Queens economy set to reopen June 8, as Cuomo and de Blasio outline return plan
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Queens residents ride the No. 7 Train on May 13. Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city is working with the MTA to determine how to promote social distancing in subway cars. AP Photo/Frank Franklin II
By David Brand
Sectors of the New York City economy are on track to open June 8, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Friday as the state’s daily COVID-19 death toll reached its lowest point in two months.
But with nearly 1 million New Yorkers unemployed as a result of the pandemic and commuters reluctant to take public transportation, how the gradual plan will play out remains to be seen.
“Reopening does not mean that we're going back to the way things were,” Cuomo said.
“Life is not about going back. Nobody goes back. We go forward. And it's going to be different.”
Under the first phase of the plan, retail stores can reopen for curbside and in-store pickup, construction can resume and factories can once again manufacture goods. Roughly 400,000 people could begin going back to work in the five boroughs, Cuomo said.
Workers will all instructed to wear masks and stay six feet apart whenever possible. But distancing will be an issue for straphangers commuting to work.
“I think you're going to see a certain number of people who their only option is to take a subway or bus and they'll come back to it,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday. “But we still have to set the right limits to make sure that experience is safe. We need social distancing.”
De Blasio said the city will work with the state-run MTA on ways to limit the number of people on subways and buses to promote distancing.
“I want to make sure that we have a plan with the MTA to guarantee what's the right number of people we can accommodate in the subway system, in the buses at this point as we go into a major new phase,” he said.
The reopening plan depends on the city’s ability to achieve sustained reductions in new COVID-19 cases while keeping 30 percent of its hospital beds empty and hiring at least 30 contact tracers per 100,000 residents. On Friday, the city had 28 percent of its beds empty and had not yet met the contact tracer benchmark.
During a Friday appearance on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, de Blasio addressed criticism that the city has moved too slowly to hire contact tracers — individuals who identify individuals who have been exposed to the coronavirus and instruct them how to quarantine.
“The contact tracer program will have 1,700 people in a matter of a few days,” de Blasio said. “And we are absolutely going to get to 2,500 people, which is the State goal in the first two weeks of June.”
Communities surrounding New York City, including Nassau County along the Queens border, entered “Phase I” of the state’s reopening plan over the past week.
Councilmember Barry Grodenchik, who had COVID-19 and whose district borders Nassau County, said he was glad to learn of the plan to gradually open sectors of the economy in Queens.
“The truth of the matter is a lot of people already go to shop in Nassau County,” Grodenchik said. “I am happy that we will be catching up to them so to speak, because it is critical.”
Nevertheless, he said, the plan should be informed by “science and not emotions.”
“Having had the disease, I know it’s nothing to be trifled with,” he said. “We’re going to have to be very very careful.”
