Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City
[19] On April 4, Governor Cuomo announced that the Chinese government had arranged for a donation of 1,000 ventilators to be sent to New York through foundations run by billionaires Jack Ma and Joseph Tsai.
[22] It was reported that "Urban Area Medical Task Forces" made up of army reservists would be working in the New York City field hospitals and other parts of the country.
[32] Symptoms include high fevers that can last for days, rash, racing heart beat, changes in skin color, redness of the tongue, and severe abdominal pain.
[42] Health experts noted that the effectiveness of contact tracing in preventing resurgence would depend on careful monitoring of hospitalizations and targeted testing of high-risk populations to screen for asymptomatic carriers.
[44] Plans to open indoor dining during the Phase 3 reopening were postponed due to the heightened risks posed by customers refusing to wear face masks and the uncertain role of air conditioning for COVID spread.
[57] By the end of September, de Blasio had ordered the police department to enforce public health guidelines in several Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods and conduct emergency inspections at private religious schools.
Twenty ZIP Codes were identified as cluster areas, with an average 5.2% of positive tests, relatively high compared to the rest of New York State.
[61][62] A twelfth ZIP Code was placed on the "watch list" on October 5, the same day that the governor's office rejected the mayor's plan to close non-essential businesses.
[80] Despite calls from health experts to close indoor dining before it was too late "to reverse the tide of new infections," the governor's office declined to impose restrictions until the statistical thresholds were met.
[83] By late November, the governor's office was warning that the entire city was approaching the threshold for the "orange zone" designation that would close indoor dining, salons and gyms.
[86][87][88] After the New York City Sheriff's Office shut down Mac's on December 1 and arrested its owner,[89] several hundred people gathered to protest the shutdown.
[95] On December 23, following concerns over a new SARS-CoV-2 variant from the United Kingdom, de Blasio issued an order for travelers from the UK to quarantine or otherwise face fines of $1,000.
[112][113] On May 12, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority launched a five-day pilot project of walk-up COVID-19 vaccination sites in eight of its subway, Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road stations.
[119] On July 7, 2021, the city held a "Hometown Heroes" ticker tape parade to honor healthcare professionals and essential workers for their work during the pandemic.
[121] The Uniformed EMS Officers Union also asked its members not to attend the parade due to an ongoing dispute with the city over a lack of hazard pay during the pandemic.
[122] On July 23, 2021, the city's health department announced that daily average cases were 32% higher than the prior week and that the Delta variant had become the dominant COVID strain, accounting for 57% of citywide samples over a four-week period.
[123] On August 2, 2021, de Blasio recommended that vaccinated people wear masks in indoor settings, following CDC guidance and a continued uptick in positive COVID cases due to the Delta variant.
[125] On August 3, de Blasio announced that New York City would become the first in the United States to require proof of vaccination for workers and customers at all indoor dining establishments, gyms, entertainment venues, and performances.
Three days earlier, on October 1, the U.S. Supreme Court denied an emergency injunction to block the mandate's implementation, allowing the city to move forward with its plans to enforce compliance.
[136] On December 2, the second reported U.S. case of the highly mutated Omicron variant was found in a Minnesota man who had recently returned from a trip to New York City to attend an anime convention at the Javits Center.
[144] Following the rejection of an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of a group of teachers, New York City commenced with the firing of 1,430 workers for noncompliance with the vaccine mandate.
The city's health commissioner, David Chokshi, unveiled a new color-coded system for the shift to 'living with COVID,' which would recommend the reintroduction of vaccine and masking mandates in the event of a future surge in cases.
[147] A collection of union leaders and elected officials, including City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, criticized the move as creating a double standard for elite, celebrity New Yorkers.
Adams had previously planned to rescind the mask requirement in early April, yet it remained in place after the mayor prevailed in a legal challenge to the mandate.
The program, which started in June 2020, after the first COVID-19 surge, had funding allocated for the entirety of the 2022 fiscal year and would continue to contact "known positives", conduct limited tracing efforts, and perform other COVID-related public health services, such as the distribution of at-home tests.
Adams, who was exhibiting minor symptoms, cancelled all of his public events for the following week and began taking newly available antiviral medications, which he recommended to other COVID-positive New Yorkers.
While working at a call center for the program in 2020 and 2021, she stole the identities of healthcare workers and sold the data to co-conspirators who would, in turn, resell the rooms to ineligible individuals.
[171] The closure came amid a rising tide of COVID-19, flu, and RSV cases in the city and a renewed suggestion of indoor masking by municipal public health authorities.
[174] On February 10, the city also sunsetted its text-based COVID-19 notification service, imploring New Yorkers to "stay safe" in a final text marking the end of the program.
There was not, however, a concurrent rise in the number of confirmed cases, due to rollbacks in funding and data reporting requirements associated with the end of the national public health emergency in early May.
