Gov ignores us, charges Rockland big

Rockland County leaders slammed Gov. Cuomo on Saturday for ignoring pleas for action as coronavirus continues to take lives in neighborhoods across the suburban county.

County Executive Ed Day said he was “dumbfounded” to hear the governor and his staff deny knowledge of the mushrooming crisis in the county, which now has 69 deaths and 4,872 coronavirus cases.

“Nobody asked me,” Cuomo told reporters Saturday.

“How in God’s name could you not know of this?” Day, a Republican, shot back. “The people of Rockland are beyond fed up.” Day said 25 Rockland residents died in the previous 24 hours. The county has just 330,000 residents, so it has one of the highest per capita infection rates in the country.

“Rockland’s situation is worsening,” Assemblyman Kenneth Zebrowski (DRockland) said.

Day (inset) held a news conference Friday in which he pleaded with the state to set up a field hospital to battle the pandemic. He also wants the state to set up a containment zone to strictly enforce social distancing in two zip codes where the biggest share of Rockland’s coronavirus cases have been recorded.

The hardest-hit zip codes, which Day dramatized with a blownup map, are in Monsey and Spring Valley, where there are large Hasidic communities. Social media users have posted videos of ultra-Orthodox Jews attending funerals in apparent defiance of social distancing rules, including the sendoff last week for the victim of an antiSemitic stabbing last year.

Day says mainstream Jewish leaders have cooperated with him, and he pointed to a statement by the local board of rabbis that encouraged compliance with social distancing rules.

But some local Jewish leaders said Day has kept them out of the loop, and that his plea for stepped-up enforcement smacks of anti-Semitism.