NYC May Close All Indoor Dining Next Week, if COVID Rates Do Not Slow

By Yehudit Garmaise

  Now that public schools are closed at least through Thanksgiving next weekend, rising COVID-positivity rates will probably shut down the city’s indoor dining and make other restrictions necessary as early as next week.

   Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said that if New York City’s seven-day rolling average state testing average exceeds 3% for more than 10 days, he will impose on the entire city the restrictions of the micro-cluster of orange zones, which shutting down indoor dining and limits outdoor dining to four people per table, the New York Post reported today.

   Yesterday Mayor Bill de Blasio shut the city’s 1,700 public schools starting today because according to the mayor’s testing system, the city hit 3.00% COVID positivity rate yesterday, however Gov. Cuomo uses a slightly different testing system, which currently shows New York City to be testing at a rate of 2.5% positivity.

   If the coronavirus infection rate does not slow down, therefore, officials privately acknowledge, that New York City could be considered an orange zone, for at least 10 days, as early as next week.

   “More restrictions are coming, very likely in the next week or two,” Mayor de Blasio just said in his daily press conference. “But we are going to work with the state, and reopen as soon as possible.”