The government of New York shut down a wedding that could have witnessed 10,000 attendees on Saturday. The wedding was planned to hold in Williamsburg, Brooklyn; but the Rockland County Sheriff’s Office notified the state health commissioner of the impending wedding, and the New York City Sheriff’s Office ordered the wedding to be canceled.
Based on this and other cases of impunity from the general public, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a new strategy for combating COVID-19 threats in hot-spot areas of the state. The governor said the state government will target micro-clusters of communities on a block-to-block basis since the regional and statewide efforts have not really been effective.
“We are going to deploy a micro-cluster strategy,” Gov. Cuomo revealed. “We have been targeting all our actions either … statewide … or we reopened on a regional level. We are now going to analyze it block-by-block. We have data so specific that we can’t show it because it could violate privacy conditions. We know exactly where the new cases are coming from.”
According to Cuomo, micro-clusters exist in Orange, Rockland, Queens, and Brooklyn counties among others, and these hot-spots for COVID-19 infections will be divided into red zones, orange zones, and yellow zones depending on the density of people within each cluster zone. He said wherever is designated as a cluster indicates an area where people fail to comply with health and safety regulations for coronavirus, and the more enforcement will be delivered to the areas.
Furthermore, the governor disclosed that movie theaters outside of New York City will be allowed to reopen as of October 23 at 25% capacity or up to 50 people per screen. He said social distancing and face masks among other health protocols will be implemented in reopened cinemas. He added that a coronavirus vaccine may become available by winter, but that the government is still perplexed on a model for administering it so that everyone gets a chance at obtaining it.
Cuomo said New York has an average of 1.1% COVID-19 infection rate – the lowest – in the country.
Source: abcnews.go.com
