New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Sunday he is moving to shut non-essential businesses as well as schools in nine neighborhoods identified as coronavirus clusters, starting on Wednesday.
This report produced by Yahaira Jacquez.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio: "Today, unfortunately, is not a day for celebration.
Today is a more difficult day." Amid growing clusters of coronavirus cases in several New York City neighborhoods, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Sunday he plans to shut non-essential businesses as well as schools in some of those hard-hit areas starting Wednesday.
"It pains me to be putting forward this approach that we'll need but in some parts of our city, in Brooklyn and Queens, we're having an extraordinary problem, something we haven't seen since the Spring and we have to address this issue forthrightly." De Blasio said the shutdown would affect nine ZIP codes where coronavirus positivity rates have recently spiked.
"So the plan is to rewind in these nine zip codes, to rewind, to go back to address the problem by using the tools that we know work, which is to ensure that non-essential businesses are not open and a variety of activities are not happening." If the shutdown is approved by Governor Andrew Cuomo, about 200 private schools and 100 public schools would close.
The restrictions come just three days after New York City's school system fully reopened, with hundreds of thousands of students returning to classrooms for in-person learning.
Many of the city's hot spots include Orthodox Jewish communities.
Another 11 ZIP codes seeing rising positivity rates are also under close watch.
A spike in coronavirus cases in certain hotspots throughout Brooklyn and Queens has prompted the state to order schools in those..
