Near McCarren Park, around 30 people line up in front of a parked medical van offering rapid tests.
“Really creepy”
“It looks a lot like March 2020,” breathes Spencer Reiter, 27, a neighborhood resident, working in finance and who came to be tested with his friend Katie Connolly, because their friends are positive for Covid-19.
« See these files […] it’s as if everything started again, “he confides, his companion finding” it really scary “.
It must be said that New York was brought to its knees by the first wave of the pandemic in the spring of 2020. The megalopolis of 8.5 million inhabitants had been completely deserted for weeks.
34,000 deaths
The huge avenues of Manhattan were animated only by the anxiety-provoking sirens of the emergency services, with overwhelmed hospitals and morgues forced to store the bodies of victims in refrigerated trucks.
We’re actually back to square one
At least 34,000 New Yorkers have lost their lives since the spring of 2020 and the city, especially Manhattan, has never really regained its legendary effervescence before the health crisis.
“We are in fact back to square one, perhaps even to much worse” than in March 2020, is alarmed Jolanta Czerlanis, a 54-year-old Polish woman, who came to be tested because she felt some symptoms.
“Winter of serious illness and death”
In recent days, nervousness has won the United States over the very rapid spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19. President Joe Biden on Thursday predicted a “winter of serious illness and death” for unvaccinated people.
On December 1, the number of daily new cases nationwide averaged 86,000; on December 14, it was 117,000, an increase of about 35% in two weeks. And in the country officially the most bereaved in the world by this pandemic, the number of deaths from Covid-19 exceeded Tuesday 800,000 since 2020, according to the report of Johns Hopkins University.
The “Omicron has arrived” variant, also noted New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Mr. de Blasio imposed compulsory vaccination on municipal officials, as well as from December 27, in principle, on the entire private sector, i.e. 184,000 businesses and businesses. But there is nothing to say that Mr. Adams will enforce this decision.
Broadway at a standstill
Just before Christmas, it’s a bit of a panic in the famous Broadway theater and musical district where the cancellations of performances are increasing, because of positive cases within the troupes.
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