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N.Y.C. may limit entry to parks to reduce crowds, mayor said.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Thursday that New York City might begin limiting entry to some parks to prevent overcrowding as the weather warms.
In certain parks, “Just the configuration of the park lends itself to overcrowding,” Mr. de Blasio said. “We can’t let that happen and we have to limit the number of people going in.”
The mayor said that the effort would take some “experimentation.” He did not clarify which parks could be covered by the new rules, but said more details would be announced on Friday.
“There’s not that many places, honestly but wherever that is the case we’re going to work with a protocol to do that,” he said.
With playground across the city closed and gyms shuttered by restrictions on nonessential businesses, New Yorkers have flooded the city’s parks in search of safe places to exercise and enjoy the outdoors while maintaining social distance.
Early N.Y. cases seeded U.S. outbreak, researchers say.
New York City’s coronavirus outbreak grew so large by early March that the city became the primary source of new infections in the United States, new research reveals, as thousands of infected people traveled from the city and seeded outbreaks around the country.
The research indicates that a wave of infections swept from New York City through much of the country before the city began putting social-distancing rules in places. That helped to fuel outbreaks in Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and as far away as the West Coast.
The findings are drawn from geneticists’ tracking signature mutations of the virus, travel histories of infected people and models by infectious disease experts.
“We now have enough data to feel pretty confident that New York was the primary gateway for the rest of the country,” said Nathan Grubaugh, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health.
During crucial weeks in March, New York’s political leaders waited to take aggressive action, even after identifying hundreds of cases, giving the virus a head start.
And by mid-March, when President Trump restricted travel from Europe, the restrictions were essentially pointless, the data suggest, as the disease was already spreading widely within the United States.
Acting earlier would most likely have blunted the virus’s march across the country, researchers say.
N.Y.C. offers 140,000 free antibody tests.
New York City will offer 140,000 free antibody tests to New Yorkers who want to know if they have been exposed to the coronavirus, Mayor de Blasio said on Thursday.
The initiative follows the city’s offer last week of 140,000 antibody tests to health care workers and other front-line responders.
The new round of testing will be offered at testing sites in some of the neighborhoods hit hardest by the virus: Morrisania in the Bronx, East New York in Brooklyn, Upper Manhattan, Long Island City in Queens, and Concord in Staten Island.
A hotline phone number for making appointments will be released on Friday, the mayor said. Preference will be given to people in the affected neighborhoods.
“The goal is to focus on people in the general area of these test sites,” Mr. de Blasio said.
Those who get tested will be asked for demographic and employment information, to help the city understand who is getting the virus and how, he said.
On the front lines: Abby Fazio, pharmacy owner.
The Times is regularly profiling essential workers in the New York region during the pandemic.
Where do you live? Manhasset, Long Island, N.Y.
Where do you work: New London Pharmacy, Chelsea, Manhattan.
How has your job changed during the outbreak?
I’ve been working seven days, because there’s just not enough staff. Just now, I was putting items away, which is not what I do as a pharmacist. But when you’re an owner, you do whatever you have to do to keep the business going.
How has your staff been?
Five or six haven’t come back to work since the beginning of this. And a few weeks ago, it was even harder because three of my main people — two pharmacists and my lead technician were out sick with Covid.
How did that change things?
We started closing at 6 rather than 8:30. Because there was just not enough time at night to sanitize and to get the store ready for the next day. And to, you know, do all the bits and ends that you have to do as a pharmacy.
In your job, you’re talking to patients about what the illness is like, and you’re interacting with people so much. Does that give you any anxiety or stress?
Not anymore. Because, like, in the beginning, we didn’t know enough. But I’m still a pharmacist. I still have to help you. I still have to show you where and what a thing is, and I have to listen to how you feel. When you take an oath in pharmacy, it’s like, you owe the public a certain thing. And I felt, that’s what I’m doing. And that has humbled me.
Cuomo extends moratorium on evictions.
Gov Andrew M. Cuomo said Thursday that he would extend the moratorium on evictions another 60 days, until August 20, and that the state would bar landlord from charging late fees for rent that went unpaid during the virus crisis.
