State fair canceled

So this is what Phase 3 looks like

For the first time in more than seven decades, New Yorkers won’t be able to enjoy a state fair this summer.

Gov. Cuomo said Monday he had no choice but to cancel the beloved fair in Syracuse because the risks are “too high” of triggering a new coronavirus outbreak, as the contagion resurges across most parts of the country.

“That makes me personally very unhappy, but that is where we are,” Cuomo (photo) said at a news conference in Manhattan. “This is a really tough one.”

The fate of the annual fair was up in the air for weeks, with Cuomo saying it likely couldn’t happen as planned between Aug. 21 and Sept. 7 while holding off on officially canceling it.

But recent spikes of COVID-19 infection and hospitalization rates in more than 30 states appear to have been the last straw for Cuomo.

The cancellation marks the first time since the 1940s that the weekslong fair won’t happen.

The event, an end-of-summer tradition for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, was last canceled between 1942 and 1948, when the fairgrounds were used as a military base beginning during World War II.

The fair setback comes as New York’s COVID-19 metrics continue to trend in the right direction.

Nine people died from the virus across the state on Sunday, Cuomo reported, a major improvement compared with the hundreds of New Yorkers who died every day at the peak of the pandemic.

The number of New Yorkers hospitalized with COVID-19 fell to 817, while just 0.95% out of 54,328 coronavirus tests performed Sunday came back positive, according to Cuomo.

New York is among just a handful of states that are keeping the virus at bay.

Most Southern and Western states, many of which rushed to reopen their economies and didn’t issue face mask directives, are seeing opposite trends, with skyrocketing infection and hospitalization rates.

Cuomo has taken other measures besides the fair cancellation to prevent New York from facing a second wave, such as postponing indoor dining in the city.

The governor pointed fingers at President Trump for the recent COVID-19 rebound, noting that he has bucked calls for federal face mask mandates while pressuring states to reopen their economies.

“He’s facilitating the virus,” Cuomo said at his Manhattan briefing. “He’s enabling the virus.”

It was a new beginning for the Big Apple on Monday as Phase 3 of the city’s reopening kicked in. Candace Sanders (far right) celebrated with a pedicure at a salon In Harlem, and a tattoo fan added another to his collection, with help from tat artist Ray Jerez, at a parlor on Third Ave. in Brooklyn.