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New York to require face coverings in busy public places

April 15, 2020 Associated Press
A jogger wearing a mask ran at Brooklyn Bridge Park on Tuesday. Photo: Mark Lennihan/AP
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NEW YORK (AP) — Face coverings will be required in busy spaces while New York City officials said they would create an emergency food reserve and take other steps to safeguard residents’ sustenance. Meanwhile, the mayor urged a cautious approach to reviving the economy.

Here are the latest coronavirus developments in New York:

Face coverings

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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said state residents will be required to wear face coverings when they are out and coming in close contact with other people.

The new mandate will require masks or face coverings on busy streets, public transit or any situation where people cannot maintain 6 feet of social distancing. The executive order is similar to recommendations already in effect in New York City and will be in force Friday.

“Stopping the spread is everything. How can you not wear a mask when you’re going to come close to a person?” Cuomo said at his daily briefing. “On what theory would you not do that?”

A delivery worker wore a mask while riding a bicycle through the rain outside NYU Langone Medical Center on Monday. Photo: John Minchillo/AP

The governor said there will initially be no civil penalties for noncompliance, but he’s urging merchants to enforce it among customers.

Though hospitalizations from the outbreak are leveling off, New York officials are trying to dramatically reduce transmission rates as the death toll rises. New York recorded 752 deaths Tuesday, for a total of more than 11,000 in just over a month.

Those figures don’t include approximately 3,800 other deaths in New York City during the outbreak that city officials say were probably caused by the virus, but haven’t been confirmed by a lab test.

Cuomo’s announcement came hours after New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called for stores to make customers wear face coverings in order to protect store workers against exposure.

Food plan

In a city where 1.2 million residents — including one in five children — already struggled at times to feed themselves, the number is expected to grow as an estimated half-million New Yorkers have lost or are likely to lose their jobs in the immediate future.

“We will make sure everyone gets the food they need,” de Blasio said in unveiling a $170 million plan to help.

Medical workers cheered to acknowledge pedestrians and FDNY firefighters who gathered to applaud them outside The Brooklyn Hospital Center on Tuesday. Photo: John Minchillo/AP

The city already is handing out 250,000 free meals a day at schools and delivering 25,000 a day to senior citizens. Officials expect to provide 10 million free meals in April and expect the need to grow to as much as 15 million in May.

Meanwhile, the city has contacted some 11,000 taxi and livery drivers — whose livelihoods have been shattered as people stay home — to hire them to deliver meals to those who can’t leave home, the mayor said.

While officials said the city food supply is stable, they also plan to create a $50 million reserve of as many as 18 million shelf-stable meals.

The economic equation

While outlining the hardships New Yorkers are facing, de Blasio said leaders need to be deliberative about trying to rev up the economy.“I want to restart the economy desperately … but the best way to do it is to be careful,” he said, warning that moving too quickly could create an opportunity for the coronavirus to come roaring back.

A New York City parks department sign encouraged social distancing as pedestrians lingered in a field at Fort Greene Park on Tuesday. Photo: John Minchillo/AP

De Blasio, whose city is the epicenter of the U.S. COVID-19 outbreak, said Wednesday that some parts of Asia have experienced a resurgence of the virus after reopening.

De Blasio spoke after the city’s health department revised its toll of COVID-19 deaths on Tuesday by adding 3,778 “probable” coronavirus deaths among people who showed symptoms but were never tested for the virus. The new methodology raises the city’s virus toll to more than 10,000.

“The first thing to think about is the human reality of thousands more human beings we lost and families that are in pain,” the Democrat told “Fox and Friends” early Wednesday. “But then we also have to think about what it means for all of us and to really recognize the sheer ferocity of this disease.”

In an earlier interview on CNN’s “New Day,” de Blasio said the new numbers show New Yorkers that “we’ve all gone through hell here.”


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