Bill De Blasio Prepares to Close Business in Nine New York Zip Codes After Virus Surge
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) said he is preparing to initiate another lockdown throughout the city in response to a new surge of coronavirus outbreaks.
NBC New York reports that de Blasio is still trying to get approval from the state, but his proposal would rollback the reopening of restaurants, schools, and nonessential businesses in Brooklyn and Queens. The lockdown would be directed at nine area codes in the two boroughs.
“This was not an easy choice to make, and let me be clear: we haven’t seen any issues in these schools. We must, however, be proactive about the safety and health of New Yorkers,” said de Blasio. “This is out of an abundance of caution and in coordination with a larger strategy that mirrors what we did successfully in the spring of a larger shutdown to make ensure we stopped the spread.”
Eleven other zip codes are also being watched, but de Blasio says that even though the city has proposed shutting them down, they have not yet seen the same Covid-19 positivity rate. At around the same time as de Blasio’s press conference, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) got on Twitter, bemoaned that “local governments have not done an effective job of enforcement in these hotspot ZIP codes,” and suggested that the state government might intervene.
However the State can’t take over effective enforcement for every jurisdiction. If a local jurisdiction cannot or will not perform effective enforcement of violating entities, notify the State & we will close all business activity in hotspots where local gov’t can’t do compliance
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) October 4, 2020
Watch above, via NBC New York.
