The Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn is experiencing an “uptick” in COVID-19 cases that are mostly linked to a large-scale wedding, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday.
“We’ve seen an uptick over the last few days,” Blasio told reporters during his City Hall daily press release, explaining that there were 16 new cases of coronavirus in the area.
Hizzoner called the new cases an “early warning sign” because he noted that “some” are “linked to a recent wedding – a big wedding, in fact in the community.”
Currently in New York, only social gatherings of up to 50 people are allowed and the Blasio said the marriage in question “was substantially more than that – and that is simply not allowed.”
It was not immediately clear where exactly the wedding was held or whether anyone was punished.
De Blasio said the city’s Test and Trace Corps is following up with attendees to test them and that the city’s immediate efforts to galvanize community leaders. ‘
“We need to avoid those big meetings that could cause a bigger problem,” Blasio said, adding that the city’s health department will begin doubling down on catering halls across the Big Apple “to let them know these standards should be met. be held. “
The mayor has also promised that the city will conduct more inspections of restaurants to ensure they do not have capacity rules.
While the violations are punishable by fines of up to $ 10,000, no one will face consequences, Blasio said.
“I’m much more worried about the future,” he told reporters.
In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, there have been several cases of Hasidic Jews breaking social distance rules by holding large funerals near Borough Park and elsewhere in Brooklyn.
Meanwhile, as it was revealed that the Big Apple’s coronavirus infection period dropped to a record low of 0.24 percent on Wednesday, the Blasio debuted any idea that the hard hit Big Apple has received any herd immunity related to the killerbug.
“I do not think we have evidence of herd immunity anywhere in New York City,” Blasio said. “We are nowhere near that point.”
The Blasio called the idea of herd immunity “folk wisdom in many communities”, but “we have no proof of that.”
Jay Varma, Blasio’s senior adviser on public health, who was also at the conference call with reporters on Wednesday, referred to a survey of the antibody in the city which showed that 25 to 30 percent of the New Yorkers “have shown some sort of infection.”
“That is not a level of anti-antibody coverage that we currently think people can mean to be fully protected,” Varma said.
Varma pointed out that the latest information from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that people infected with the virus “are somehow protected until three months after that initial infection.”
“The problem is that we do not know how many people are protected after that,” he said, adding, “everyone should still consider themselves potentially at risk of infection.”
The only way to continue to keep infection rates low is to wear face masks, practice social distance and maintain good hygiene and limits at meetings, the health adviser said.
However, Varma said, “it may very well be that there is some percentage of the population that helps keep infection rates low.”
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