Cuomo Says He Will Redraw Lines in Some Covid Hot Zones

CBSNewYork

Relief is in sight for businesses, schools and religious institutions in some of New York City’s COVID hot zones.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo says he will redraw the lines, and the results will be announced as soon as Wednesday.

As CBS2’s Marcia Kramer reported Monday, not everyone in the lockdown areas will be off the hook, but the governor said he’s doing a block-by-block assessment of infection rates and plans to ease restrictions wherever he can.

“We have total flexibility in the zones,” Cuomo said. “Marcia, you can draw the lines on these maps wherever you want, literally. You can just configure it block by block. So as discrete areas get better you can rewrite the size of the zones, and that is what we’re looking to do now,” Cuomo said.

Cuomo’s willingness to redraw the lockdown lines came after a virtual meeting with Jewish leaders, begging him to realize that many in their community are wearing masks and complying with social distancing and should not be confused with one congregation in New Square — which held a mass service a week ago.

Rabbi Yaakov Bender of Far Rockaway was one of the participants.

“Please remember when you see some idiots doing silly things, don’t paint us with that brush. We are really beating up on them. We are doing everything in our power to stop these people,” he told Cuomo on a phone call.

Red zone infection rates are coming down. In the last week:

Queens red zone dropped from 3.3% to 2.2%
Brooklyn went from 5.8% to 5.2%
Rockland went from 9.7% to 4.5%
Orange went from 12.4% to 4.6%

The governor said he is depending on community leaders to help with compliance.

“If you know certain activities are going to be curtailed, which we believe have been significant generators, then we can do even more,” Cuomo said.