New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio agree that indoor meals will not return to the city anytime soon, citing a continued rise in COVID-19 cases.
Cuomo said during a news conference on Monday that while he plans to ease some restrictions on New York’s COVID-19 starting on Wednesday, “New York covered dining is a city-specific condition” and the state ” is not currently thinking of any changes “to the ban.
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De Blasio, after urging people to stay home if they can and use public transport amid the harsh weather conditions in the city during a meeting on Tuesday, said that “open-air restaurants will be open” despite the snow.
“Get ready. Stay warm outside,” he said.
Asked when New York City would resume dining indoors, he said he wanted “that meals be reopened when it is safe”.
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The city is reporting a positive COVID-19 rate of about 9% with a total of 36,067 new cases reported in the past week.
“Obviously, we are the largest city in the country. An incredibly dense place. We were the epicenter of this crisis,” said de Blasio. “We lost tens of thousands of New Yorkers. We will be very careful and smart when we allow people to be together again, without the masks, because they are eating and drinking.”
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The mayor said he has not seen New York City’s COVID-19 number of cases drop and is concerned about new variants of the virus coming from outside New York.
The Dos Caminos restaurant is closed for indoor dining, Tuesday, December 15, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo / Mark Lennihan)
The restaurants were initially closed in early April to September, when they were able to reopen at 25% capacity – until they were closed again a few months later.
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Cuomo suspended all meals indoors in the city in early December, as cases increased during the holiday.
A July report from the Partnership of New York City found that “up to a third of the 230,000 small businesses that populate the neighborhood’s commercial corridors may never reopen” as a result of pandemic-related closings, noting that the city’s unemployment rate had soared to 18.3% at the time.