New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio agree that indoors will not return to the city any time soon, citing a continuing increase in COVID-19 cases.
Cuomo said at a news conference Monday that while he plans to ease some restrictions on New York COVID-19 from Wednesday, “the indoor dining room in New York City is a specific state of affairs in New York” and that the state ‘does not at this stage consider any changes’ to the ban.
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De Blasio, after appealing to people to stay at home if they can, and to take mass transport if they have to be in the city during difficult weather conditions during a Tuesday briefing, said ‘outdoors will be open be ‘despite the snow.
‘Bind up. Stay warm out there, ‘he said.
Asked when New York City will resume indoor dining, he said he wants to “reopen indoor dining if it is safe.”
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The city reports approximately a 9% COVID-19 positivity rate with 36,067 total new cases reported within the past week.
“We are, of course, the largest city in the country. An incredibly dense place. We were at the center of this crisis,” de Blasio said. “We’ve lost tens of thousands of New Yorkers. We’re going to be really careful and smart when we let people come close again with their masks off because they’re eating and drinking.”
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The mayor said he had not seen the COVID-19 case numbers from New York and was concerned about the new variant of the virus coming from outside New York.
The Dos Caminos restaurant is closed for indoor dining, on Tuesday, December 15, 2020 in New York. (AP Photo / Mark Lennihan)
Restaurants were initially closed from April to September when they were allowed to reopen at 25% – until it closed again a few months later.
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Cuomo suspended all indoor eateries in the city in early December as business intensified amid the holidays.
A report by the Partnership of New York City in July found that ‘as many as a third of the 230,000 small businesses living in nearby commercial corridors can never reopen’ due to the shutdown with pandemic, pointing out that unemployment in the city rose to 18.3% at the time.