With COVID-19 positivity rates continuing to rise across the state (and country), New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo shared some new tactics to keep the spread under control.
He announced a new “Surge and Flex” plan in a press conference Monday, December 7, in order to decide when to enact restrictions. Instead of just basing it on the positivity rate, they will calculate on how far a certain region is from reaching a “critical” number of hospitalizations, ie: if they are 90% full. 
If statistics show that a region is three weeks away from reaching that 90% capacity, then the state will start enacting “NY Pause” shutdowns.
For NYC, the Governor said that that if the current hospitalization rate continues to increase over the next 5 days, indoor dining will be banned. The state is following the CDC’s newly released recommendations that identify indoor dining as a “particularly high-risk scenario.”
When pressed by a reporter, he said this will likely happen by Monday, December 14. He also said multiple times at he “expects” the rate to continue rising, which means a shutdown of indoor dining in NYC is almost inevitable.
featured image source: Unsplash