Gov. Cuomo said some parts of upstate New York will start reopening on Friday as his coronavirus stay-at-home order expires — while Mayor de Blasio warned the city will remain on lockdown through next month.
A trio of upstate regions have met the criteria to reopen, Cuomo said, noting that construction, manufacturing, wholesalers and retailers offering curbside pickup will be among the first to get going as the economy starts to reawaken.
“Some regions are ready to go today, they just need to get some logistical pieces in order by the end of the week," Cuomo said during a press briefing at Rochester Regional Health’s Riedman Campus Training Center in upstate Irondequoit.
The green light was given to the Finger Lakes, Mohawk Valley and Southern Tier regions since they have a low number of hospitalizations, a high number of available beds and have met benchmarks for testing, tracing and other metrics.
All but non-essential businesses in the Empire State have been shuttered since March 22 as the state became the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S. Cuomo noted that the daily death toll for the state dipped on Sunday to 161, the lowest figure since the virus started its deadly tear two months ago. The virus has killed 21,640 New Yorkers so far.
Hospitalizations and new cases also fell, but Cuomo noted that some 93 children have been diagnosed with a rare illness linked to COVID-19 that has already killed three children in the state.
In New York City, however, the death toll from coronavirus has now passed 20,000 fatalities, according to the New York City Health Department. During the 24 hours ending Sunday at 6 p.m., 125 city residents lost their lives, bringing the death toll to 20,056, which represents about a quarter of the known fatalities in the U.S.
Even as he warned that little will change in the five boroughs, for the time being, Cuomo suggested that some of the number of regions in the state that will meet his seven-point checklist of conditions needed to allow the easing of restrictions will soon grow.
The state is also going to allow certain low-risk businesses and recreational activities to resume on Friday, including landscaping and gardening work, some outdoor sports such as tennis and drive-in movie theaters.
FILE - A protester holds a Liberate Upstate sign from a vehicle during an Operation Gridlock protest outside of the New York State Capitol Building on April 22, in Albany, New York. (Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images)
Cuomo did not offer any predictions about when the city would be able to start reopening, but de Blasio warned little will change before next month.
“June is when we are potentially going to be able to make some real changes, if we can continue our progress,” de Blasio said at a press conference Monday.
“We""re going to always go by the data,” he continued. “It""s been pretty good and pretty consistent. It""s not quite been what we need it to be, but definitely trending the right direction. But we need to see it sustained in a deeper way.”
Hizzoner has pointed to three health metrics — new hospital admissions, the number of people receiving intensive care and the percentage of tests that come back positive — as key gauges for when restrictions can be eased.
He says before that can happen, the city will need to see 10 straight days of decreases in all three categories, or an overall downward trend over the course of two weeks.
But there is “good news," the mayor added.
Patients in ICUs for suspected COVID-19 in city-run hospitals went down from 540 on Friday to 537 on Saturday and the number of people admitted with coronavirus fell from 69 to 55, de Blasio said.
“That sure is heartening compared to where we were,” he said.
The percentage of people tested citywide who tested positive for coronavirus also plummeted from 17% on Friday to 13% on Saturday.
Still, the city’s official death toll from confirmed and likely COVID-19 cases stands at 19,931, including “probable” coronavirus deaths, according to numbers last updated 6 p.m. Sunday.
However, a new report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention notes that there were 5,293 deaths in the city during the past two months that may be directly or indirectly linked to the pandemic.
De Blasio said the city will continue to monitor its daily coronavirus indicators as it looks to reopen non-essential businesses next month, noting that the state uses a different metric.
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“We have our daily indicators. The state has their indicators,” de Blasio said. “We’re all working together … they’re all valuable measures.”
Cuomo cautioned that New York is not taking any chances and will keep an eye on other parts of the country where restrictions have been lifted much quicker.
“We’re not the first to reopen,” he said. “We have to learn from the mistakes of others.”
Cuomo heaped praise on New Yorkers for showing discipline in the face of the pandemic’s onslaught.
“We were in a very, very bad place (and) we changed the trajectory dramatically by what we did,” Cuomo said. “People said it was impossible. We did it. We have to stay smart.”