Indoor dining will reopen in New York City at 25 percent capacity this week two days earlier than originally planned. Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday announced restaurants can start serving customers inside on Friday instead of Valentine’s Day on Sunday. The governor pointed to a one-month decline in positivity rates of the coronavirus statewide, declaring the “post-holiday surge” over.
“They’d [restaurants] like to open a couple of days earlier so they can be ready for Valentine’s Day, get the staff oriented, get supplies into the restaurants,” Cuomo said during a press briefing on Monday. “That’s a reasonable request.”
According to the governor, the percentage of positive COVID-19 cases over a seven-day average citywide dropped from 7.94 percent on January 4 to 4.42 percent on February 7. As the number of new COVID-19 cases and new hospitalizations continue to decline, Cuomo last month lifted all restrictions in the state’s orange zones and some yellow zones.
In New York City, yellow zones remain in place in eastern and western parts of the Bronx, Washington Heights, and in Kew Gardens/Forest Hills in Queens. This designation means the area has experienced a seven-day rolling average of a 3 percent positivity rate over the past 10 days.
“I think at this point it’s safe to say the holiday surge was anticipated, the holiday surge did happen, but the holiday surge is over,” Cuomo said last month.
Indoor dining, which resumed at 25 percent capacity on September 30 after six months of closure, shut down again on December 14 after the rate of hospitalizations failed to stabilize. Restaurants in nearly every region in New York except the five boroughs and those in designated “zones” have been allowed to serve diners indoors at 50 percent capacity. Industry advocates have questioned Cuomo’s decision to close New York City restaurants and not in other places.
Bars and restaurants have been hit tremendously hard by the pandemic and related closures. According to the New York State Department of Labor, more than 140,700 city bar and restaurant jobs have been lost over the last year. Just between the months of November and December 2020, the industry lost 11,700 jobs.
“We commend Governor Cuomo for permitting indoor dining to resume in New York City on Friday, instead of Sunday the originally scheduled date,” Andrew Rigie, executive director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance said, in a statement. “This will allow restaurants to generate much needed revenue from the Valentine’s Day weekend business, much of which they would have lost because the holiday falls on a Sunday this year.”
State rules for indoor dining require that temperature checks at the door for all customers, one member of each party will be required to provide contact information for tracing if needed, tables must be set up six feet apart, and face coverings will be required for all diners when not seated at a table.