Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced new COVID-19 restrictions on bars, restaurants, gyms and residential gatherings in New York State.
Effective Friday at 10 p.m., bars, restaurants and gyms or fitness centers, as well as any State Liquor Authority-licensed establishment, will be required to close from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. daily. Restaurants will still be allowed to provide curbside, food-only pick-up or delivery after 10 p.m., but will not be permitted to serve alcohol to go. The State Liquor Authority will issue further guidance for licensees as to what sales are continued to be permitted.
The Governor also announced that indoor and outdoor gatherings at private residences will be limited to no more than 10 people. The limit will be implemented due to the recent prevalence of COVID spread resulting from small indoor gatherings including Halloween parties. These gatherings have become a major cause of cluster activity across the state. Further, this public health measure brings New York State in line with neighboring states including Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. This new rule is also effective Friday at 10 p.m.
AUDIO of today's remarks is available here.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Melissa DeRosa, Robert Mujica, Beth Garvey, Howard Zucker, Gareth Rhodes. Guys is a gender-neutral term. Today is day 256, happy Veterans Day to everyone. We wish the 718,000 veterans in New York and their family a happy Veterans Day. We thank them for their service. We thank them for their sacrifice. America just would not be America without them.
I'm also happy to announce today that we're opening a major expansion of the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor in Orange County. This is really an extraordinary facility and it's going to be a great tourist destination. It's not far from where George Washington first established the badge of military merit, which was the inspiration for the modern Purple Heart. So I hope a lot of people visit it. It really is something we're very proud of.
Let's talk about COVID. We have done 164,000 tests yesterday. The state rate without the micro-cluster zones is 2.5. The state rate with the micro-cluster zones is 2.9. The micro-cluster zone positivity is 4.9. 21 New Yorkers passed away. They're in our thoughts and prayers. 1,628 hospitalized, 304 in ICU, 135 intubated.
What we're seeing is what they predicted for months. Who was listening. The scientists all predicted. We're seeing a national and global COVID surge, and New York is a ship on the COVID tide, right. Yesterday, we actually saw, no I'm sorry, today, we've seen the country set a new record in terms of COVID cases, believe it or not. Record established on April 15th. So it is really getting much, much worse by the day.
You look at the states surrounding New York, on the theory that we're only a ship on the COVID tide. You have New Jersey, which is about a 5 percent infection rate. You have Connecticut, which is about a 7 percent infection rate. You have Pennsylvania which has about a 15 percent infection rate - those are the positivity rates - and you have Massachusetts. If you look at the places in our state where we're having issues, they're very often near the neighboring states. We have issues in the Southern Tier near Pennsylvania, we have issues in Staten Island near New Jersey, Port Chester near Connecticut, et cetera, so if the national numbers are going up and the states around you are going up, be prepared.
In New York we follow the science. We do it more rigorously I believe than any state in the nation and I believe we use more science than any state in the nation and that's primarily the testing data. The reason we have been successful in reducing the spread in New York is we have been a step ahead of COVID. You know where it's going. Stop it before it gets there. And you know where it's going by following the science. You follow these number, you look at the line, you look at the trajectory, you know where it's going, and it is going up and we have always been good at staying ahead of COVID and this is the calibration that we've talked about: increase economic activity, watch the positivity rate, positivity rate starts to go up, back off on the economic activity. It was never a light switch. It was never binary, economic activity or public health. It was always both. That's my great graphic that nobody likes of the valve and the calibration of the valve. You want economic activity to increase, you open the valve, you see the positivity rate going yup, you close, back off on the valve. There is something honest and clean about the mechanics of a valve which is non-binary.
We're taking several actions today. If you look at where the cases are coming from, if you do the contact tracing, you'll see they're coming from three main areas and we're going to act on those three areas.
First is bars and restaurants. We are going to have a requirement that statewide SLA, State Liquor Authority, licensed establishments close at 10 o'clock. What is a state licensed facility? It is a bar, it's a restaurant overwhelmingly, is the majority of it. Bowling alley with a liquor license, but it's about bars and restaurants. That's one of the main spreaders of COVID.
In theory, indoor dining, outdoor dining, you're at a table. You only take down the mask to eat or drink, but what happens is that setting is very hard to police, it's very hard for people to maintain the discipline of sitting there eating and drinking and chatting and having a good time and laughing and keeping a mask on.
Bars and restaurants are one of the identified spreaders. They will close at 10 o'clock. A restaurant can do curbside food-only pickup after 10 o'clock, but food only pick up after 10 o'clock.
Second, gyms. Gyms have to close at 10 o'clock. Gyms are also an identified spreading element. It's bars, restaurants, gyms.
The states surrounding us have done a thing that I think is intelligent and we're going to follow suit because I try to keep symmetry with the surrounding states whenever possible. New Jersey, for example, closed their bars and restaurants. I don't want to then drive their traffic to New York. States around us have capped parties at private residences to no more than 10 people in a residence. Unless your household happens to be more than 10, then it's your household.
Halloween parties, football parties - just let's get together and have a party - this is the third, one of the three great spreaders as identified by our contact tracing. So, the states around us have done this. We're going to do it also because, again, symmetry. I don't want people in Connecticut saying well we can't meet at my house so we'll go meet at your house in New York. You don't want the traffic being steered. No more than 10 in a private residence for a party. Bars, restaurants, gyms, house parties - that's where it's coming from primarily, and those are the ones that we can address. Some specifics, Port Chester was a yellow zone, it will now go to an orange zone; it's right on the Connecticut border. By the way, the 7-day average for Connecticut was something like 10, which is very high. Steuben, good news. It was a yellow zone, they've gotten it under control and that is now eliminated. In Tioga, Waverly will become a yellow zone. And Staten Island will become a yellow zone - parts of Staten Island, and we'll have a map.
Staten Islanders spend a lot of time going back and forth from New Jersey, and New Jersey has a very high rate. I think that's part of what's driving the high rate in Staten Island, which is higher than the rate in the rest of New York City. But I think that's the proximity and the mobility with Jersey. These rules go into effect Friday at 10pm. Last point, you can make rules, but the rules are only as good as the enforcement. Period. Local governments are in charge of enforcement. There are only two fundamental truths in this situation: it's individual discipline and it's government enforcement. Period. End of sentence. Individual discipline: how you act, COVID fatigue, "I don't believe it". Individual discipline and government enforcement.
I need the local governments to enforce this. We went through this with bars and restaurants once before if you remember. We put rules in place. There was widespread lack of compliance and local governments- some did a good job, some really did not. We then had to put together a state task force to do the enforcement. This is statewide. I don't have the resources to do it, so I need the local governments to do it. I need the NYPD to do it in New York City. 150 sheriffs are not enough. It's just not enough to do all COVID safety: airports, borders, trains, buses, bars restaurants. So, I need local enforcement to do it because the rules are only as good as the individual discipline and the government enforcement. That's where we are. We will watch the numbers. We will continue to adjust as the facts adjust. You see some micro-clusters have been relaxed. We're making good progress on other micro-clusters and I think you're going to see in the coming days some more micro-clusters relaxed. Steuben was relaxed. So we know it works.
But, you have to do it. Eat less, burn more calories. You will lose weight. You just have to do it.
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November 12, 2020 at 05:14AM
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Audio & Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo Announces Restaurants, Bars & Other SLA-licensed Entities Must Close In-person Service From 10 PM to 5 AM - ny.gov
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