| Start spreading the news. New York City, the original U.S. epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, is preparing to close again.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday that the city's inability to stem a rising increase in hospitalizations means there's probably no choice but to shut all non-essential businesses in the days after Christmas.
"With good luck and hard work, we could be out of that in a matter of weeks," the mayor said.  Times Square last month. New York has been slowly recovering from the first shutdown, and now a second one is looming. Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images North America Although New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will make the final decision, closures will be similar to what the city experienced last spring, with the exception that schools will remain open this time, de Blasio said. The mere mention of the spring is enough to send chills down the spine of the city's 8.3 million residents. Almost overnight in March, the Big Apple was transformed into a ghost town whose eerie silence was broken only by the sirens of ambulances rushing coronavirus patients to hospitals.
The shutdown this time would be different, though. Kids will be going to school, and people now used to wearing masks will probably be more comfortable venturing into parks and grocery stores than they were in March and April.
But it would still be a body blow to the U.S. financial capital, which has been slowly recovering from the original lockdown. While Broadway remains dark and midtown office buildings are still mostly empty of workers, outdoor dining has breathed life into some restaurants, and museums, hair salons, fitness centers and clothing stores have all mostly reopened with limited capacity and other restrictions. It will take weeks to reduce the number of people hospitalized in New York—at 2.89 per 100,000 in the population as of Dec. 13—to the city's established safety level of 2 per 100,000. The percentage of people testing positive for the virus stood at 5.51%, also above the city's threshold, which is 5%. In the summer, through social distancing, testing and mask-wearing, New Yorkers had driven that figure below 1%.
Unless New Yorkers can push those numbers down again, it looks like the city that never sleeps will be taking another long nap.—Mark Schoifet | 
Post a Comment