New York opens art festival as covid-19 figures improve

New York, Feb 20 (EFE) .- New York inaugurated this Saturday an art festival that aims to revitalize the cultural sector with hundreds of performances, and in the first of them it celebrated in situ the efforts of the health workers who are contributing to the improving pandemic numbers by dealing with vaccinations.

The NY Pops Up festival kicked off at the huge Javits Center convention center in Manhattan, which was a morning hospital months ago and is now a vaccination point, with the performance of jazz musician Jon Batiste, choreographer Ayodele Casel and the opera singer Anthony Roth Costanzo.

The initiative, in which the authorities have collaborated, will take 300 artistic events from different disciplines to all corners of the state, including the Big Apple, where Broadway remains closed and cultural activities have been reopening under restrictions until the beginning of September. .

This first step towards normality in one of the sectors hardest hit by covid-19 and most important for the New York economy has occurred precisely when the pandemic is receding from the peak after the Christmas celebrations and immunizations continue to advance.

State Governor Andrew Cuomo said today that infections have returned to pre-Thanksgiving levels and hospitalizations have dropped to mid-December figures, while 93% of the first doses received have been administered. of the federal government.

“Our ability to beat COVID-19 is completely dependent on our actions and the reduction in positivity and hospitalizations after the holidays shows that New Yorkers are still doing the right thing to be safe. Numbers are going down, vaccines are going up and so on. it means we are progressing towards the light at the end of the tunnel, “he said in a statement.

In total, according to John Hopkins University, which makes an extensive count of the pandemic, in the state of New York there have been accumulated 1.58 million cases and 46,700 deaths since the crisis began, but it has ceased to lead that data in the worst affected country in the world as it has been improving. EFE

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