Two Brooklyn-based members of the New York Assembly, Charles Barron and Ways and Means Committee Chair Helene Weinstein, tested positive for the coronavirus.<\/p>\n
It comes to my attention that two of our Assembly colleagues Helene Weinstein and Charles Barron diagnosed with COVID-19. It is important to note that both members have not been in Albany since early March for separate reasons.<\/p>\n
Weinstein, 67, chairs a major committee; Barron, 69, is known as an outspoken lawmaker and is married to a New York City Councilwoman, Inez Barron.\u00a0 Weinstein in a statement said she tested positive today and not been in Albany since March 4:<\/p>\n
Assembly woman Rodneyse Bichotte, also from Brooklyn and the newly-elected chairwoman of the borough\u2019s Democratic Party, said that Weinstein is well, but Barron has needed to be hospitalized\u00a0 though she did not know if he was still in the hospital.<\/p>\n
\u201cI sent Charles and his wife a note. We\u2019re praying for him,\u201d\u00a0 \u201cI was with Charles recently. He look fine. He looked as healthy as ever.\u201d both Brooklyn lawmakers were infected this evening, Bichotte said .<\/p>\n
Heastie did not immediately respond to reporters\u2019 questions of when the lawmakers became sick.<\/p>\n
The statehouse and Legislative Office Building will undergo \u201can intensive cleaning,\u201d Gov. Cuomo and Heastie said in a joint press release Saturday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdditionally, out of an abundance of caution we are closing the Capitol to visitors effective tomorrow,\u201d the statement added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are working hand in glove to contain and mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 in New York but we will continue to act aggressively to protect the public health.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cuomo had alluded\u00a0 \u00a0to the possibility of Albany lawmakers catching the virus.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of getting the budget done, this is a situation where we have to anticipate, and you have several hundred legislators at the rate of infection\u00a0 if the rate of infection is anything that we believe it to be, there will be legislators who will contract the virus,\u201d he said 90 minutes before Heastie\u2019s announcement, during a Saturday evening press call.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust on the numbers, you have people in that proximity that we have in the capitol, somebody does test positive that person will be in proximity to a number of people.\u201d Cuomo said he was considering closing the statehouse to visitors.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn getting the budget done quickly, we are working to accelerate the budget because we want to anticipate future issues that we\u2019re gonna have to deal with,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two Brooklyn-based members of the New York Assembly, Charles Barron and Ways and Means Committee Chair Helene Weinstein, tested positive for the coronavirus. It comes to my attention that two of our Assembly colleagues Helene Weinstein and Charles Barron diagnosed with COVID-19. It is important to note that both members have not been in Albany […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":13583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1469,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-york","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13582","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=13582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13584,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13582\/revisions\/13584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}