De Blasio on Monday said he anticipates a full reopening but not until September
Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Monday night that he does not anticipate New York City fully reopening until September despite declining hospitalization rates and deaths.
The city is on lockdown along with the rest of the state until May 15 at least, after which point is must meet seven requirements set out by Gov. Andrew Cuomo before it can reopen.
There have been 13,536 confirmed COVID-19 deaths in New York City and another 5,373 presumed deaths.
As of Tuesday morning, 170,534 cases had been detected.
An antibody study carried out by the state last week suggested that as much as 25% of the city had been exposed to the virus – some 1.8million people – which significantly lowers the death rate from 5 percent, the number calculated by the official numbers, to 0.5 percent.
It is still far more deadly than the flu – which has a death rate of 0.1 percent – but is prompting some New Yorkers to call for a reopening, claiming the city might have developed herd immunity and that only the most vulnerable now need to be kept inside.
New York City currently meets three of the four criteria; it is lacking in free hospital beds and does not yet have the number of contact tracers – people to track down everyone who has come into contact with new COVID-19 cases – that Cuomo is insisting on hiring before it can reopen.
None are thought to have been hired yet and 2,520 are needed to meet Cuomo’s requirement.
No one from the mayor’s office nor the governor’s office would provide numbers for how many had been hired so far when asked repeatedly by DailyMail.com on Monday and Tuesday.
New York City currently meets three of the four requirements set out by Gov Cuomo
A spokesman for the city said they hoped to hire 1,000 and bulk out the remainder of the tracing workforce with existing Department of Health staff but they would not specify exactly how many people had been hired.
Then, the city can start to reopen in phases, with restaurants and entertainment services among the last industries to come back to life.
In an interview on Monday night with Inside City Hall, De Blasio said that while there will be a softening of restrictions between now and September, he thinks it is a ‘safe bet’ for a ‘fuller reopening’.
‘I believe right now we’re on a good track for the thing I’m focused on the most, which is getting us up and running and as much normal as we can be by the beginning of September when school begins, I want to see school come back strong.
‘I want to see us do the work over the next few months to get to that point. It’s also a natural time when people are coming back from the summer, sort of have everything get into higher gear.
The field hospital in Central Park that was one of the most ominous reminders of the virus is now being taken down
An abandoned Times Square on Monday night as the New York City lockdown continued
There are still thousands of new COVID-19 cases in New York City every day but the death and hospitalization rate is lowering
Walkers in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, wearing masks and practicing social distancing on Monday
‘Now, I think, in the meantime, we’ll be able to start reducing restrictions and opening up certain types of businesses in certain ways.
‘But when I think about sort of what a fuller restart looks like, more normalcy, I still think it’s going to take, you know, several months.
‘September to me is a pretty good bet. So, I’m a little more hopeful that by the time you get to end this summer, beginning of the fall, there’s a chance for more normalcy,’ he said.
Gov. Cuomo’s requirements have been met with mixed reactions.
Some called them ‘absurd’ and accused him of holding the state ‘hostage’.
‘The premise that we cannot reopen NYC’s economy until we have sufficient “contact tracers” in place for covid exposure is flatly absurd.
‘These arbitrary “test and trace” benchmarks increasingly look like an excuse to delay re-opening after the curve has been flattened,’ conservative radio host Buck Sexton tweeted on Monday.
Cautious business leaders refrained from criticizing the requirements on Monday night.
‘Our government and health officials will have to determine when it’s safe to begin reopening New York City’s restaurant and nightlife industry, and we’ll be right there to help develop and inform the policies and procedures so they make as much sense as possible from an industry perspective,’ Andrew Rigie, Executive Director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance, told DailyMail.com.
He added that while the restaurant industry would be ‘ready’ to reopen with safe measures in place, ‘it is up to our public health and government officials to determine when the appropriate time is to begin reopening.’
On Tuesday, Cuomo said the ‘real discussion’ should be about putting the economy before human lives.
‘There’s a question being debated right under the surface. the decisions we make on reopening are really profound. The fundamental question which we’re not articulating is how much is a human life worth.
‘There’s a cost of staying closed, no doubt. Economic cost, personal cost. There’s also a cost of reopening quickly. Either option has a cost. You stay closed, there’s a cost.
‘You reopen quickly, there’s a cost. The faster we reopen, the lower he economic cost but the higher the human cost. Because the more lives lost.
‘That, my friends, is the decision we are really making. What is that balance? What is that trade-off?
‘Our reopening plan doesn’t have a trade-off.’
Of New York City specifically, he said: ‘When do we hit the metrics in NYC ? I don’t know. Nobody can tell you. It depends how fast the decline continues.’
He called his plan ‘the most specific’ to date in terms of data and metrics, and said that unlike others.
‘We laid out a very specific reopening plan yesterday we studied all the states plans, studied reopening plans of countries around the world, I think we have the most specific plan for metrics and measuring to make these decisions,’ he said.
Outside New York, there is growing impatience in states with lower infection rates to get back to work.
It has led to protests and accusations that leaders are shackling the economy.
Gov. Cuomo has repeatedly resisted their outrage, saying he is not willing to risk a second wave of infections because people are angry.
