City Council Speaker Corey Johnson on Wednesday called for the Big Apple to limit nonessential events that draw large crowds in light of the coronavirus outbreak a direct conflict with Mayor Bill de Blasio who hours earlier said \u201cwe\u2019re not there yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been speaking to leading public health care experts, and I believe that we are now at a point where it is necessary to create limits on nonessential large gatherings,\u201d Johnson said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cOther cities and states around the country are taking this responsible step. New York City should as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier in the day, de Blasio\u00a0swatted down the idea\u00a0of potentially canceling upcoming events in large city gathering points like Madison Square Garden and Broadway over coronavirus fears.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could get there, but we\u2019re not there yet,\u201d de Blasio told reporters at a 311 call center in Lower Manhattan.<\/p>\n
However, Johnson said the city should begin setting limits by \u201cofficially\u201d canceling the St.Patrick\u2019s Day Parade, sayings \u201cit\u2019s an unnecessary risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson, a presumptive 2021 mayoral candidate, also said he\u2019s not calling for the city to \u201cshut down\u201d over coronavirus but believes \u201cwe need to look at other mass gatherings to determine how we can limit exposure to keep people safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOther cities have determined how to manage large gatherings, and there are a number of models for how we can do this.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur public health care experts should establish clear guidelines for New York. I have spoken to the Department of Health and Administration related to determining these criteria and guidelines.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were 53 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the city as of Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
De Blasio spokes woman Freddi Goldstein said the city has \u201cthe finest health care professionals in the nation constantly assessing the situation. As soon as they believe a change needs to be made, we\u2019ll make it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
City Council Speaker Corey Johnson on Wednesday called for the Big Apple to limit nonessential events that draw large crowds in light of the coronavirus outbreak a direct conflict with Mayor Bill de Blasio who hours earlier said \u201cwe\u2019re not there yet.\u201d \u201cI have been speaking to leading public health care experts, and I believe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":13524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1469,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-new-york","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13522"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13528,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13522\/revisions\/13528"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}