NY mayor announces shutdown plan for 9 neighborhoods, including Jewish areas

Schools, nonessential businesses to close in areas where infection rate is soaring, Bill de Blasio says, including many districts with large ultra-Orthodox populations

By AFP 4 October 2020, 10:49 pm

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Workers move bodies to a refrigerated truck from the Andrew T. Cleckley Funeral Home in the Brooklyn borough of New York, April 29, 2020. (Craig Ruttle/AP)

NEW YORK CITY — New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday that he planned to put nine neighborhoods back under tight shutdowns as COVID-19 cases rise in parts of the city, which had largely controlled the pandemic after a catastrophic outbreak.

“Today, unfortunately, is not a day for celebration,” de Blasio said, announcing he would ask to close nonessential businesses and all schools in nine neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens.

The proposal, which must be approved by New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, marks a major setback for the city since it was hit hard by the coronavirus in March. The city has lost almost 24,000 people to the virus.

Several of the nine neighborhoods have large populations of Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews, and the virus has been spreading rapidly in that community in recent weeks.

Jewish New Yorkers gather for the tashlich ritual in the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, September 24, 2020. (Luke Tress/Times of Israel)

The increases coincided with the Jewish High Holidays, the most holy days in the Jewish calendar, that culminated last Monday with Yom Kippur.

De Blasio said he intended to “rewind” the city’s reopening in the worst-affected areas, according to the New York Times.

The city is also monitoring 11 additional ZIP codes that de Blasio described as a “real concern.”

New York became the global epicenter of the pandemic in the spring. But more recently, officials had touted the lowest test positivity rate and infection rate among major US cities.