N.Y. Recovery Stumbles as Cuomo, De Blasio Feud Over Hot Spots

(Bloomberg) -- Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to shut down schools and nonessential businesses in viral hot spots of New York City. So does Governor Andrew Cuomo. They disagree, though, over how to draw the boundaries.

It’s the latest in a political tug-of-war between de Blasio and Cuomo as the two try to contain rising cases and hospital admissions, mostly due to Covid clusters in parts of Brooklyn and Queens that have large Orthodox Jewish populations.

Their conflict adds to the confusion that has engulfed residents of these areas since de Blasio on Oct. 4 announced a plan to close schools and nonessential businesses in nine ZIP codes on Wednesday. Plans changed in the days that followed as the mayor and the governor held competing press conferences and defined different boundaries affected by the new lockdowns.

Statewide hospital admissions reached 748 on Tuesday, up from fewer than 500 two weeks prior. Cuomo reported 1,360 new cases, marking nine of the last 12 days with 1,000 cases or more. The governor blamed a lack of enforcement of his virus restrictions by local governments, along with mass gatherings.

“These limitations are better than going back to close down, which is what happens when the infection increases,” Cuomo said.

New York, the early epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, had more than 18,000 people hospitalized for Covid at its worst point in April, and more than 50% testing positive. The city had recovered to a point where it had more than 35 straight days with a positive test rating of less than 1% through mid-September.

Of 108,000 tests conducted statewide on Tuesday, 1.25% were positive, including hot spot areas, Cuomo said. The number just in those areas was 5.1%, and 1.05% excluding them.

Dueling Announcements

Cuomo initially questioned the mayor’s decision to announce a plan before getting his approval. After de Blasio said he would close schools and nonessential businesses, the governor delayed the business closings so he could draw his own “cluster action” map -- a cacophony of red, orange and yellow zones based on the density of cases and subject to varying restrictions and fines.

“Legally, the mayor has no authority” to close businesses, Cuomo said at a Tuesday press conference. “Let’s say he proposed something, because he has no authority to close a school, or open a school, or close a business or open a business, or put these rules in place. No locality has that authority.”

On Tuesday night, hundreds of Orthodox Jews spilled onto the streets of Brooklyn to oppose Cuomo’s latest restrictions. Videos posted on social media showed a group in Borough Park burning a pile of face masks in protest.

“To the extent there are communities that are upset, that’s because they haven’t been following the original rules,” Cuomo told reporters Wednesday on a conference call. “The rules weren’t being enforced, because the communities didn’t want to follow them. I understand that. But that’s why we are where we are.”

Cuomo said his “cluster action” initiative was developed in consultation with leading national public-health experts, including former New York City Health Commissioner Tom Frieden and Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota. He described the cluster area as the circles after a pebble is dropped in a pond, with those toward the middle indicating the main cluster and outer circles the precautionary area.

“These are geographically circumscribed, relatively small, but that’s why they’re clusters,” Cuomo said. “And the trick is to keep them small.”

Closures will be in effect for at least 14 days, with fines for mass gatherings raised to $15,000 a day. Failure to comply with mask-wearing or social distancing can result in a fine of as much as $1,000. About 1,200 city employees will enforce those fines, with more personnel added if needed. The city will create an online tool so people will know what zone they are in, de Blasio said during a news briefing Wednesday.

Enforcement Zones

In red zones, schools are closed, and non-essential businesses will be closed Thursday. Houses of worship will be limited to 25% capacity, with no more than 10 people inside, and restaurants can only serve takeout.

Orange zones will close schools, gyms and barber shops. Restaurants can serve outdoor only, with four people at a table. Houses of worship may be at 33% capacity but only with a maximum of 25 people inside. In yellow zones, schools will remain open, but with mandatory weekly testing. All businesses can remain open, including indoor dining limited to four people per table, and houses of worship can have up to 50% capacity. Group gatherings must not exceed 25 people.

Neighborhoods with large Jewish populations are already chafing under a city-ordered enforcement crackdown on mask-wearing and social distancing. Cuomo’s announcement came just four days before the Oct. 10 start of the Jewish holiday of Simchas Torah, a festival marked by hundreds dancing in the streets.

The ZIP code designations had been one way to define these areas without giving them a Jewish identity, said Councilman Chaim Deutsch, a Democrat who represents Borough Park, where the infection rate is 8.22%. He said he asked city officials about three weeks ago to use ZIP codes rather than neighborhoods to avoid attaching the stigma of the virus to Jews generally.

“It’s only going to increase anti-Semitism, and it’s going to sound like the Jews are spreading the Covid virus,” Deutsch said in recounting the conversation last week.

The ZIP code designation has the advantage of being “easy to find out if your store or school is in that ZIP code,” de Blasio said.

Cuomo Soliloquy

Community leaders denounced the governor’s move as ill-advised and doomed to failure. Avi Shafran, a New Yorker who is the national spokesman for Agudath Israel, said a phone call from the governor Tuesday morning “was more of a soliloquy than a dialogue,” as Cuomo lectured a group of rabbis on the need for police to enforce mask wearing and social distancing. Shafran said the governor didn’t mention the bans on mass gatherings that would limit the size of religious services throughout a broad section of Brooklyn.

“Unless he wants to call out the National Guard to break up gatherings of 40 in a room built to hold five times that many, we are going to see disobedience on a large scale,” Shafran said. “He’s gotten tens of thousands of people upset, and we are pleading with people to not let the governor’s rash actions prevent them from taking the proper precautions.”

City Councilman Mark Treyger, who represents parts of Brooklyn, said Cuomo’s boundaries “don’t follow the street grid and slices blocks into pieces.” “How are communities supposed to make sense of this?” he said on Twitter. “How does this instill trust and confidence during a time when both are sorely needed?”

Since the coronavirus struck New York in March, Cuomo and de Blasio have bickered over who has the authority to close what, and who should be enforcing the rules.

In March, de Blasio urged Cuomo to order New Yorkers to “shelter-in-place.” The governor recoiled, reminding the mayor that only he had authority to open and close schools and businesses. Yet several days later, as the pandemic worsened, Cuomo ordered a statewide lockdown.

On Wednesday, the mayor put the latest tension to rest, announcing that “the state has come up with a new model, and we’re going to act quickly to implement this with the state.”

De Blasio said the vast majority of faith leaders in the affected areas support Cuomo’s ordered restrictions, and he does, too. “They are necessary, and they will hold up in court,” de Blasio said. “We warned people well over a week ago that we were moving into a dangerous situation.”

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