Cuomo rejects New York City’s shutdown plan for virus spike

ALBANY, N.Y.

On Sunday afternoon, faced with a new wave of infections in his virus-battered city, Mayor Bill de Blasio made a sobering decision to ask the state to roll back openings of businesses in virus hot spots in Brooklyn and Queens, pending approval from Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

But Monday, Cuomo, de Blasio’s longtime foil and fellow Democrat, refused to give it.

Cuomo said he would not yet allow New York City to close the nonessential businesses, suggesting that the ZIP codes that were being used to identify hot spots were too imprecise to guide shutdowns, and that he was considering other geographic boundaries. The more pressing problem, he said, lay in schools and houses of worship, including many that cater to Orthodox Jews, rather than businesses that “are not large spreaders.”

The conflicting messages from the state’s two most prominent politicians created confusion for residents, business owners and parents in the affected areas and drew scrutiny to the conflict between city and state over how to tackle early signs of a second wave of the virus in its one-time epicenter.

Cuomo accelerated the mayor’s plan to close schools in newly hard-hit areas, moving the closure date up a day to Tuesday, a decision the governor defended by saying that testing was insufficient to protect children in those schools. “I’ll never let a New Yorker send a child to a school that I wouldn’t send my child to,” he said.