Three upstate regions have met the conditions required to start reopening on Friday. New York City will likely stay shut down for several weeks.
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Mayor de Blasio announced 12 new virus-testing sites across the city. The effort could double the public hospital system’s current testing capacity.
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52 children in New York City now have a rare syndrome linked to the virus.
Fourteen more children in New York City were found to have a rare and dangerous inflammatory syndrome that appears to be connected to the coronavirus, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Tuesday.
So far, the city has reported 52 cases of the illness, which is known as pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome and causes life-threatening inflammation in critical organs and can have serious effects on the heart. Ten potential cases were being evaluated, Mr. de Blasio said.
One child died of the illness in New York City last week.
“We’re seeing something that’s very troubling,” the mayor said at his daily news briefing. “And we’re combining the efforts of health care professionals all over New York City to understand what it is and how to deal with it.”
The illness began to appear in the region in recent weeks, and doctors and researchers are still investigating how and why it affects children.
Statewide, at least 93 children have the syndrome, and three people have died, officials have said.
Mr. de Blasio’s announcement came as Connecticut reported its first cases of the syndrome on Monday. So far, six children in Connecticut are being treated for the ailment, Gov. Ned Lamont and health officials said.
Three of the cases were announced by Mr. Lamont on Monday at his daily briefing.
“I think right now it’s a very, very tiny risk of infection,” Mr. Lamont said. “It was not really ever detected in Asia, which, I don’t quote know what that implies.”
Three more children were being treated for the syndrome at the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford, a spokeswoman, Monica Buchanan, said on Tuesday. Two of them were confirmed to have it, Ms. Buchanan said.
Three upstate New York regions are ready to reopen.
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In the most concrete step yet toward bringing New York back to life, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Monday that three upstate regions are set to partially reopen this weekend, with limited construction, manufacturing and curbside retail.
It has been nearly 10 weeks since the first case of the coronavirus was confirmed in the state. And while the virus has killed more than 26,000 people in New York and sickened hundreds of thousands people, New York City and its suburbs account for most of that toll. Upstate New York has recorded far fewer cases and deaths.
Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, laid out a detailed plan for reopening last week, requiring each of 10 regions to meet thresholds in seven health-related areas. The metrics include beefing up testing and contact tracing, ensuring adequate hospital capacity, and showing sustained declines in virus cases and deaths.
On Monday, Mr. Cuomo said that all seven metrics had now been met in three regions: the Finger Lakes, which includes Rochester; the Southern Tier, which borders Pennsylvania; and the Mohawk Valley, west of Albany.
The governor said the state would allow certain low-risk businesses and activities to resume operations on Friday, including landscaping and gardening work; outdoor sports like tennis; and drive-in movie theaters.
N.Y. Democrats tell the national party that the June 23 primary will proceed.
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New York State will hold its presidential primary on June 23, the state’s Democratic Party told national party leaders on Monday.
New York’s Board of Elections, citing public health concerns related to the coronavirus outbreak, had canceled the primary. But a federal judge subsequently ordered the primary restored to June 23 ballot after the former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang sued to block the move.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and his supporters also opposed the canceling of the primary.
Supporters of Mr. Sanders, who suspended his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination last month, can win key slots at the Democratic National Convention if he wins at least 15 percent of the vote statewide or in each congressional district.
New York Democrats formalized the June 23 primary date in a submission to the Democratic National Committee, whose rules committee is set to meet on Tuesday to grant waivers to states that have moved their primaries past the party’s June 9 deadline because of the outbreak.
The committee will also vote to formally change the date of the Democratic convention from mid-July to late August and to allow convention officials “full authority” to alter key processes, like switching votes to be held virtually rather than in person, without the rules committee’s consent.
New Yorkers, some well known, get wistful about what they miss.
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Seven weeks have passed since New York City, fleeing the coronavirus, put up a collective closed-for-business sign and locked itself away inside the strange, timeless bubble of the shutdown. The crisis, by any standard, has been costly: More than 19,000 New Yorkers have already lost their lives, and tens, if not hundreds, of thousands more have lost their livelihoods.
But the fabric of the city, too, has suffered harm as our attempts to stop the spread of disease have infected the streets and subways, the great public spaces and the secret little hideaways with a kind of festering emptiness. Social distance, for all its benefits, is a plague to places like New York, laying waste to the churning rhythms, the cherished rituals and the millions of spontaneous interactions where, in normal times, the city lives at the level of its cells.
With New Yorkers in retreat from New York, it seemed appropriate to ask a few what they missed most about their home as it was just months ago. Some missed the big things: the daily tide of bodies swirling around the clock in Grand Central Terminal. Some missed the small things: the two-tone chime of a closing subway door.
“There’s a complicated chemistry the city uses as eight million people go about their lives together,” said Ric Burns, the documentary filmmaker perhaps best known for his PBS series on New York. “It’s an infinitely delicate attraction-repulsion mechanism that help us negotiate our density, and it’s been put on hold.”
“It’s like our language has been taken from us,” Mr. Burns said, “and we’ve been silenced.”
He was one of about a dozen New Yorkers who talked to The New York Times wistfully about what it is they most with the city in a diminished state.
Are you a health care worker in the New York area? Tell us what you’re seeing.
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As The New York Times follows the spread of the coronavirus across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, we need your help. We want to talk to doctors, nurses, lab technicians, respiratory therapists, emergency services workers, nursing home managers — anyone who can share what’s happening in the region’s hospitals and other health care centers.
A reporter or editor may contact you. Your information will not be published without your consent.
Reporting was contributed by Reid J. Epstein, Alan Feuer, Michael Gold, Jesse McKinley and Azi Paybarah.
