Gov. Andrew Cuomo of the state of New York in the United States has threatened to shut down Manhattan if residents fail to adhere to the state’s social distancing rules.
He also threatened to shut down the Hamptons as well.
“We’re not going to go back to that dark place because local governments didn’t do their job” and people don’t take the proper precautions amid the coronavirus, Cuomo said, according to New York Post.
He said the state has received 25,000 complaints about health-safety violations since the start of the pandemic — an “alarming” figure that mainly involves bars and restaurants.
“Manhattan and the Hamptons are the leading areas in the state with violations,” Cuomo said.
“These are not hard-to-spot violations. People send videos of these violations,” the governor said — two days after at least 200 people were caught on video partying together, many without masks, around St. Marks Place in the East Village in Manhattan.
“They are rampant, and there’s not enough enforcement,” he said of violators.
“I’m not going to allow situations to exist, that we know have a high likelihood of causing an increase in the virus,” Cuomo said. “Local governments, do your job.
If “local governments are not monitoring policing, doing the compliance, yes, there is a very real possibility that we would roll back the reopening of those areas.”
The governor said he has personally phoned “a couple of bars and restaurants myself when I saw pictures of their situations. …
“And I said to them, ‘You’re playing with your [liquor] license.’ ”
Read the original in New York Post
