New York City begins to wake up after 100 days of pandemic

New York began to wake up this Monday when it entered phase one of the reopening of the city after a hundred days of hiatus due to the pandemic, but it did so in an inconspicuous way, with the ghostly image of Manhattan stores still protected for fear of new looting due to protests against racism, although with greater activity in some sectors, such as construction, and in transportation.

Between 200,000 and 400,000 people returned to their jobs today, which has been noticed in the subway and the commuter train, as well as in the noise of the city due to the reactivation of many works. Authorities estimate that some 16,000 businesses – from clothing stores to electronics stores – and some 3,700 manufacturing companies will reopen this week, along with more than 32,000 construction sites.

Retail stores can only offer store delivery service, while the return to work in the industrial, construction, agriculture and fishing sectors was more normal. But New York, the city that never slept, is still half empty, with its restaurants, theaters and cinemas still waiting to open normally.

CONSTRUCTION IN PROGRESS

“Today is the first day that we return to work here in New York City, because it has been a very difficult situation because we have been unemployed for almost three months. Thank God it is almost normalizing and we are back to work,” he assured Efe Alejandro, a Guatemalan man who got up this morning at 5.30 to go to the work.

He is working on a home renovation in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, which had been suspended since the outbreak of the pandemic. Alejandro, who lives with his wife and daughter, does not hide his joy. To survive these months he has had to use his savings and “sometimes” ask for help from people.

How he thousands of workers have resumed their work today, although there are “colleagues” who lost their jobs permanently.

New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio congratulated the citizens of the Big Apple for the economic reopening they have undertaken this Monday and they stressed that they are already “back”, one hundred days after detecting the first case of the virus, stopping the contagion and curbing the “worst situation” of the entire nation and the world.

Cuomo assured that if they had told him more than three months ago that New York would reopen after only one hundred days “I would not have believed it” because the experts predicted a much more pessimistic situation. Then 800 people died daily from the coronavirus in the state of New York, the vast majority in the Big Apple.

SAFETY MEASURES

All those who return to work have to operate with numerous precautionary measures, including social distancing where possible, use of masks and with a close monitoring of the health of the employees.

Companies have a 30-day margin to adapt to the safety and prevention measures imposed by the City Council, such as implementing temperature checks among workers, reducing occupancy in enclosed spaces to less than 50% or wearing face covers, and from then on inspectors can sanction them if they do not comply.

It is also recommended that companies that those who can work from home continue to do so and that shifts be made more flexible to reduce the density of jobs and public transport.

MORE TRAVELERS, BUT HALF GAS

The metropolitan transport network of metros and buses, whose use plummeted to a 90% during the pandemic, has started to slowly pick up the pace, but still very far from the frequency that the city moved a hundred days ago.

It does so by forcing the use of masks and promoting social distancing as much as possible, for which it will have 3,000 volunteers spread throughout the city.

However, its revival has not satisfied everyone. Councilor Ydanis Rodriguez has asked that the subway resume activity between one and five in the morning, time in which it remains closed for disinfection. Before the virus, the subway was open 24 hours a day.

During the month of April, in which New Yorkers were confined by the serious incidence of COVID-19, subway users fell to record lows, with an average of 400,000 commuters, a number that rose to 600,000 in May, when virus statistics began to improve. But very far from the more than 5.5 million daily passengers that were registered before the arrival of the virus.

Governor Cuomo decided today to travel to the place of his daily press conference on line 7 of the subway, which connects the borough of Queens with Manhattan. In his speech, he insisted that transport is safe and encouraged city residents to make use of it.

“If I say that it is safe, it is because I think it is for me and my daughters. If not, I would not start it,” said the governor bluntly after being asked about the role that the public transport system can have in a possible upturn.

RETAIL STORES

On the streets of Lexington, Madison and Fifth Avenue, where the opulence and luxury that the city offers is displayed, fashion stores have decided not to open for the moment, as protests continue over the death of black citizen George Floyd at the hands of a white policeman, who for several days have passed all over New York.

A few, like Uniqlo, on Fifth Avenue, have begun to remove the wooden armor with which they tried to protect themselves from the looting of a few days ago. Others, like the Talbots clothing store, in Madison, or “The Container Store,” which sells drawers and packaging for storage, on Lexington Street, have only opened to allow people to pick up their orders.

On Stainway shopping avenue in Queens, where family-run stores predominate and which has hardly been affected by looting, there are no open businesses either. In the early morning, the vast majority of the metal shutters in retail stores remained down, many of them now forever and with the “for rent” sign hanging in their windows.

Only a couple of clothing stores have decided to resume their activity and allow the entrance of the few customers who dare to venture, since many of them do not have web pages that allow online shopping.

Yihan is a clerk in one of these stores, located in a predominantly Arab and North African area, which sells “Islamic clothing” for women. “It was very difficult, very difficult, we stayed at home without leaving and there was no income, things were complicated,” Yihan told Efe in Egyptian Arabic before telling that the place where he works will open this week until three pm.

“The place opens at 10 and closes at 20 hours but during this week it will close at three in the afternoon to see how things are going and if customers come or not, and then, God willing, we will open during normal hours “, says the clerk dressed in a” hijab “.

MUSEUMS AND RESTAURANTS WILL HAVE TO WAIT

Restaurants still cannot return to normality, but many of them have been resorting to home deliveries and collections during the stoppage of activity, in the latter case also of already prepared drinks.

New York City’s cultural institutions and important entertainment industry, which attract so many tourists annually, will be one of the last to be reactivated, since the governor has placed this industry in the fourth and final phase of the reopening of the region.

For this reason, it is estimated that a good part of the museums and theaters will not reopen their doors, at the earliest, until July, although many of the most important art galleries in New York have not yet announced a fixed date for this.

Some of the leading institutions in the Big Apple, however, have preferred to adopt a more conservative stance and have already stated that they will not open until much later, with the aim of avoiding the possibility of new infections and that new infections also occur. unforeseen events in 2020 that deal another blow to its precarious financial situation.

One of them is the Metropolitan Opera, which recently announced that this year its show season will not begin until December 31, canceling all fall performances, while the Metropolitan Museum (Met) has said it won’t open until mid-August at the earliest.

It is the same approach that the Broadway League has chosen, which brings together owners and producers from the mecca of US theater., and that already in May he announced that until at least September the curtain on his stages will not be raised again.

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