Restaurants, offices, retail stores, theaters, museums, hair salons, amusement parks, gyms and other establishments will be able to operate at full capacity and with very few restrictions in the states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut as of this May 19, as announced by state officials on Monday.
The announcement of the relaxation of measures to contain the coronavirus in those three neighboring states comes
a year after precisely there the epicenter of the health crisis in the United States was located.
The governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, announced Monday at a press conference the state's plans to ease restrictions and restore economic activities, as part of a broader strategy towards a return to normalcy and a complete reopening, that city officials already announced is expected before July 1.
Cuomo, a Democrat, also announced the end of the curfew for food and beverage services.
The metro in the Big Apple will also operate 24 hours a day again.
For months, the New York subway closed between 1:00 and 5:00 in the morning and currently it closes between 2:00 and 4:00 am.
"Today is a milestone for New York State and an important time of transition," said Cuomo, who acknowledged that immediately restarting operations may not make practical or economic sense for some companies, such as Broadway theaters, that they have said they will not resume operations until September.
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Businesses in New York will still need to comply with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) social distancing guidelines, which require a minimum of six feet of separation between people.
For this reason, crowd sizes will continue to be limited, although
businesses will not have to comply with the six-foot rule if they require everyone to submit a
complete COVID-19
vaccination
proof or a negative test, he said. Cuomo.
Restaurants will also be able to circumvent the six-foot rule by planting plastic barriers between tables.
For people who have received the vaccine, said the governor who is going through his third term, "life should return to normal."
"This is an incentive to get vaccinated," he said.
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The new rules in New York, coordinated with the neighboring states of New Jersey and Connecticut, also raise the limit of participants in outdoor gatherings from 200 to 500 people and indoors from 100 to 250.
Large venues, such as stadiums and Theaters will be able to exceed those figures if they require vaccination tests or negative coronavirus tests and have the space to maintain the required distances.
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Last week, the mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, had set July 1 as the target date for a "full" reopening of the city, although the announcements made today by Cuomo - with whom he maintains a tense relationship - seem advance the deadlines somewhat.
Florida removes restrictions at a stroke
This Monday, another large state in the south of the country announced the relaxation of measures to stop the pandemic.
The Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, on Monday revoked all emergency orders issued by local authorities to deal with COVID-19 and announced the signing of a decree that will prevent the appearance of new measures that entail the closure of businesses and the restriction of movement.
That decree will take effect on July 1, according to a press conference in which he asserted that these decisions are based on "evidence."
As of today,
Florida remains the third state in the country with the most cases of COVID-19 (2.24 million)
and the fourth with the most deaths (35,600) since the pandemic began, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
DeSantis also indicated that the revoked measures were extraordinary in nature and it is no longer justified that they remain in force given that in Florida there is "a wide availability of vaccines and that vaccines are effective," and said that everyone has the responsibility to seek protection against coronavirus through immunization.
The measures announced today contrast with the fact that on April 27 DeSantis extended for 60 days the state of emergency declared at the state level for the pandemic.
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DeSantis, whom former President Donald Trump has suggested could be his running mate if he decides to run in the 2024 presidential elections, has been reluctant to impose measures due to the health crisis from the beginning.
It never made the use of masks mandatory at the state level and began the economic reopening sooner than health experts recommended.
How are the numbers of cases and vaccinations in the US?
The United States reached this Sunday the figure of 32,420,079 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 577,029 deaths from the disease since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the independent count from Johns Hopkins University.
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President Joe Biden has predicted that in total more than 600,000 people in the country will die from the virus.
Data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Assessments (IHME) at the University of Washington, on whose prediction models the White House often relies,
estimates that by August 1, about 610,000 people will have died.
As far as vaccines are concerned, some 147 million people (44.3% of the population) have received at least one dose, of which 104.7 million (31.6%) are already fully immunized, according to the most recent data from the CDC.
With information from EFE and The New York Times
