Indoor dining in New York City will come to a halt on Monday, Governor Andrew Cuomo said, as COVID-19 hospitalizations fail to stabilize and the infection rate rises.
The governor acknowledged indoor dining is not at the top of a list of settings driving the rise in new cases led by household gatherings, but said rising hospitalizations and New York City’s high density were worrying factors.
“You put the CDC caution on indoor dining together with the rate of transmission and the density and the crowding, that is a bad situation,” Cuomo told a news briefing on Friday.
Separately, Cuomo announced that a state review panel unanimously approved the recommendation by an FDA advisory panel to approve Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, and said an additional 346,000 doses of a vaccine manufactured by Moderna are expected in New York the week of Dec. 21. A first shipment of 170,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine could arrive in the state as soon as this weekend, Cuomo said.
(Reporting by Peter Szekely and Maria Caspani, Editing by Franklin Paul)