CITY EYES COVID-19 UPHEAVAL PART TW0
Warns of lockdown, citing spike in cases in Brooklyn
City officials raised the possibility Wednesday of a return to lockdown conditions if an alarming spike in cases in southern Brooklyn isn’t brought under control.
“In the absence of our doing the right thing, we will need to be in a lockdown-type situation as occurred in Israel because they haven’t been able to control the spread of the virus,” Dr. Mitchell Katz, head of the city’s publicly run hospital system, said at a news conference alongside Mayor de Blasio.
The officials were urging residents in southern Brooklyn, including predominantly Hasidic neighborhoods, to take steps like avoiding large gatherings in the wake of a jump in coronavirus cases there. Midwood, Borough Park and Bensonhurst reached a 4.71% positive coronavirus rate Saturday, according to the Health Department, which called the area “the Ocean Parkway Cluster.”
The rate has also gone up to 3.69% in Edgemere-Far Rockaway, Queens; 2.24% in Kew Gardens, Queens, and 2% in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
In all, those areas accounted for one in five of the city’s COVID cases as of Saturday, according to the city Health Department.
“The situation, particularly in southern Brooklyn, is causing a lot of concern here,” said de Blasio. “It’s something we have to address with a very aggressive public health effort right away.”
Calling large indoor gatherings “the place of greatest concern,” de Blasio said officers from the NYPD and the city sheriff’s office will conduct “enforcement” of coronavirus-related restrictions.
“We’re going to greatly increase our on-the-ground education efforts and enforcement efforts to address this situation,” Hizzoner said.
While Jewish communities are in the middle of celebrating the High Holidays, NYPD officers will monitor large gatherings and break them up if needed, according to police sources.
Cops have also been directed to respond to and investigate all 311 calls regarding large groups and flouting of COVID rules from now on, the sources said. Sheriff’s officers previously had this responsibility.
Enforcement actions were yet to be taken in southern Brooklyn as of Wednesday, police sources said, since no large groups or COVID rule-breakers had been found.
Up to 100 sheriff’s deputies can be deployed to a large gathering if one is detected, said city Sheriff Joseph Fucito.
His office has largely focused on unsafe bars and underground nightclubs. Earlier this month, deputies raided a packed, illegal Borough Park bar where people were carousing and shunning masks inside.
Under ongoing state restrictions for Phase 4 of reopening — which the city entered in July — indoor religious gatherings are allowed at 33% capacity. Other gatherings are allowed to host no more than 50 people.
De Blasio said in spite of the cluster, the start of in-person classes at middle and high schools is still on track for next Tuesday — “as of now.”
“It’s something we obviously are all keeping a close eye on,” he said.
Under the city’s plan for school reopening, in-person learning will end if the city’s overall infection rate reaches 3%. It was 0.75% as of earlier this week, according to the mayor. Individual schools will temporarily shut down if they have two or more cases in different classrooms.
The city has contacted 20 synagogues in Borough Park and distributed information and 10,000 face masks there, according to Katz.
The city has also been making robocalls about the situation to Borough Park, Bensonhurst, Midwood, Crown Heights, Williamsburg, Forest Hills and the Rockways, Katz said.
Having come under fire for his previous messaging to the city’s Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, de Blasio avoided singling out any community on Wednesday.
“We’re saying exactly where the problem is,” Hizzoner said. “We’re being very clear about where the challenge is and we want to work.”
Katz shared his own family’s tragic experience of coronavirus in appealing to New Yorkers to obey health rules. He said his father-in-law died of COVID earlier this week in Israel, but his family didn’t hold the usual religious rites because of restrictions on large gatherings.
“These things are extremely hard, but they’re what’s necessary for us to get through COVID,” he said.