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Gov. Andrew Cuomo threatened to close restaurants and bars back down in New York City following a weekend marked by more incidents of people crowding the streets outside of venues to party late at night.
“Don’t be stupid,” Cuomo said Monday at a morning briefing. “What they’re doing is stupid and reckless for themselves and for other people, and it has to stop.”
He demanded local governments and law enforcement agencies enforce state public health and safety mandates, such as mask-wearing and social distancing, as well as disperse crowds and crack down on bars and restaurants that flout the rules — or else.
“We will have to roll back the bar and restaurant opening if congregations continue. If local governments don’t stop it, that is what is going to happen,” Cuomo said during a briefing held at Kennedy Airport, ahead of a flight to Savannah, Georgia, where he’s expected to deliver coronavirus aid. He’s part of a delegation of New York medical professionals who went to Savannah to help expand testing and other strategies addressing the outbreak in the southern city.
Among the most egregious parties over the weekend included hundreds of late-night revelers who crowded a block in the New York City borough of Queens — once the epicenter of the city’s COVID-19 outbreak and which to-date has suffered nearly 6,000 deaths, more than any other county in the U.S.
Authorities have already shuttered one venue as a result of the block party, which took place on a bar-heavy artery in the borough’s Astoria neighborhood, Mayor Bill de Blasio said at his own briefing on Monday.
De Blasio said businesses are “overwhelmingly” following the rules, but echoed the governor’s sentiment that the industry could be shut back down if “troubling” incidents like the one in Queens continue.
“We don’t want to shut down restaurants,” he said on Monday. But when it comes to other parts of the country, he said: “It was reckless disregard in the way that bars and restaurants were handled that was one of the causes of the resurgence of the coronavirus, and we will not let that happen here.”
The threats to close dining back down came as the city entered a modified version of Phase 4, the final stage in its economic reopening. Phase 4 allows zoos and botanical gardens to reopen; and paves the way for schools and colleges to reopen in the fall.
But indoor dining, theaters, gyms, malls and museums remain closed in the five boroughs indefinitely. De Blasio said there was no timeline for when they could reopen.
Confirmed cases in the state have remained flat for weeks. Cuomo announced another 519 new diagnoses out of about 50,000 tests performed on Sunday; there were eight deaths from COVID-19 reported that day and 58 new hospitalizations.
