What to Know
- New restrictions are on tap for New Jersey -- and may be in store for other Northeast states -- this week following an emergency governors' summit to discuss next steps to curb the latest COVID tide
- The country recorded more than 1 million new cases last week alone and now has well over 11 million; more than a dozen states, including New Jersey and Pennsylvania, set single-day highs for new cases
- Mayor de Blasio insists schools will move all-remote if NYC hits a 3% rolling positivity rate, and while Gov. Cuomo says he won't intervene, he also says schools aren't the problem
Gov. Phil Murphy announced early Monday he would lower indoor and outdoor capacity limits in New Jersey in the coming days, potentially one outcome of an emergency weekend summit convened by Gov. Andrew Cuomo with other Northeast governors, many of whom rolled out new protocol over the last week to stem their states' soaring rates of virus spread. More restrictions may follow.
Murphy said indoor gatherings will be capped at 10, down from 25, starting Tuesday -- echoing a move made by Cuomo last week in New York and another Gov. Ned Lamont made in Connecticut the week before that. Outdoor gatherings will be limited to 150, a reduction of 70 percent, as of Nov. 23. Murphy is expected to provide more details on the restrictions in his COVID briefing later Monday.
"We think those are steps coupled with some of the other steps we've taken, which will hopefully begin to shave these numbers down," Murphy told MNSBC, referring to new state curfews. "It's gotten worse and it's going to get worse ... particularly with the cold weather, with the holidays, this is going to get worse."
The developments come after New Jersey broke its own single-day case pandemic case record twice in two days over the weekend, reflecting the struggles of the nation amid a COVID surge that has left no state untouched.
They come as New York emerges from its first weekend of a 10 p.m. indoor-service curfew on restaurants, bars and gyms, as well as a capacity cap of 10 people in private homes, which presents its own unique enforcement challenges as the health expert-feared holiday season draws ever closer.
And they come as hundreds of thousands of New York City public school parents await what appears to be an all but certain fate in the re-closure of in-person learning, with the city clinging to a rolling positivity rate just below the 3 percent threshold that triggers the all-remote switch. That number was 2.77 percent Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on MSNBC. Schools remain open for now.
Schools in New York City will be open Monday after weekend numbers stayed below the closing threshold. Myles Miller reports.
Even before the newest New York restrictions took effect Friday night, Cuomo warned of new measures likely to come. His tone last week, while resigned to what he perceives to be an inevitable viral increase associated with the national and international climate, colder weather and holiday travel, also appeared more resigned to the necessity of new statewide measures than in previous weeks.
He has championed his micro-cluster strategy, which apples varying restrictions to narrow geographic areas based on risk, as an effective containment tool for the last two months. It has proven to drive down positivity rates in the highest risk areas, data shows; none of the initial red zones, which warrant the most severe restrictions under the micro-cluster plan, exist anymore, given their improvement.
That said, the current COVID climate in the tri-state area is more reflective of community spread than a simple cluster situation. More intense measures may be needed to stem that tide. It's "a pure consequence of science," Cuomo said. Ideally, those measures should be aligned on a regional basis to discourage people in New York, for example, from going across the river for a holiday party in New Jersey, where until Monday, the indoor gathering limit was more than double.
It wasn't immediately clear what may or may not have been agreed upon during the weekend summit, but Cuomo described it as a productive conversation. Previously he said airports, travel and enforcement were on the list of topics.
It wasn't known if the subject of in-person schooling was also on the agenda. Many major school districts and universities in Connecticut and New Jersey have switched all-remote of their own accord, despite no gubernatorial mandate. Cuomo has been hesitant to intervene in the looming closure of the largest public school district in the nation, though suggested for the second time in two days Saturday that Mayor Bill de Blasio incorporate more factors than the rolling citywide positivity rate into his shutdown threshold. School has proven a bright spot in the city in its ongoing war against coronavirus, with less than 0.2 percent of mandatory weekly randomized student and staff testing returning positive.
Daily Percentage of Positive Tests by New York Region
Gov. Andrew Cuomo breaks the state into 10 regions for testing purposes and tracks positivity rates to identify potential hotspots. Here's the latest tracking data by region and for the five boroughs. For the latest county-level results statewide, click here
Not only are schools not fueling infection spread, they might actually help to mitigate it, Cuomo has said. De Blasio is expected to provide an update on the city's core indicators, including that positivity rate, in his briefing later Monday.
