Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday announced new restrictions on businesses and social events on Staten Island and imposed a 10 pm curfew on restaurants, bars and gyms statewide in response to a significant uptick in coronavirus infections.
Additionally, Cuomo announced a new 10-person cap on parties and other gatherings in private residences, including apartments and houses.
The restaurant and gym rules take effect Friday at 10 pm.
Eateries will have to clear customers out by 10 p.m. However, their kitchens can remain open for takeout and delivery, a Cuomo official later clarified.
And if that doesn’t work, the three-term governor threatened that further measures could be on the table — including nixing indoor dining at bars and restaurants — to get the spread of COVID-19 back under control.
“If these measures aren’t sufficient to reduce the spread — we’ll turn the valve more and part of that would be reducing the number of people indoor dining,” Cuomo told reporters during a Veterans Day press briefing.
“If that doesn’t work, if these numbers keep going crazy … you will go back to a closedown,” he said, of indoor dining and gyms.
Restaurants will only be able to remain open after 10 pm for takeout meals and delivery service.
Cuomo’s slew of announcements came as the state reported that 2.9 percent of tests from across the state came back positive Tuesday. The rate only fell to 2.5 percent when removing the state’s COVID ‘hot zones,” another worrisome sign of the disease’s potentially wider spread.
In the five boroughs, the picture is also continuing to worsen — though Gotham remains in relatively better shape.
Figures from the city Health Department show that the average positivity rate for coronavirus tests taken over the last seven days has climbed to 2.52 percent — the highest rate since the Big Apple recorded a 2.61 percent positivity rate on June 9.
New York’s new COVID headache comes as the virus continues to spread out of control in many other parts of the country and is still killing more than 1,000 people daily.
All told, 241,000 have perished since the outbreak began in March, including more than 24,000 in New York City alone.
Cuomo said the State Liquor Authority will take the lead on enforcing the new rules, but admitted there are not enough state agents to patrol New York City — and, again, hammered Mayor Bill de Blasio for not using the 34,000-strong NYPD to enforce social distancing measures.
“I think this should be a relatively simple activity because, what’s the alternative? We’re going to run New York City without the NYPD? Doesn’t work! Doesn’t work on any level,” Cuomo told reporters during the Veterans Day briefing. “One hundred and fifty sheriffs are going to substitute for 33,000 NYPD? Doesn’t work. It is an impossible situation.”
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- A sign that reads, “Sorry, we’re closed!” is seen outside a restaurant in Astor Place.
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- Andrew Cuomo
Bill Neidhardt, a spokesman for Mayor Bill de Blasio, said, “City Hall has been in discussions with the state on these guidelines and fully supports these actions. They will be enforced effectively.”
For their part, exasperated restauranteurs slammed Cuomo for failing to brief them beforehand or including key details when announcing the new restrictions.
“At the time of the announcement, restaurants have not been provided important details by the State or City about the new restrictions on their businesses,” said Andrew Rigie, the executive director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance. “These new restrictions should be publicly justified with contact tracing data because they will make it even more difficult for these small businesses to survive.”
The governor also placed most of Staten Island under ‘yellow zone’ coronavirus restrictions beginning Thursday as the number of positive test results in the city’s smallest borough balloons.
That means there will be new testing requirements for teachers, staff and students who are part of the city’s in-person learning program and imposes a four-person limit for every indoor and outdoor dining party.
Those rules could become stricter if Staten Island is placed under an orange or red zone.
“The yellow zone is more of a statement than anything else,” said Staten Island Borough President Jimmy Oddo. “It’s a friend putting a hand on another friend’s shoulder and saying: ‘Hey, we’ve got a problem here.'”
The Republican added: “No one on Staten Island wants to return to the lockdown, but tougher measures are looming in the headlights if we don’t get control of this virus.”
But another GOP lawmaker from the borough taunted Cuomo on Twitter over the restrictions, daring officials to enforce the rule at his home over Thanksgiving — and claimed local, state and health officials were overreacting in an interview with The Post.
“I think people should take responsibility,” said Staten Island Councilman Joe Borelli. “We still have a comparatively small number of cases compared to elsewhere in the country and maybe we’re overreacting.”