Coronavirus: New York and California reopen as most restrictions are lifted
- ‘Life is about celebrating. Life is about enjoying. Life is about interacting,’ says New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
- Leaders of both states cite high vaccination rates among their residents, but add that a degree of caution is still necessary
New York and California, among the first US states to record Covid-19 infections, announced on Tuesday the dropping of restrictions meant to slow the spread of the pandemic that has claimed 600,000 lives in the country.
Governors Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gavin Newsom of California said high vaccination rates, physical distancing mandates that closed many businesses and other precautions had allowed them to roll back the restrictions, including capacity limits. Both said more than 70 per cent of their states’ adult populations had received at least one vaccine dose.
“All the state-mandated restrictions are lifted on commercial, social settings, sports and recreation, construction, manufacturing, retail buildings, all across the board – we can get back to living and businesses can open because the state mandates are gone,” Cuomo said in a press briefing at One World Trade Centre in lower Manhattan.
“Congratulations to New Yorkers because they are the ones who did it,” he said.
“We’re no longer just surviving. We’re not in our homes afraid to go out. Life is not about survival. Life is about thriving. Life is about seeing people. Life is about loving. Life is about celebrating. Life is about enjoying. Life is about interacting.”
Speaking at the Universal Studios theme park in Los Angeles, where many visitors milled behind him without masks, Newsom lauded California’s Covid-19 positivity rate of below 1 per cent over the past six weeks and said it was among the lowest in the US.
“I want to thank everybody that worked so hard to work through some challenging and vexing times, to work through a lot of the misinformation, a lot of the politics that took shape unfortunately to mask wearing, as it relates to the vaccination programmes themselves,” he said.