"Schools are actually the safe place – the infection rate in the schools is much lower than the rest of the city and the rest of the community," Cuomo said on MSNBC Monday. "Why not leave the children in the schools, rather than have them run around the streets where the infection rate is five times as high?”
Finding such bright spots over the last month, which has seen the United States smash its own single-day case record nearly a dozen times and report a pandemic high in hospitalizations, has been a challenge of the highest order.
Both New York City and state have struggled to contain rising COVID rates in recent weeks. While the positivity rates within both remain among the lowest in the nation, the bar for "lowest in the nation" has risen steadily. New York has reported about an average of 3,900 new daily infections each day over the last seven days, which is nearly four times the numbers it was seeing at the end of October. That's only about six weeks ago. Hospitalizations are at their highest total since June 8, and daily deaths have steadily been ticking up accordingly.
In Westchester County's Mount Vernon, a stay-at-home advisory went into effect Monday. The city has recently seen a double-digit increase in daily cases, with 84 new cases reported this month. Only absolutely essential travel is advised.
As the city of Mount Vernon sees a spike in virus cases, its urging people who live there to stay at home unless they are traveling for work, school or essential needs. Phil Lipof reports.
Both New Jersey and Pennsylvania reported alarming COVID-19 over the weekend, setting new pandemic highs for single-day case totals. The Garden State broke its spring record on Saturday when Murphy announced 4,395 new cases of COVID-19. It took 24 hours to break it again, with 4,540 on Sunday.
Despite those highs, New Jersey hospitalizations are at a third of what they were at the end of April (2,004). Treatment is more effective now than it was at the onset of the pandemic, which may translate to fewer and shorter hospitalization and ultimately, less tragedy. On the other hand, hospitalizations lag increases in cases and deaths lag increases in new admissions, which means the full impact of the latest COVID surge may not yet have fully materialized in those regards.
New Jersey reported a new record number of coronavirus cases: 4,395. For perspective, the former record was set back on April 17 with 4,391. Ida Siegal reports.
The country recorded more than 1 million new cases last week alone, including 156,416 on Saturday, which marked the eleventh day in a row that the United States recorded more than 100,000 daily cases. It now has well more than 11 million confirmed cases. More than a dozen states, including New Hampshire, Maryland, Colorado, and Montana, all broke daily records of cases this weekend. Georgia was the only U.S. state to report a two-week decrease.
Experts say life in the U.S. won't return to any semblance of normalcy until there is an effective and widely available vaccine. That may not happen for months, despite encouraging news from Pfizer. Moderna followed up with its own positive news Monday, saying it expects to file for emergency approval of its vaccine in the "coming weeks," with 20 million doses ready to ship this year.
Even when a safe, effective vaccine is approved, delivery and distribution to millions of Americans remain a mammoth challenge for governors.
In his first press conference since he lost his reelection bid, President Trump touted the progress vaccines have made — while also taking a dig at New York by saying the government won't be giving the state any shipments of the vaccine. NBC New York's Adam Harding reports.
Cuomo urged the federal government Sunday to get ahead of equitable vaccine distribution, referring Sunday to alarming health disparities unveiled within the first few months of the pandemic. He is determined not to repeat the patterns of spring, when New York hospitals were overwhelmed, testing was less expansive and fear crippled the economic and psychological nuclei of almost every state.
The governor described the COVID crisis as a "low tide" for America -- one that reveals ugliness below the surface that may not be visible under higher waters.
"Do you know how when you stand on the beach, and you look out at the water, and the tide is high, and all you see is the surface of the water, and the waves, and everything looks nice and beautiful? But you stand at the same point at low tide, when the water goes out and the sea bottom is revealed, and you see rocks, and you see debris, and you see the ugliness that the water was covering," he said.
"emergency" - Google News
November 16, 2020 at 09:21PM
https://ift.tt/3pxuudJ
NJ Imposes New Capacity Limits After Cuomo's Emergency Summit; NYC Schools' Fate in Limbo - NBC New York
"emergency" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2VVGGYQ
https://ift.tt/3d7MC6X
emergency
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "NJ Imposes New Capacity Limits After Cuomo's Emergency Summit; NYC Schools' Fate in Limbo - NBC New York"
Post a Comment