Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Thursday that phase one of the city’s reopening could start sometime in the first half of June, which would allow for construction, manufacturing, agricultural operations, and retailers to reopen with restrictions, according to New York state guidelines.
“I’m basing that on what we know today, I’ll put an asterisk,” said Mayor de Blasio during his daily novel coronavirus press conference.
De Blasio told reporters that although his administration would decide later this month the exact date of reopening would occur, that officials were literally trying to decide on a date between June 1 and June 15. That time frame could change though if the city sees and spike in new cases, hospitalizations, or admittances to ICUs.
“The goal obviously is to never have to go back to the same level of restriction that we’ve been in and God forbid go to even higher levels of restriction,” said de Blasio during his daily novel coronavirus press conference. “If we are smart about this we’ll have some ups and downs, that’s normal… but the game plan we are trying to put together here is where you don’t have the big setback.”
De Blasio called Thursday a “pretty good day” in terms of his office’s coronavirus indicator data. On Thursday, his administration reported that since May 18 the number of New Yorkers admitted to hospital suspected of having COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, dropped from 63 to 60.
The number of people currently in an ICU at one of the city’s public hospital’s dropped from 483 to 477 but the percentage of people that have tested positive for the virus increased slightly from 8% to 9%.
