New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday the city will remain on lockdown at least “until the first half of June,” saying certain criteria still must be met before the city can safely reopen amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Despite experiencing a steady downward trend of coronavirus cases and deaths, the city is still weeks away from reopening, Mr. de Blasio told PIX 11.
“We still need at least a few more weeks — it’s going to go into the first half of June,” the Democratic socialist said. “We are not going to allow a boomerang in this disease. We’re not going to allow a resurgence that could obviously shut us down for a much longer period of time.”
“We’re looking like we’re making steady progress, but then when we get to that point, we’ll take some measured reopening steps and then see how those go and then go farther from there,” he added.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo unveiled seven criteria New York counties need to meet before reopening. New York City is behind in three criteria: hospital beds, ICU beds and contact tracers.
The city needs to have 30 percent of its hospital beds and ICU beds available and hire 2,250 contact tracers. According to the governor’s regional monitoring dashboard, the city currently has 27 percent of its hospital beds free and 26 percent of its ICU beds free. It does not say how many contract tracers have been hired.
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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