New York City set to take first steps toward reopening its doors today.
Exactly 100 days since its first case of the coronavirus was confirmed, New York City, which weathered extensive hardship as an epicenter of the worldwide outbreak, is set to take the first tentative steps toward reopening its doors today.
Getting here took the sacrifice of millions of New Yorkers who learned to live radically different lives. More than 205,000 have been infected, and nearly 22,000 have died.
As many as 400,000 workers could begin returning to construction jobs, manufacturing sites and retail stores in the city’s first phase of reopening a surge of normalcy that seemed almost inconceivable several weeks ago, when the city’s hospitals were at a breaking point and as many as 800 people were dying from COVID-19 on a single day.
Many retail stores, battered by months of closure, are readying to do business again today, starting with curbside and in-store pickup. Construction companies are adding safety features and stockpiling masks and gloves. Manufacturers, whose shop floors have idled since March, are testing machines.
State and city officials said they were optimistic that the city would begin to spring back to life. Testing is robust and growing, reaching 33,000 people on a recent day. And new infections are now down to around 500 a day half as many as there were just a few weeks ago.
That is low enough for New York City’s corps of contract tracers, who began work last week, to try to track every close interaction and, officials hope, stop a resurgence of the virus.
“You want to talk about a turnaround this one, my friends, is going to go in the history books,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Saturday.
New York City, like nine other regions in the state, was required to meet seven health-related metrics before beginning reopening. New York City was the last part of the state to do so; much of upstate has already moved on to Phase 2, which allows most stores, offices and hair salons to open, with restrictions on capacity and social distance.
The road back will undoubtedly be challenging. More than 885,000 jobs vanished during the outbreak, and strong gains are not expected for the city until 2022. The city budget hemorrhaged tax revenue and now faces a $9 billion shortfall over the next year.
And the reopening has been complicated by the vast protests for racial justice that have swept the city for more than a week and have forced government officials and business owners to unexpectedly adjust their plans.
Hundreds of stores were burglarized by looters who took advantage of the protests to prey on commercial districts from Midtown to the Bronx. Shop owners scrambled to cover windows in plywood rather than reaching for welcome banners. Police officers enforced a nightly curfew.
“We were planning to make a lot of noise saying, ‘Hey, we’re back,’ ” said Ken Giddon, a coowner with his brother of Rothmans,
a small clothing chain with a flagship near Union Square. “Now we don’t think that would be appropriate. I think New York City needs a week or two of healing before a week or two of selling.”
In areas hit hard by looters in high-end retail neighborhoods of Manhattan, some stores were not planning to open today. The executive director of the business improvement group in SoHo declined to even discuss reopening in the neighborhood.
On Sunday morning, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that he was lifting the 8 p.m. curfew a day early because the city had been relatively calm Saturday. The curfew had been scheduled to expire at 5 a.m. today, just as the reopening begins.
Even before the protests, some public health officials were privately fretting that the timeline set by Cuomo and de Blasio was too ambitious. They worried that infections could increase as people returned to work and commuters began to take the subway again.
But the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said it did not believe that rush hour would meaningfully return today or anytime soon. Even when schools and Broadway are allowed to open in the fourth and final phase of the reopening, the authority is projecting ridership will be under 70%.
One person briefed on the authority’s planning said officials there expected the trains to be at well below 50% capacity at least through Labor Day, a calculation based on the idea that many office workers would continue to work remotely into the fall.
Many business leaders, particularly those in office-based jobs like technology and finance, are watching the transit system for signs that it is safe. The authority has embarked on large-scale cleanings and required riders to wear masks but said social distancing may not be possible if subways and buses carry anywhere close to their normal loads.
The city has yet to offer alternatives for how to move millions of commuters around. De Blasio suggested that many may drive. Urban planners and transit experts cautioned, however, that few would have that option and criticized de Blasio for not offering a street-level transit plan for easing commutes in the next phases of reopening.
City Hall said Friday it was working with the MTA to expand bus service and create new bus lanes around the city.
As many as 32,000 construction sites could open as of today, according to the city, the biggest part of the initial phase of reopening. The protests were not altering preparations, said Gary LaBarbera, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York.
LaBarbera, whose group represents unions for more than 100,000 workers, said his focus was on making sure workers would be safe when they return, with masks and other protective equipment available and construction sites reconfigured to allow distancing, health checks and hand-washing.
“In the construction industry, by the nature of the tasks that are at hand, it’s not always possible to social distance,” he said.
The unions reached an agreement with contractors and developers to mitigate risk, he said, including staggered shifts, altered start times and more flexible hours, like a four-day workweek with 10-hour days.
Some construction work was deemed essential early on and continued through the state’s pause. Many manufacturers, particularly those that made protective gear and medical equipment, have also been operating.
Some businesses are taking it slowly and carefully.
Only about one-third of textile workers in the city are expected to be back at work today, said Edgar Romney, the secretary-treasurer of their union, Workers United/ Service Employees International Union. Businesses that are operating have altered their shifts to reduce crowding and installed plastic shields to separate tightly packed sewing machines.
But many, particularly in midtown Manhattan, have remained closed, he said.