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New York, May 30 (PTI) New York City, the epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, will begin reopening in a phased manner on June 8, bringing about 4,000,000 employees back to work, Governor Andrew Cuomo has said.
New York City has been shut since mid-March as coronavirus ravaged the metropolis, which has reported over 199,038 coronavirus cases so far and close to 20,000 deaths. US has so far reported more than 1,747,085 COVID-19 cases and over 102,835 fatalities -- both the numbers highest in the world.
Regions across New York State began their phased re-opening this month but New York City remained shut as it did not meet the seven health-related criteria necessary for the first phase of reopening.
Addressing a press conference on Friday, New York Governor Cuomo said the city is on track to meet all the metrics and will enter phase one of reopening on June 8.
"Phase one should bring about 4,000,000 employees back to work in New York City. Remember that reopening does not mean we're going back to the way things were...It is reopening to a new normal, it's a safer normal," Cuomo said.
The first phase of re-opening allows construction; manufacturing and wholesale supply chain; retail for curbside pickup and drop-off or in-store pickup; and agriculture, forestry and fishing to resume operations.
The seven metrics that define whether a region can re-open businesses are decline in total hospitalisations, decline in deaths measured by the three-day rolling average of daily new hospital deaths not exceeding 5, fewer than two new hospitalisations per 100,000 residents, hospital bed capacity regions must have at least 30% of their total hospital beds available before a phased re-opening, availability of 30% of ICU beds in a region, diagnostic testing capacity and contact tracing capacity.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said, "We are excited to get to the point of a restart for New York City and when I talked to the people of this city this morning I told them that the indicators were moving absolutely in the right direction."
He said the city is making sure that as it reopens, "we are driving back the disease every day, watching constantly for any indicators, any evidence that the disease might reassert, because we want to address that instantaneously".
"But we also recognise a strong restart means making sure that our businesses can come back effectively, can come back quickly. We're talking about 200,000 to 400,000 New Yorkers who can, and will be going back to work in a matter of weeks. We have to make sure it goes well, and that means supporting the businesses, not only listening to them, but helping them in very real ways," he said.
Cuomo said five other regions in the state — Central New York, Finger Lakes, Mohawk Valley, North Country and Southern Tier — can now enter Phase-2 of reopening, under which office-based workers, real estate services, in-store retail shopping and some barbershop services will be allowed to resume services.
New York state's six regions -- Central New York, the North Country, Finger Lakes, Southern Tier, Western New York and Mohawk Valley Regions -- have re-opened after they met all seven metrics required for phase one of the state's regional phased reopening plan.
New York State is steadily seeing a drop in the number of new coronavirus cases, hospitalisations, ICU admissions and daily deaths. The state has a total of 368,284 cases and the number of daily deaths is now below 100 after recording nearly thousand deaths every day in April.
"The number of deaths, thank the good lord continues to decline. It's at its lowest level ever of 67 deaths. We hope and we pray that that continues to be the case," Cuomo said.
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
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