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Cuomo said that if hospitalization rates don’t begin to stabilize, restaurants and bars in New York City will completely close for indoor seating, while the rest of the state will see the indoor dining capacity drop from a max of 50 percent to 25 percent.
The changes will take effect within the next week, Cuomo said, and he will give restauranteurs a few days to “reorient.” Indoor dining in designated “red” and “orange” micro-clusters is already banned under the state’s COVID-19 strategy.
According to Cuomo, each of the state’s 10 regions’ hospital rates will be reviewed independently and won’t have a bearing on shuttering indoor dining elsewhere.
The move comes following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention releasing new guidance on indoor dining on Friday, Dec. 4.
“I believe that as the facts change, your opinions change. And as the facts change, your strategy should change,” Cuomo said during a COVID-19 briefing in Manhattan on Monday, Dec. 7. “If after five days we haven’t seen a stabilization in a region’s hospital rate, we’re going to clamp down on indoor dining.”
There were 160 new COVID-19 patients admitted into New York hospitals overnight, bringing the total to 4,602 statewide as of Dec. 7, its highest total since May 22 but down from the peak, when approximately 19,000 were hospitalized. There are 872 (22 new) COVID-19 patients in ICU beds, and 477 (13 new) have been intubated.
“The Thanksgiving wave is just starting to break, then you’ve got the Christmas, Hannakuh, Kwanza wave, then the New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day wave, so it’s all a matter of function and New Yorkers can change that,” he said. “It’s not just about indoor dining, you have to look at the big picture, and that hospitalization capacity.
“If we don’t get the (hospitalization) rate under control, you’re going to overwhelm the hospital systems, and we’re going to have to go back to shutting down,” Cuomo continued. “There are certain absolutes, and what’s absolute here is that we cannot overwhelm the hospital systems, because if you do, you have to shut down (everything).”
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