Cuomo issues new guidance for college reopenings

NEW YORK CITY, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) — On Thursday, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo delivered his daily briefing from New York City where he said New York State was issuing guidance to colleges and universities that wanted to open in the fall.

Cuomo said the campuses must develop plans for reopening, monitoring, containment, and shut down in order to allow some residential and face to face programming for the fall semester.

Cuomo also said he was going to issue an Executive Order to strengthen the state’s enforcement to protect New Yorkers. The Executive Order says that any business in violation of reopening rules and guidelines can lose their liquor license and their business could be shut down. Cuomo also said he would issue an Executive Order that says bars are responsible for the area immediately outside their establishment.

“We reopen in phases, and phases have rules, which is why it makes it a phase instead of an overall reopening,” Cuomo said.

Cuomo also said that compliance by people and enforcement by local governments were two of the biggest issues the state was facing with reopening right now.

On Wednesday, New York tested 68,541 people, and only 618 people tested positive, which is an infection rate of 0.90%

“Yay New York,” Cuomo said. “That is just great news. And that’s why I’m in such a happy-go-lucky mood.”

Cuomo said this was the lowest positive percentage New York State has had since the coronavirus pandemic started. Also on Wednesday, there were only 1,358 people hospitalized with coronavirus, however, 29 people did die from the virus yesterday.

There was an uptick, though, in the Central New York region. The region had 3% of coronavirus tests come back positive on Wednesday, and Cuomo says that could be linked back to a cluster outbreak at a food processing plant in Oswego County.