'Not over': NY continues to see uptick in virus cases; Cuomo threatens to close schools, businesses in hot spots

New York state’s daily count of new coronavirus cases is continuing to tick along on an upward trend.

Associated Press

Oct 4, 2020, 4:29 PM

Updated 1,462 days ago

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'Not over': NY continues to see uptick in virus cases; Cuomo threatens to close schools, businesses in hot spots
Gov. Andrew Cuomo called on local governments to do better enforcement in "hot spot ZIP codes" in New York that are seeing COVID-19 clusters, and threatened to close businesses and schools if they didn't do better.
"Local governments have not done an effective job of enforcement in these hot spot ZIP codes. The state will be doing aggressive enforcement starting tomorrow," Cuomo said in a statement Sunday. "As we saw with bars and restaurants, when the state initiated enforcement actions compliance greatly increased. However, the state cannot take over effective enforcement for every jurisdiction and if a local jurisdiction cannot or will not perform effective enforcement of violating entities, notify the state and we will close all business activity in the hot spots where the local governments cannot do compliance."
Gov. Cuomo also expressed concerns about what he said is a lack of testing in schools.
"If the localities do not do testing immediately in the schools in those areas, the state will close them immediately. We all want schools to reopen if they can reopen safely. I have assured the parents of this state that I would not send my child to a school that I didn't know was safe. Without testing we can't assure parents and teachers of the safety of that school."
It comes as New York state’s daily count of new coronavirus cases is continuing to tick along on an upward trend.
The state reported on Saturday that there were more than 1,700 new confirmed cases on Friday, up slightly from the day before - case totals not seen in New York since May.
Some of the hotspots in the state included the borough of Brooklyn, where more than 350 people tested positive, and in Rockland County in the Hudson Valley, which saw at least 120 new cases.
New York recorded the results of more than 134,000 virus tests Friday, the most ever performed in a single day.
“This pandemic is not over," Gov. Cuomo said in a statement Saturday. He added: “My message to New Yorkers is please stay vigilant.”
The hardest hit regions of the state, on a per capita basis, were the Southern Tier area along the Pennsylvania border and the Mid-Hudson Valley. Both of those areas were seeing the virus spread at a rate that, if they were independent states, they would be subject to New York’s rules requiring out-of-state travelers to quarantine.
The quarantine cutoff, currently for states like Illinois, Colorado and Florida, is based on a seven-day rolling average of positive cases exceeding 10 per 100,000 residents.   The Southern Tier’s average Friday was at 17 per 100,000.
An often-cited measure of the virus’ spread - the percentage of tests that come back positive - remained low, about 1.3%.