COVID and NYC: impacts on one of the most populated cities in the world

Reilley Ciastko, Staff Writer 

During a normal day in New York City, before March of 2020, you would be surrounded by millions of smells and sights; on a normal day there would be 1,400 people per block in NYC. You’d be surrounded and confined as you walked through the busy streets, bumping into people and rushing to go where you needed to be. Now, in November of 2020, NYC is nothing like that because it has been one of the most populated cities for many years, and now it is one of the major cities that have been most affected by COVID-19.

Before the global pandemic that has taken over the world, NYC would have 60 million tourists flooding the subways and crowding the streets (according to Wikipedia). Now, people are encouraged to stay indoors, subways are shut down, and there are over 2000 social distancing ambassadors who work in public areas such as parks and beaches; they are there to remind New Yorkers about the basic state-mandated health and safety requirements, such as wearing masks, though they stop short of demanding that they comply. Along with the subways being shut down, many companies and organizations in NYC are struggling during the worst economic crisis the city has ever seen. For example, St.Patrick's Cathedral is pleading for help because tourists used to spend about 44 billion dollars there. Professional sports are also impacted; even though professional sports such as baseball are reopening, they aren’t allowing fans into the stadiums, which means the vendors around the stadiums-which used to be making around 400,000 dollars a year-are now making nothing. Even though NYC is in the stage 4 of reopening, Broadway won’t open until 2021 and the New Year's Eve and the Thanksgiving Parade will be different this year.

Since NYC is in stage 4 of reopening, schools are reopening, low risk indoor and outdoor arts and entertainment have opened; we've also seen openings in media production, malls, gyms, and indoor seating. Even though all this is good, the city is still in economic trouble and it will take a long time for some businesses to get out of debt and back to “normal”. The rate of cases and deaths have gone down significantly since April and May, when the city experienced its worst numbers; they had 11,571 cases on April 14th and the most deaths in the city were recorded at 1,000 on May 5th, when the positivity rate was up to 3%. 

Even though many things are reopening, and the death/ new cases are going down, the city is facing treats to shut down again if death rates start to increase again.