Mr. Cuomo also said that tenants would be allowed to use their security deposit in lieu of a month’s rent.
“I hope it gives families a deep breath,” he said of the measures, adding, “On a human level, I don’t want to see people and their children being evicted at this time.”
Mayor de Blasio, who had been pushing for the measure on security deposits, thanked the governor on Twitter.
In March, the governor had barred landlords from evicting tenants for any reason through June 20.
N.Y. health care workers have fewer virus antibodies than general population, study finds.
Health care workers in downstate New York who were tested for coronavirus antibodies were actually less likely to test positive than the general population, Governor Cuomo said on Thursday.
Mr. Cuomo said that antibody tests of 27,000 workers at 25 hospitals and other facilities found that 12 percent of the health care workers based in New York City had the antibodies. Tests of customers at New York City supermarkets found much higher rates — nearly 20 percent, the governor said.
In Westchester County, just north of the city, the results were similar: 14 percent of supermarket customers tested positive, while only 7 percent of health care workers did.
Mr. Cuomo attributed the counterintuitive findings to the fact that health care workers followed protocols on using masks, gloves and sanitizer more closely than regular citizens did.
“Those masks work,” Mr. Cuomo said. “If they’re working for front line workers, they’re going to work for people in their day-to day lives.”
On Long Island, the number of percentages of health care workers and supermarket customers who tested positive for antibodies were about equal, Mr. Cuomo said.
The governor announced Thursday that 231 New Yorkers had been killed by the virus. That number has been all but flat for four consecutive days.
More homeless on subway enter shelters, the mayor said.
At his morning briefing, Mayor de Blasio released the results of the city’s second night of approaching homeless people in the subways and persuading them to stay in shelters or enter hospitals.
Of the 361 people approached early Thursday, 218, or about 60 percent, agreed to go to either shelters (196 people) or hospitals (22 people), the mayor said.
The outreach effort is part of the new nightly shutdown of the subway system, which began early Wednesday. Each night from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m., subway service stops, homeless people are ejected, and cleaners disinfect the trains.
On the first night of the subway closing, Mr. de Blasio had said, 139 of 252 homeless people who were approached agreed to go to shelters or hospitals.
More homeless had been camping on mostly-empty trains in recent weeks, as the virus swept through densely packed shelters for single adults. The city says it has reduced the density in those shelters by putting more people up in hotels, but advocates for the homeless remain concerned that shelters may be unsafe.
Advocates also say that some homeless people who are kicked off the trains are simply sleeping instead on buses, which still run all night.
City opens two more miles of streets to pedestrians.
Today two more miles will be added to New York City’s network of closed pedestrian streets, for a total of nine miles across the city.
The new swaths of car-free thoroughfares, in four boroughs, are part of the effort to provide more open space to New Yorkers as the weather warms, to encourage social distancing.
They include stretches of 34th Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens; Broadway in Midtown Manhattan; Downtown Brooklyn; and Third Avenue in the South Bronx. Here’s a full list.
As the weather has improved, parks have been deluged with cooped-up residents seeking space, pushing the limits of social distance in some areas with crowded paths and green spaces. At the same time, playgrounds are closed across the city, leaving children without places to play.
A total of 40 miles of streets citywide will open to pedestrians in May, the city has said, and there are plans to expand the program to 100 miles, out of more than 6,000 miles of city streets. This weekend, Hoboken, N.J., also will also start a similar pilot program of closed streets.
Are you a health care worker in the New York area? Tell us what you’re seeing.
As The New York Times follows the spread of the coronavirus across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, we need your help. We want to talk to doctors, nurses, lab technicians, respiratory therapists, emergency services workers, nursing home managers — anyone who can share what’s happening in the region’s hospitals and other health care centers.
A reporter or editor may contact you. Your information will not be published without your consent.
Reporting was contributed by Jonah Engel Bromwich, Benedict Carey, James Glanz, Michael Gold, Joseph Goldstein, Julia Jacobs, Jeffery C. Mays, Andy Newman, Azi Paybarah, Sarah Maslin Nir, Ed Shanahan and Nikita Stewart.
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N.Y.C. May Limit Entry to Parks to Prevent Crowds: Live Updates - The New York Times
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