Cuomo made the announcement on Sunday, March 22 after visiting the city on Saturday, March 21.
"I was in these parks and you wouldn't know there was anything going on," Cuomo said.
"I saw kids playing basketball. There is not social distancing playing basketball. You can't stay six feet away from someone playing basketball.
"It has to stop and it has to stop now. This is not a joke. I am not kidding. This is not life as usual."
Earlier Sunday, Cuomo announced New York City had 2,832 positive cases the last 24 hours, giving it a total of 9,045, accounting for 60 percent of New York State's 15,168 cases. (See first image above.)
Meanwhile, Cuomo said hundreds are working on issues with the state Department of Labor's website which has repeatedly crashed because of an unprecedented amount of unemployment insurance requests.
"We have never seen this kind of volume at any state agency ever," Cuomo said. "We have 700 people working on the website. The tech experts have not been able to figure out a solution."
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