Governor Andrew Cuomo during a press briefing in April 2020 (Darren McGee- Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo)
ALBANY – Governor Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday announced new COVID-19 restrictions on bars, restaurants, gyms and residential gatherings in New York State.
Effective Friday, Nov. 13 at 10 p.m., bars, restaurants and gyms or fitness centers, as well as any State Liquor Authority-licensed establishment, will be required to close from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. daily. Restaurants will still be allowed to provide curbside, food-only pick-up or delivery after 10 p.m., but will not be permitted to serve alcohol to go. The State Liquor Authority will issue further guidance for licensees as to what sales are continued to be permitted.
The Governor also announced that indoor and outdoor gatherings at private residences will be limited to no more than 10 people. The limit will be implemented due to the recent prevalence of COVID spread resulting from small indoor gatherings including Halloween parties. These gatherings have become a major cause of cluster activity across the state. Further, this public health measure brings New York State in line with neighboring states including Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. This new rule is also effective Friday at 10 p.m.
“If you look at where the cases are coming from, if you do the contact tracing, you’ll see they’re coming from three main areas: establishments where alcohol is served, gyms, and indoor gatherings at private homes,” Governor Cuomo said. “The reason we have been successful in reducing the spread in New York is we have been a step ahead of COVID. You know where it’s going; stop it before it gets there. And you know where it’s going by following the science. This is the calibration that we’ve talked about: increase economic activity, watch the positivity rate – if the positivity rate starts to go up, back off on the economic activity. It was never binary — economic activity or public health — it was always both.”
Governor Cuomo continued: “The rules are only as good as the enforcement. Local governments are in charge of enforcement. There are only two fundamental truths in this situation: it’s individual discipline and it’s government enforcement. Period. End of sentence. I need the local governments to enforce this.”
The Governor took these actions amid a widespread increase in cases throughout the nation and an increase in New York, which was expected moving into the fall and winter seasons.
The Governor noted that the positive testing rate in all focus areas under the state’s Micro-Cluster strategy is 4.96 percent, and outside the focus zone areas is 2.58 percent. Within the focus areas, 24,005 test results were reported Tuesday, yielding 1,192 positives. In the remainder of the state, not counting these focus areas, 140,295 test results were reported, yielding 3,628 positives.
For Western New York, the region’s percentage of positive test results reported for Tuesday was 4.4%, down from 5.7% on Monday and 5.3% for Sunday. As for Erie County and its designation of being in the state’s Yellow Zone, the positivity rate was 8.12% on Tuesday and 7.47% on Monday. The 7-day rolling average was 6.55% – a significant increase from the 1.81% rolling average from three weeks earlier.
For Chautauqua County, there were 23 new cases reported for Wednesday. No other details were reported because of Wednesday being a holiday. A full report will be put forward later Thursday.
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