Covid 19 coronavirus: New Yorkers flattened the curve. Now they're dropping their guard

Social distancing did not appear to be a top priority for many people gathered in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen neighbourhood on Saturday. Photo / Chang W. Lee, The New York Times

Governor Cuomo warned that lax adherence to social-distancing rules meant to contain the coronavirus could lead him to slow New York City's reopening.

The critical indicators surrounding the coronavirus crisis in New York have clearly turned a corner: Deaths have slowed to a trickle, new cases have declined sharply and the numbers of hospitalisations and intubations have eased.

But over the weekend, a more ominous sign emerged. Throughout New York City, many people openly disregarded social-distancing rules, prompting state officials to threaten to reinstate restrictions in the city to guard against a second wave of infections.

"We have 22 states where the virus is increasing," Governor Andrew M. Cuomo said at a news conference Monday. "It's a dramatic national turnaround. We don't want the same plight of these other states."

Cuomo sounded the alarm after a weekend's worth of videos and reports of people violating social-distancing rules, including on Friday in Manhattan's East Village and on Saturday in Hell's Kitchen, neighbourhoods with many bars and restaurants.

The governor singled out bar owners and patrons in Manhattan and the Hamptons on Long Island for flouting the rules, and he warned that if local officials did not crack down on such behavior, the state authorities might suspend or roll back reopening plans for those areas.

Such a move could be financially devastating for business owners who were forced to close for most or all of New York's almost three-month shutdown, and for the tentative recovery in the city, where municipal coffers were decimated as nearly 1 million people lost jobs.

"There is a very real possibility that we would roll back the reopening in those areas," Cuomo said Sunday, suggesting that a second wave of infections was almost inevitable if people gathering outside bars and others violated rules. "It will come. And once it comes, it's too late."

Cuomo's warning came as state officials touted the minuscule rate of new positive virus cases in New York — just over 1% of more than 56,000 tests conducted on Sunday, according to the governor — and as other states grappled with surges in infections.

The number of virus cases has been rising in many of the states that reopened earlier, and in a broader fashion, than New York: Arizona, Florida and Texas all recently reported their highest numbers of cases yet. The governors of Oregon and Utah have taken the drastic step of pausing re openings in their states as a result of similar spikes.

Without a vaccine for the virus, experts have warned, about 70 per cent of the population will need to be infected and develop immunity to halt the spread of infection. New York has had about 390,000 confirmed cases, or about 2 per cent of the state's population.

As of Monday, about 1,600 people in the state were hospitalised because of the virus, the fewest since March 20 and a huge decline from a peak of over 18,000. The daily death toll has hovered below 50 for the past five days, compared with the nearly 800 in one day that were recorded at the outbreak's peak.

But health officials have cautioned that the number of cases could rise as businesses fully reopen, people return to work and commuters take mass transit again, especially in New York City, which has tallied more than 20,000 virus-related deaths. The city began a limited reopening on June 8 that allowed construction and manufacturing to resume, while also permitting curbside and in-store pickup for retail businesses.

Another concern is the recent mass protests against police brutality that have, at times, clogged the city's streets with tens of thousands of people. Although they have encouraged participants to wear masks, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Cuomo have fretted about the possibility the protests could fuel the virus' spread.

With bars and restaurants in New York City not allowed to serve inside, patrons in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn had their drinks outside on Saturday. Photo / Juan Arredondo, The New York Times

There have also been conflicting messages from the state leaders about social gatherings. Such gatherings are still technically limited to 10 people, although Cuomo said Monday that the New York regions in the third phase of reopening — most of the state from the Hudson River to Lake Erie — could allow gatherings of up to 25 people.

The mixed messages on gatherings, along with a weekend of warm weather, may have contributed to a false sense of security among those who were seen flouting social-distancing guidelines.

Jennifer Charlera, 19, a college student, has self-quarantined in her family's apartment in Harlem since March. She said it was difficult to balance respect for social-distancing rules with the desire to see friends and relatives after many weeks of isolation.

She said she had recently begun to get together — outdoors, with masks — with friends who themselves had quarantined at home. Family outings have included walking homemade dinners to relatives, to eat together outside.

"I've gotten more lenient now," she said. "I go out more than I did in March and April."

On Sunday, Cuomo said that the state had been deluged with around 25,000 complaints about businesses that were "in violation of the reopening plan." He warned that bars and restaurants could lose their liquor licenses if they failed to comply, noted that state Liquor Authority inspectors had been dispatched to problem areas and said that he had called several establishments himself.

But he emphasised it was ultimately up to local governments to enforce the state's reopening policies, and he publicly urged mayors and county executives to target establishments that were found to be flouting rules.

"They don't want to enforce them because they're not popular," Cuomo said Monday. "Nobody wants to go to a bar and say, 'You guys have to wear a mask. You guys are violating social distancing.' I get it, but they have to do their job."

A spokeswoman for de Blasio, the governor's fellow Democrat and frequent rival, took issue with Cuomo's remarks, saying in a statement that city employees had worked over the weekend to disperse large groups, distribute face coverings and help business owners keep patrons at an appropriate distance from one another.

"We must balance safety with people's need to reopen their businesses," the statement said. "These businesses are allowed to be open per the governor's guidelines, and we don't believe imprisoning people or taking away their livelihood is the answer."

In another sign of frustration over the virus-related restrictions, residents of Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighbourhood gathered at a playground there on Monday to demand that it be reopened so children who had been cooped up for months had a place to play.

Joseph Lentol, a state assemblyman who represents the area, said police officers from the local precinct had provided a temporary reprieve by unlocking the playground's gates. Lentol said he understood the need for rules meant to keep the virus contained, but suggested that there were inconsistencies in how they were being enforced.

"Nobody seems to be disciplining people who go out and stand around all night in the street and drink," he said.

Monday was also the start of the second stage of New Jersey's reopening. Across the state, outdoor dining was allowed to resume with restrictions, and retail businesses opened their doors for limited indoor shopping for the first time in months.

"Our goal is to not experience the spikes that other states are now seeing because they rushed to open too much, too soon," Gov. Philip D. Murphy said. "We have lost too many lives in too short a period to not heed the lessons of this virus."

Not every public official was pleading for caution.

Steven McLaughlin, the Republican county executive of Rensselaer County, New York, just east of Albany, has been encouraging local businesses to fully reopen against state's guidelines, saying that county officials would not enforce the restrictions.

McLaughlin has criticized the governor's shutdown as unnecessary, arguing that it was hurting small businesses despite there being few active cases in the county.

"Ignore him and his stupid 'phases,'" McLaughlin wrote of the governor on Twitter last week. "Every day he proves they are arbitrary and based on nothing but his maniacal need for power."

Richard Azzopardi, a senior adviser to Cuomo, said McLaughlin was a "conservative extremist who always puts politics over science."

"Look no further than the 22 states experiencing spikes to see what happens when you do that," he added.

Written by: Jesse McKinley and Luis Ferré-Sadurní
Photographs by: Chang W. Lee, Juan Arredondo
© 2020 THE NEW YORK TIMES