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N.Y.C. may limit entry to parks to reduce crowds, mayor said.
New York City may limit entry to some parks to prevent them from becoming too crowded as the weather warms and adhering to social-distancing rules becomes more of challenge, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Thursday.
At some parks, Mr. de Blasio said, “just the configuration of the park lends itself to overcrowding.”
“We can’t let that happen and we have to limit the number of people going in,” he said, adding that any such effort would require “experimentation.”
The mayor did not clarify which parks could be covered by the new rules, but said more details would be announced on Friday.
“There’s not that many places, honestly,” Mr. de Blasio said. “But wherever that is the case we’re going to work with a protocol to do that,”
With playgrounds closed and gyms shut down as nonessential businesses amid the coronavirus outbreak, New Yorkers have flooded parks in search of safe places to exercise and enjoy the outdoors while maintaining social distance.
To help create more open space, the city has been closing some streets to car traffic. On Thursday, two more miles of streets were closed, bringing the total to nine miles. (Here’s a full list of which streets have been closed so far.)
Officials have said a total of 40 miles of streets would opened to pedestrians and cyclists this month. There are plans to ultimately expand the program to 100 of the city’s 6,000 miles of streets.
National Guard arrives at troubled N.J. nursing home.
National Guard members arrived at a troubled nursing home in northern New Jersey on Thursday after weeks of pleading from patients’ families who feared for their relatives’ safety.
At least 53 residents of the nursing home, Andover Subacute and Rehabilitation Center II, have died after contracting the virus, making the home the site of one of the state’s worst outbreaks.
The day after Easter, 17 bodies were found in a small morgue at the center after the police received a tip that a body was being stored in an outdoor shed.
Family members and Sussex County officials have repeatedly asked Gov. Philip D. Murphy to send the National Guard in to help, as he has done at two state-run veterans homes.
Mr. Murphy said on Thursday that 120 National Guard members would be deployed at private nursing homes, including Andover.
An employee at the Andover home said they were told to expect 22 National Guard members whose duties would include cleaning and disinfecting.
Over the past week, residents have complained that clothing and bedsheets had not been washed.
A lawyer for Chaim Scheinbaum, the home’s manager, could not be reached for comment.
New Jersey unemployment claims top 1 million.
New Jersey officials have received more than one million claims for unemployment benefits since March 15, when the state began shutting down its economy to stop the spread of the coronavirus, Governor Philip D. Murphy said Thursday.
Since then, officials at the New Jersey Department of Labor have issued $1.9 billion in unemployment assistance.
“This is an unemployment crisis unlike that which we have ever seen,” Mr. Murphy said.
Robert Asaro-Angelo, commissioner of the Labor Department, said his employees have been fielding a stream of calls and emails from desperate residents seeking benefits and that 150,000 new claims have been filed each week since mid-March.
“To put this in perspective, the most new claims in a week after Super Storm Sandy were just 45,000,” he said.
Many people have complained of waiting for hours to reach someone at the department or reported delays in getting checks.
Mr. Asaro-Angelo said some residents filed the wrong information and advised them to consult the state’s guidelines on filing claims. “We’re doing everything in our power to get everyone the income they’re entitled to,” he said.
On Wednesday, Mr. Murphy had extended for another 30 days the public health emergency order that has essentially stopped the state’s economy, even as the rate of new cases slows down.
On Thursday, he said that the number of hospitalizations fell to below 5,000, down nearly 40 percent from its mid-April peak.
“Having fewer than 5,000 people in the hospitals for Covid-19 is a milestone,” Mr. Murphy said.
New Jersey reported another 254 deaths from the virus, bringing the total to 8,801. The state’s daily death counts fluctuate because the number reported on any given day can include older deaths newly linked to the virus.
On Thursday, Mr. Murphy mentioned the deaths of Satyender Dev Khanna and his daughter, Priya Khanna, both doctors who died of the coronavirus within days of each other at Clara Maass Medical Center in Belleville, where they worked.
“This is a family, by the way, dedicated to health and medicine,” Mr. Murphy said.
N.Y.C. offers 140,000 free antibody tests.
New York City will offer 140,000 free antibody tests to residents who want to know whether they have been exposed to the virus, Mr. de Blasio said on Thursday.
The initiative followed the city’s offer last week of 140,000 antibody tests to health care and other front-line workers.
The new round of tests will be offered at sites in some of the neighborhoods that the virus has hit hardest: Morrisania in the Bronx, East New York in Brooklyn, Upper Manhattan, Long Island City in Queens, and Concord in Staten Island.
A phone number for making appointments will be released on Friday, the mayor said. Preference will be given to people who live in the affected neighborhoods.
