Bill De Blasio had been reluctant to cancel the festivities, but today he reconsidered the situation and admitted that the issue “is under discussion.”
The Mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, does not rule out canceling the New Year’s Eve festivities in the famous Times Square, given the large increase, in absolute and relative terms, in positive cases of covid-19 due to the rapid transmission of the omicron variant.
Although de Blasio had remained until today reluctant to any restriction to these holidays -On Friday he said that they would remain even if that meant requiring proof of vaccine to one million attendees-, today he was open to reconsidering the situation and admitted that the issue “is under discussion” and that he will make “a decision before Christmas.”
“We are examining the new challenge we face. It is an outdoor event and only for vaccinated, (but) we are considering other ways to approach it, even with the current rules that could be made tougher, so the discussion continues and we work closely with the sponsors (Times Square Alliance) to see the best way to proceed, “said the mayor at a press conference.
This was the only possible restriction that De Blasio referred to at the press conference, when the city and state of New York observe a progressive increase in cases: for the third day, today the state exceeded 20,000 cases of new positives (They added 22,478), and the percentage of positivity does not stop growing, to stand today at 8.41% (almost two points more than on Friday, when it was 6.58%).
De Blasio acknowledged that “a substantial increase in the number of cases and a rapid increase in that number is expected“; However, he wanted to be optimistic and spoke of a peak of several weeks: “We hope it will be a matter of weeks, and then we will see that this begins to calm down,” he predicted.
At the moment, this steady increase in cases has created considerable alarm among the population, that in recent days he has appeared in long queues to take the free tests that are practiced in medical centers and mobile units, creating long queues of hundreds of meters and waits of several hours.
In this regard, Di Blasio said that the Mayor’s Office is strengthening the number of detection centers and that for next Tuesday there will be 30 fixed and 93 mobile units.
At no time did De Blasio refer to total or partial closures of places or activities, neither for work nor for leisure, in a city that lives largely from the entertainment business, whether in restaurants, theaters or bars, where the vaccination certificate is currently required.
Last Monday, it came into force a new regulation to make the mask mandatory in most closed places, under penalty of a fine of up to $ 1,000. (I)
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