New Jersey announced its first death from the coronavirus on Tuesday.
Right Now
New York’s governor announced a one-mile “containment zone” would be created in New Rochelle, limiting ” major gathering spaces ”to curb the spread of the virus. New Jersey officials announced the first death in the state from the coronavirus.
Image
With New Rochelle, a small city just north of New York City in Westchester County, emerging as the epicenter of the state’s outbreak, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Tuesday announced a targeted containment strategy to halt the spread of the virus.
“New Rochelle is a particular problem,” he said at a news conference on Tuesday.
The state’s plan focuses on a “containment area” in New Rochelle with a one-mile radius centered around a synagogue believed to be at the center of the cluster, officials said.
The state also planned to deploy the National Guard in the containment area to clean schools and deliver food to quarantined residents, Mr. Cuomo said.
Schools and other large gathering facilities like community centers and houses of worship within the area will be closed for two weeks beginning on Thursday, Mr. Cuomo said. Businesses such as grocery stores and delis would remain open.
The state did not plan to close streets or implement travel restrictions, Mr. Cuomo said.
“You’re not containing people,” he said. “You’re containing facilities.”
The cluster in Westchester County first came to the authorities’ attention last week, when a lawyer who lives in New Rochelle and works in Manhattan, Lawrence Garbuz, became the second person in New York to be diagnosed with coronavirus last week.
New Jersey sees region’s first death from the virus. A
A
The man, who lives in Bergen County, had a history of health problems before contracting coronavirus, the state’s health commissioner, Judith Persichilli, said.
He was admitted to Hackensack Medical Center over the weekend, and suffered two heart attacks, Ms. Persichilli said. Three other people tested positive on Tuesday for coronavirus in New Jersey, bringing the statewide total to
The man had no known travels outside the United States but did travel to New York City.
The man died on Tuesday morning, officials said at a news conference.
“We are sad to report the first death in a case of COVID – in New Jersey, ”Mr. Murphy and Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver said in a statement. “Our prayers are with the family during this difficult time.”
The latest numbers: (in New York.)
In New York City, the state had 69 confirmed cases of the virus, Mr. Cuomo said.
Only People with the virus were hospitalized, the governor said.
On Monday, Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey declared a state of emergency and a public health emergency, effective immediately.
The move, which allows state agencies to move more quickly to prepare for a broader spread of the virus, follows a similar action by Mr. Cuomo over the weekend.
In the United States, more than (people in) states and Washington, DC, have tested positive for the virus so far, and at least 46 people have died.
Which schools are closed in the New York area?
[The New York Times is keeping an updated list of the school closings in the New York area here.]
Thousands more student s who attend some of New York City’s private schools and universities were told that schools were closed or in-person classes were canceled on Tuesday, as the list of school closures around the region continues to grow.
In New York City, Columbia University, Fordham University, St. Louis. John’s University, Yeshiva University and New York University announced that classes would be canceled or offered online.
Public schools in Scarsdale, a wealthy suburb in Westchester County, will be closed through March . Many of New York City’s best-known private schools – including the all-girls school Brearley in Manhattan and the Quaker school Brooklyn Friends – said they could close until after spring break, meaning many students will not return to school until March at the earliest.
Officials at private schools and universities said they would take advantage of closures to create remote learning systems in case the schools have to close for extended periods. While the city Department of Education is making preliminary plans for distance learning, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday that it was not the city’s “preference” – in part because many of the city’s students do not have Internet at home or live in homeless shelters.
“At least at the beginning, the learning curve will be really steep” on remote learning if schools are closed for extended periods, said Ioana Literat, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College.
No city public schools have closed yet, and officials have said they view mass closures of the system as a “last resort.”
Mr. de Blasio doubled down on that position in an interview on MSNBC on Tuesday morning, saying that individual schools might close for a temporary period if particular students or teachers were exposed but that the city was unlikely to halt school altogether.
“I would advise against these mass closures when we’re keeping this situation relatively contained,” he said. But, he added, “ask me in a week, ask me in a month – it might change.”
A week after the virus first appeared in New York, the state residents under quarantine have largely been left to fend for themselves.