“The goal is to focus on people in the general area of these test sites,” Mr. de Blasio said.
Those who are tested will be asked for demographic and employment information, to help the city understand who is getting the virus and how, he said.
On the front lines: Abby Fazio, pharmacy owner.
The Times is regularly profiling essential workers in the New York region during the pandemic.
Where do you live? Manhasset, Long Island, N.Y.
Where do you work: New London Pharmacy, Chelsea, Manhattan.
How has your job changed during the outbreak?
I’ve been working seven days, because there’s just not enough staff. Just now, I was putting items away, which is not what I do as a pharmacist. But when you’re an owner, you do whatever you have to do to keep the business going.
How has your staff been?
Five or six haven’t come back to work since the beginning of this. And a few weeks ago, it was even harder because three of my main people — two pharmacists and my lead technician were out sick with Covid.
How did that change things?
We started closing at 6 rather than 8:30. Because there was just not enough time at night to sanitize and to get the store ready for the next day. And to, you know, do all the bits and ends that you have to do as a pharmacy.
In your job, you’re talking to patients about what the illness is like, and you’re interacting with people so much. Does that give you any anxiety or stress?
Not anymore. Because, like, in the beginning, we didn’t know enough. But I’m still a pharmacist. I still have to help you. I still have to show you where and what a thing is, and I have to listen to how you feel. When you take an oath in pharmacy, it’s like, you owe the public a certain thing. And I felt, that’s what I’m doing. And that has humbled me.
Cuomo extends moratorium on evictions.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Thursday that he would extend the moratorium on evictions another 60 days, until August 20, and that the state would bar landlords from charging late fees on rent that was not paid during the virus crisis.
Mr. Cuomo also said that tenants would be allowed to use security deposits in lieu of a month’s rent.
“I hope it gives families a deep breath,” he said of the measures.
Mr. de Blasio, who had pushing for the security-deposit measure, praised the move.
In March, Mr. Cuomo barred landlords from evicting tenants through June 20 for any reason.
N.Y. health care workers have fewer virus antibodies than average people, study finds.
Health care workers in downstate New York who were tested for antibodies to the virus were less likely to test positive than the general population, Mr. Cuomo said on Thursday.
Antibody tests of 27,000 workers at 25 hospitals and other facilities found that 12 percent of the health care workers based in New York City had the antibodies, Mr. Cuomo said. Tests of customers at New York City supermarkets found rates of nearly 20 percent, the governor said.
In Westchester County, just north of the city, the results were similar: 14 percent of supermarket customers tested positive, compared with 7 percent of health care workers.
Mr. Cuomo attributed the findings to health care workers following protocols for using masks, gloves and sanitizer more closely than regular citizens.
“Those masks work,” Mr. Cuomo said. “If they’re working for front line workers, they’re going to work for people in their day-to day lives.”
On Long Island, health care workers and supermarket customers tested positive for antibodies at about the same rate, Mr. Cuomo said.
The governor said on Thursday that the virus had killed 231 more New Yorkers. The number has been fairly steady for four straight days.
More homeless people entered shelters from the subway.
At his morning briefing on Thursday, Mr. de Blasio said that of 361 homeless people approached by city workers on the subway shutdown’s second night, 218, or about 60 percent, had agreed to go to shelters (196 people) or hospitals (22 people).
On the first night of the subway closing — during which trains stop running from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. so that the system can be thoroughly disinfected — 139 of 252 homeless people who were approached agreed to go to shelters or hospitals, the mayor reported on Wednesday.
It had appeared that more homeless people had been camping on mostly empty trains in recent weeks as the virus swept through densely packed shelters for single adults.
Officials have said the city was reducing the number of people in such shelters by putting more of them in otherwise empty hotels, but advocates for homeless people remain concerned that shelters may be unsafe.
Advocates also said that some homeless people who were kicked off trains were simply sleeping on buses, which continue run through the night.
Are you a health care worker in the New York area? Tell us what you’re seeing.
As The New York Times follows the spread of the coronavirus across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, we need your help. We want to talk to doctors, nurses, lab technicians, respiratory therapists, emergency services workers, nursing home managers — anyone who can share what’s happening in the region’s hospitals and other health care centers.
A reporter or editor may contact you. Your information will not be published without your consent.
Reporting was contributed by Jonah Engel Bromwich, Maria Cramer, Michael Gold, Joseph Goldstein, Julia Jacobs, Jeffery C. Mays, Andy Newman, Azi Paybarah, Sarah Maslin Nir, Ed Shanahan and Nikita Stewart.
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N.Y.C. May Limit Entry to Parks to Prevent Crowds: Live Updates - The New York Times
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