New York restaurants, which could no longer serve indoor customers since mid-December, should be able to reopen for Valentine’s Day on February 14, thanks to the decline in the pandemic, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Friday.
New York has seen indicators of the epidemic decline since early January, when the epidemic recorded a new peak, fueled by the holiday season, Cuomo said.
According to the governor’s figures, the test positivity rate in New York itself has now fallen to 4.9%, from 7.1% in early January.
“You could book a table now, plan your dinner, get someone married for Valentine’s Day,” he joked.
But while the detected cases of variants of the coronavirus, especially British and more recently South African, increase in the United States, he warned that this reopening, with a capacity limited to 25%, remains conditional on “maintaining positivity rates current ”.
New York dining rooms had closed for the first time in the spring, before reopening at the end of September, then closing in mid-December, to the chagrin of the restaurant sector, which is bloodless, like all sectors linked to tourism.
Restaurants that have remained open have often set up cabins or tents on the sidewalk, not without success. But with the drop in temperatures – it was -6 degrees Celsius on Friday noon – customers became scarce.
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