Local health departments in New York State are supposed to check in daily even with people under precautionary quarantine, the lowest category of risk for contracting the virus. But in many cases, they have not started doing so yet.
And when the authorities do issue guidance or directives, they can seem contradictory or illogical.
“We’ve been told everything from it was OK to go out, to we had to sign a release that we’re housebound now,” said one of the women who received an isolation order and who spoke on the condition that her name not be published.
[“It’s been very crazy,” said one of the thousands of New Yorkers under quarantine.] Corey Johnson cancels his state of the city address.
On Tuesday, the speaker of the City Council, Corey Johnson canceled his planned state of the city address, which was to be held on Thursday, “out of an abundance of caution,” he said in a statement.
“I was looking forward to the speech, but at a time when we are urging New Yorkers to consider measures like telecommuting and staggered work hours, it seemed an unnecessary risk, ”Mr. Johnson said.
The announcement comes even though city and state health officials have not moved to cancel large gatherings.
Laura Curran, the Nassau County executive, also announced that she was canceling her state of the county address Wednesday night to give her “full focus” to directing the coronavirus response.
Federal courthouses in the region also added new restrictions to help prevent further spread of the virus. On Tuesday the chief judge for the Eastern District of New York issued an order preventing a number of people who might have been exposed to the virus from entering any of the district’s courthouses in Brooklyn and Long Island.
The order matched one issued Monday by the chief judge for the Southern District of New York, which includes Manhattan and Westchester County. The districts are two of the largest country and busiest.
Among those barred from entering the courthouses are: those who have traveled to China, South Korea, Japan, Italy or Iran in the last two weeks; anyone who has been asked to self-quarantine; and people who have tested positive for the coronavirus or been in contact with those who have.
The United Nations also closed its headquarters to the public and suspended all tours until further notice.
New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day parade is still on.
But he and Mr. Cuomo both said that officials were weighing the possibility.
“That’s one of the things we’re looking at,” Mr. Cuomo said in an interview on CNN on Tuesday morning.
More than a hundred thousand people take part in the annual procession down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, with hundreds of thousands more typically lining the streets to watch.
Ireland’s government canceled all st. Patrick’s Day parades in the country, including Dublin’s, and similar events in other places have also been canceled.
The mayor of Boston, a city which, like New York , has a sizable and influential Irish-American community, also canceled that city’s annual St. Patrick’s Day parade as a precautionary measure. Massachusetts has 30 confirmed cases of the coronavirus.
Mr. de Blasio said on Monday that officials would continue to monitor the spread of the coronavirus and that any final decision on the parade would be a “day-to-day thing.”
On Tuesday, he seemed to suggest that the outbreak had not yet reached the threshold for such a large cancellation.
“We’re better off not closing larger events, ”Mr. de Blasio said on MSNBC.
New York City advises homeless shelters to isolate people ‘as much as possible.’
Medical researchers have been warning that the (nation’s homeless are particularly
New York City, which has the largest homeless population in the country, issued an 17 – page document telling shelters to screen people for symptoms and to identify and isolate people who have contracted the virus in a separate room “as much as possible.”
criticized by several criminal justice groups after it became known that the sanitizer would be made by the state’s prison-based product company, Corcraft.
[The New York Times is keeping an updated list of the school closings in the New York area here.] We are disgusted at Governor Cuomo’s decision to exploit prison labor to push back the imminent public health crisis presented by Covid – while doing absolutely nothing for incarcerated people across the state, ”said one angry statement signed by five groups, including Citizen Action and VOCAL-NY, which also praised“ the sacrifices made by people in prison ”to fight the outbreak.
The Cuomo administra interpretation gently dismissed the complaints. “A central part of prison rehabilitation is job training and skill development, and this is part of that existing program that’s been in place for years,” said Rich Azzopardi, senior adviser to the governor.
Reporting contributed by Alan Feuer, Thomas Fuller, Michael Gold, Nicole Hong, Jeffery C. Mays, Eliza Shapiro, Jesse McKinley, Sarah Maslin Nir and Luis Ferré-Sadurní.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings