bright spot for New York City in its ongoing war against the coronavirus. Randomized tests show a positivity rate of around 0.17%, an indication that the in-person learning experience in the country’s largest school system has so far been a success amid the pandemic.

De Blasio was asked on Thursday if he would increase the 3% closing threshold, given those numbers. Statewide, for example, Cuomo set a 9% mobile positivity rate threshold for school closures. The mayor, after fighting with teachers ‘and principals’ unions over in-person safety at school over the summer, says he still sticks to the 3% threshold.

“This is a rule that we have spelled out very clearly,” said de Blasio. “If one day we see the indicators in the morning come out and reach this level, then we will move immediately. The next day, the schools will close.

“If we come to a point of closure, then we will assess what we need to do to come back as quickly as possible,” he added. “At this point, we’ll be looking at a variety of options because we have something that we didn’t have before – evidence of how things would end up working in this environment.”

De Blasio stressed that the reclosure was not inevitable, not wanting to deprive people of their own power to stop it. That said, anyone who has been watching core metrics closely over the past couple of weeks may think it is only a matter of time.

The latest figures are shocking to say the least. The city’s daily average of cases has skyrocketed since early November. Last week it hit 600 for the first time since early June. On Wednesday it was 817. Thursday it reached 870. Then it passed 900 (916) on Friday, an increase of 5% from the previous day. That daily average of cases has increased every day since October 30, according to city data.

A less measurable sign that the situation has worsened: Testing centers now see long queues even into the evening hours, which they were not a month ago. CityMD, which operates more than 130 emergency care centers in New York, New Jersey and Washington state, wrote in an email to patients on Friday that long queues “are a daily occurrence” in almost all of its sites in the tri-state like “as we are seeing a sharp increase in COVID-19 cases in the region.”

Statewide, the numbers have exploded, but certainly not in the exponential way they saw in March and April. New York has averaged more than 4,800 new cases over the past two days, half the number it saw at the height of the crisis, but about four times the daily total it was seeing to begin in September.

The seven-day mobile positivity rate, which provides a more accurate picture over time, is at its highest (2.6%) since May 29. This represents a 44% increase over the past seven days.

Daily percentage of positive tests by New York region

Governor Andrew Cuomo divides the state into 10 regions for testing and tracks positivity rates to identify potential hot spots. Here is the latest monitoring data by region and for the five boroughs. For the latest county-wide statewide results, click here

The increases were strongest in neighboring New Jersey, where, met Thursday with more questions about the impact of the new restrictions, a frustrated governor, Phil Murphy, responded, “You know what’s uncomfortable and boring? When you die.

It’s not springtime, officials say – and the numbers certainly aren’t there yet. But with new restrictions coming into effect in the tri-state area and schools in New York City on the verge of closing, anxiety is certainly familiar to millions of people who find themselves preoccupied with their children again. and their livelihoods. The numbers will increase; they don’t have to turn into nightmarish April peaks, but they sure could, officials say.

Coronavirus cases across the tristate are reaching heights that have not been seen for months, leaving citizens and elected officials concerned. News Four’s Brian Thompson and Andrew Siff are live with team coverage detailing the latest restrictions in place in New Jersey and New York

That this latest set of rules, which are much more flexible than spring closures, serve as a wake-up call of the highest urgency, the New Jersey health commissioner pleaded Thursday.

“If we are lax, if we continue on this trajectory, our state will return to the situation we found ourselves in last spring,” said Judy Persichilli. “It’s a wake-up call. We need your help.”

New Jersey reported its third consecutive day of more than 3,000 new cases Thursday, marking the first time it has reported such high consecutive counts since April. The 3,877 new cases reported on Tuesday were not so far from the peak in a day of 4,391 that the state reported at its peak of the pandemic. Wednesday’s report fell to just over 3,000, while Thursday’s rebounded to 3,517.

Hospitalizations are at their highest level in the tri-state area since June. While treatment is generally much more effective than it was in April, and ventilator use remains much lower for hospitalized patients, it is to be expected that hospitalizations will continue to increase among patients. vulnerable populations in the coming weeks. These delays increase in cases. And deaths are lagging behind admissions.

Hospitals in the tri-state (and the United States) have been stocking up on PPE supplies for months since the first wave of the virus began to subside, and are now preparing to potentially gain access to those hiding places. Hospitalizations in the Hackensack Meridien healthcare system have increased sixfold in just two months.

At the current rate of spread, the United States is on track to hit 20 million cases before Christmas, according to data from NBC News. That’s almost double its highest total in the world right now. No state was spared by the latest American wave.

The country struck more than 100,000 daily cases Thursday for the ninth day in a row. It also set a new record for daily cases, with nearly 160,000 confirmed infections, surpassing the previous record of 148,000 on Wednesday. California has also joined Texas as the only states to have surpassed one million confirmed cases.