New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) announced on Friday that due to New York City seeing an increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, indoor dining will be banned starting on Monday.
Cuomo's announcement came shortly after he said the data shows the vast majority of COVID-19 cases are stemming from household gatherings. Takeout, delivery, and outdoor dining will be able to continue.
"Where are the new cases coming from? Right? You want to know what’s generating the new cases so you want to know where you can stop them. The troubling information in this, is 74 percent of the cases are coming from household gatherings, living room spread. In many ways, you can understand what happened. You close the bars, you close restaurants, you close theaters, you close stadiums, you close mass gatherings. Where do people go? They go home, come to my house," Cuomo said.
In contrast, Cuomo's own data shows indoor dining only accounts for 1.4 percent of all COVID-19 cases.
"The hospitalizations have continued to increase in New York City, we have said that we would watch it if the stabilization if the hospital rate didn’t stabilize, we would close indoor dining. It is not. We’re going to close indoor dining in New York City on Monday," Cuomo said. "Outdoor dining and take out continues. Outside of New York City, in the orange zones, we are going to watch the indoor dining data. The numbers are down in the charts. But we are going to watch, over this weekend, and we’ll make any adjustments next week if the data suggests."
Indoor dining will close in New York City starting Monday.
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) December 11, 2020
Hospitalizations have not stabilized, and with a rising infection rate and NYC’s density, this means that indoor dining is too high of a risk.
Takeout, delivery and outdoor dining will continue.