“Now is not the time to get into dining,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a press briefing. “We are looking at what is happening in other parts of the country […] and we are all worried that eating inside a restaurant has become a problem. ”
He gave no possible new date for the resumption of this key aspect of life and tourism in America’s economic capital, where all entertainment venues remain closed. Broadway theaters will not reopen until January 2021.
“It is not a rule forever, it is a postponement,” he stressed. “We have to wait until we have proof that we can do it safely.”
The New York metropolis, which was for a long time at the heart of the epidemic in the United States and recorded 22,000 deaths from the coronavirus, has since seen the epidemic decline sharply.
It has been engaged since the beginning of June in a cautious deconfinement, and fears that the epidemic will return like a boomerang with the soaring cases in the southern and western states of the country.
On Monday, only 40 people were hospitalized in New York due to coronavirus, and only 1% of those tested tested positive, two key indicators whose figures have continued to improve, while tests are now available everywhere.
The restaurants were able to reopen on the terrace on June 22, thanks to social distancing measures, even if New Yorkers do not generally jostle there. Hairdressers also reopened on the 22nd, as well as many stores, with the obligatory wearing of masks and reduced capacities.
As for municipal beaches, especially those very busy Coney Island or the Rockaways, where we could only walk, they reopened for swimming on Wednesday.
The mayor also announced that he would reopen by August 1 15 municipal swimming pools, usually very popular in the humid New York summers.
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