New York Post reports:
Schools in Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks will again be closed for in-person classes starting Tuesday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday.
The governor additionally announced that the state was rolling into the city to take the reins on enforcement — using city personnel — for coronavirus infractions in those areas, and put businesses and religious institutions on notice about large gatherings in houses of worship.
Mayor Bill de Blasio sought his blessing to shut down nine ZIP codes in the boroughs wholesale, closing not just schools but non-essential businesses and dining at restaurants.
The governor, however, said only schools would be closing for now.
Both public and private schools within nine ZIP codes experiencing outbreaks will be closed to in-person classes starting Tuesday. The governor did not give a reopening date.
Cuomo partially approved de Blasio’s plan less than a week after rapping the city for not doing enough to tamp down on the burgeoning outbreaks, a point he again stressed Monday without specifically naming the target of his remarks.
In the city, the Department of Health and the state police would run a task force to issue summonses at a clip far more furious than the city has, he said.
Cuomo also noted that de Blasio’s plan left untouched religious institutions, even though many of the areas experiencing flare-ups are home to sizable Orthodox Jewish populations, with which the city’s outreach efforts have struggled to connect.
Cuomo said that he would again attempt to get them to see the light on abiding by pandemic precautions, but was prepared to shutter synagogues if ignored.
Nine ZIP codes were targeted by City Hall in the Sunday proposal for their 3-percent coronavirus positivity rate over the past seven days.
The nine ZIP codes are:
11219: Borough Park, Brooklyn
11223: Gravesend/Homecrest, Brooklyn
11230: Midwood, Brooklyn
11204: Bensonhurst/Mapleton, Brooklyn
11210: Flatlands, Brooklyn
11691: Edgemere/Far Rockaway, Queens
11229: Gerritsen Beach/Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn
11367: Kew Gardens Hills/Pomonok, Queens
11415: Kew Gardens, Queens
This is utterly ridiculous!! Again!?
Can Mr. Mayor and Cuomo and Dr. Zucker stop threatening us? We pay their salaries. They work for us and not the other way around. Let them shut down their offices because of covid restrictions and resign. We don’t agree to be persecuted in the name of public health and they’ve done an awful job. Sorry! Bye bye! You’re fired!
The disdain for someone’s well-being; the complete defiance of all halachic experts across the entire spectrum of frum Jews…it’s simply astounding!
nobody is saying to laugh off the virus, rather when it comes to a point of an utter socialist takeover of our daily lives and the lives of our children, we must put an end to this madness!!
All what the government is doing is making people not want to comply even more.
So let’s get our act together as a neighborhood. Wear masks, no more Simchas Beis dancing, act like you actually care at all about having schools open.
To keep our schools open; our children desparatly need the structure, the one on one and social interaction of school.
To keep our businesses open; they have suffered and desparatly need every day ope to stay alive and make up for months of shut downs.
To keep our families SAFE and alive???