GOTHAMIST
Among those tested, an average of 31 percent of New York City residents have tested positive for coronavirus over the last 14 days, according to data presented by Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday.
Along with Long Island, which had the same testing percentage, New York City had the highest percentage of positive tests in the state. The mid-Hudson area, which includes Westchester County, had the second highest proportion of positive tests, at 28 percent.
With promising indications that the coronavirus contagion has passed its peak, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York laid out a broad outline on Sunday for a gradual restart of the state that would allow some “low-risk” businesses upstate to reopen as soon as mid-May.
The governor’s announcement, coming as the state recorded its lowest death daily toll in nearly a month, was filled with caveats, but nonetheless offered the clearest outline yet for recovery in New York, the national center of the outbreak, with nearly 17,000 dead.
That human devastation has largely been confined thus far to New York City and its sprawling suburbs. And under Mr. Cuomo’s plan, upstate regions would move forward with reopening long before downstate, with an emphasis on manufacturing and construction, industries in which telecommuting and working from home are impossible.
During his daily briefing in the State Capitol in Albany, Mr. Cuomo said such changes could occur shortly after May 15, when a statewide stay-at-home order — known as New York State On Pause — is scheduled to lapse, though the governor has indicated that many restrictions on businesses and residents’ activities could be continued for weeks, if not months.
He did not suggest any loosening of restrictions on New York City in the near future.
In Georgia, close-contact retail businesses like barbers and tattoo parlors were allowed to open on Friday. Areas where large numbers of people congregate, such as movie theaters, were expected to accept customers on Monday, though mayors of large cities like Atlanta and Augusta have resisted Gov. Brian Kemp’s call for reopening.
Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, said that he was closely monitoring hospitalization, infection and recovery rates in the city and regionally, with an eye toward the federal guidelines released by the White House 10 days ago. Under those, states were advised that they could move into limited reopening if they satisfied a series of criteria, including two weeks of sustained downward trends in documented cases of Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, and an easing of stress on the hospital system.
At the same time, Mr. Cuomo pleaded with local officials — particularly in the New York City region — to consider how to provide for summer activities for residents, including children. New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, has already said that the city’s public swimming pools will not open this summer, even as its playgrounds remain shut for the time being.
“You can’t tell people in a dense urban environment all through the summer months, ‘We don’t have anything for you to do,’” Mr. Cuomo said, adding, “There’s a sanity equation here.”
Earlier on Sunday, Mr. de Blasio had struck a similar chord while announcing a series of advisory groups to help imagine New York City’s future, with an emphasis on a rebuild that “confronts deep inequities” in low-income and minority communities, a theme Mr. Cuomo also touched on.
In laying out scenarios for a broader reopening of other businesses, Mr. Cuomo suggested that data would be evaluated in two-week increments, and that companies wanting to restart work would be individually evaluated to determine “how essential a service does that business provide and how risky is that business.”
He also laid a heavy onus on businesses to develop their own plans for reopening, including outfitting employees with personal protective equipment, enforcing social distancing between employees and customers and instituting testing in the workplace.
“They have to think about how they are going to reopen with this quote-unquote new normal,” Mr. Cuomo said, adding, “It’s very much going to be up to businesses.”
While the news was largely positive on Sunday — with marked decreases in hospitalizations and other critical indicators of the crisis — Mr. Cuomo said that such progress could be lost in “a matter of days if we’re not careful.”
Cuomo announces that the L Train will reopen.
Mr. Cuomo announced Sunday that construction on the L train tunnel, linking the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn to Manhattan, had been completed and that the line would fully reopen.