What to know
- A judge in the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of several restaurants in Erie County that sued the state over their name as an orange area; the judge gave a preliminary ruling
- Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s attorney says the state is reviewing the decision, which he disagrees with; in the meantime, it allows restaurants in the orange area to operate according to the rules of the yellow area
- Since Cuomo’s last update, there have been seven orange areas with cluster areas in the state, including parts of Westchester County and NYC, where indoor dining is prohibited regardless of cluster rules.
New York has temporarily taken meals indoors in the orange areas, following a Supreme Court ruling this week in favor of restaurants in Erie County that have sued the restriction, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday.
This means that parts of Westchester County that have been under these mid-level restrictions since mid-December can resume meals indoors – at least temporarily. The Staten Island areas were also under the orange zone rules of the time, but Cuomo banned dining inside the entire city of New York, regardless of its cluster zone program. It is not clear how the state decision would affect this.
Up to four people on the table can dine indoors in seven so-called “orange areas” located in counties with some of the highest rates of COVID-19 cases or hospitalizations in the state: including Monroe County in Finger Lakes.
A number of restaurants across the state, including many in New York, have sued for a ban on dining indoors, but State Supreme Court Judge Henry Nowak has granted a preliminary injunction to enforce it. Erie’s case on Wednesday.
According to the Rubber’s rules on cluster areas, orange areas – the second smallest in level three – completely ban indoor consumption and limit four people per table outdoors. Schools also move remotely, unless they are testing; non-essential high-risk businesses are closed and meetings are limited to a maximum of 10 people.
In its decision, Nowak decided that restaurants in Erie County that were in the orange areas could return to the rules of indoor dining, which apply to yellow areas, which allow dining, but only with a maximum of four people per table.
Nowak said he could not “find evidence that the state has a rational basis for designating parts of Erie County as an orange area” and that restaurants would suffer “irreparable harm” beyond measure.
According to Cuomo’s latest guidelines, which were last updated in mid-December, the orange zone restrictions apply to areas with a positivity rate of 4% or higher for 10 consecutive days. and the area reached the capacity of the hospital of 85% or The Department of Health determines that the area has an unacceptably high rate of hospitalizations.
As of Thursday, Erie County has a positivity rate of 6.3 percent. The governor’s website does not break down hospitalization data by county, but state data show that no region in the state has reached 85% hospital capacity. This would trigger more aggressive cessation measures. As of Thursday, western New York, Erie County, had 32 percent and 36 percent of hospital beds and ICU beds, respectively, based on a seven-day rolling average.
Daily percentage of positive tests in the New York region
The Andrew Cuomo government divides the state into 10 regions for testing purposes and monitors positivity rates to identify potential hot spots. Here are the latest tracking data by region and for the five neighborhoods. For the latest county-level results at the state level, click here
It was not immediately clear whether the assessment of the Department of Health is what determined the restrictions of the orange area. Erie County has confirmed nearly 50,000 total cases of COVID to date, more than 69 percent of the 71,273 confirmed cases in the five counties that make up western New York in March.
Cuomo’s office says it is reviewing the ruling. The parties will have to go back to court to determine whether the order will become permanent.
Gibson, meanwhile, said the state would allow all restaurants in the orange area to operate in accordance with yellow zone rules “to ensure uniformity and fairness.”
“We do not agree with the court’s decision and its impact on public health, as federal CDC data clearly show that indoor mass is increasing the spread of COVID-19,” Gibson said. “Since the beginning of this pandemic, the state has acted on the facts and advice of public health experts and we will continue this approach.”
Regarding Cuomo’s latest update, there are seven areas of orange areas in the state, including the one in Erie County. Parts of Staten Island, Westchester County, Monroe County, Chemung County, Onondaga County and Niagara County (also in Western New York) are classified as orange areas.
The NYC Hospitality Alliance, which represents the city’s restaurants, among other businesses, fired Cuomo for banning dining indoors in light of the ruling.
“The court’s preliminary ruling and the governor’s action to remove dining restrictions within all ‘orange areas’ make the state of New York’s ban on dining all the more outrageous and destructive for thousands of restaurants in the five neighborhoods. , especially when infection and hospitalization rates are lower than most counties in the state where the indoor mass is allowed to occupy 50%, “executive director Andrew Rigie and lawyer Robert Bookman said on Thursday.
“The continuation of the ban on dining inside New York City is separate from any of the data and criteria that the state has formulated and must be concluded now,” they said.