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Cinemas outside NYC may reopen on October 23
A comeback months in the making is about to happen for movie theaters outside of New York City.
NEW YORK - New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that beginning October 23, movie theaters outside of New York City will be allowed to reopen at 25% capacity with a maximum of 50 people per screen.
Masks will be required and there will be assigned seating to ensure social distancing.
Theaters in New York City aren’t included, and counties must have a positivity rate below 2% on a 14-day average and have no “cluster zones.”
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Gov. Cuomo on NY strategy to fight COVID in the fall
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo reveals New York's strategy to fight COVID-19 in the fall.
Orange and Rockland County also do not currently meet the thresholds, so theaters in those areas may not yet reopen either.
Cuomo also said that the state will use "micro-targeting" to fight the spread of COVID-19 in New York this fall.
"We are now going to analyze it on the block by block level," Cuomo said.
According to Governor Cuomo, the micro-targeting strategy will not go by the same kind of benchmarks the state used for its regional phased reopening strategy.
Cuomo also announced that the state had reached a new record high for testing on Friday, with 159,972 test results reported. Just 1.11%, or 1,784, of the reported tests came back positive.
Inside of the state’s “Red Zone” focus areas, 4,305 tests were done and the positivity rate was at 4.34 percent, or 187 positives.
NY, Orange County sue to close school in virus hot spot
State and county health officials filed a lawsuit Friday against an Orange County school that they said has remained open despite an order to close because of a spike in coronavirus cases.
The Times Herald-Record reports the suit filed in state Supreme Court in Goshen names the Bnei Yoel school in Kiryas Joel. Earlier this month, Orange County health officials ordered schools in the Orthodox Jewish community to remain closed for two weeks.
In the lawsuit, a deputy county health commissioner said he visited the school on two days recently and saw children not wearing masks and not observing social distancing.
A phone message was left Saturday with the village's administrator.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo reinstated restrictions this month on businesses, houses of worship and schools in and near areas where coronavirus cases are spiking.
The new rules, which include school and business shutdowns and limitations on gatherings, affect parts of Brooklyn and Queens in New York City, sections of Orange and Rockland counties outside the city, and an area within Binghamton in the Southern Tier.
Some Jewish leaders have called the measures “blatantly anti-Semitic” for targeting Orthodox communities. On Friday, in a case brought by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, a federal judge upheld Cuomo’s order limiting worship to as few as 10 congregants in communities seeing spikes in coronavirus infections.
With the Associated Press.