Start spreading the news. According to New York City’s Mayor Bill de Blasio the city will be ready to fully reopen by July 1st.
Speaking with the Morning Joe team on MSNBC, de Blasio pointed to high vaccination rates in NYC as having inspired this decision to get the world’s greatest city back on track.
“Our plan is to fully reopen New York City on July 1,” he said. “We are ready for stores to open, for businesses to open. Offices, theaters. Full strength. Because, look, what we’re seeing is people have gotten vaccinated in extraordinary numbers. 6.3 million vaccinations in New York City to date. We’re doing a lot to reach people at the grassroots.”
“We know the vaccination effort is going to grow and grow,” said de Blasio, who has been mayor since 2014. “We gotta keep working hard at that, but what’s amazing is every single day we’re beating back COVID more and more. Hospitalizations down. You know, we’re just seeing a better situation every day. We’re ready to take that pathway to a full reopening.”
City officials are confident that they can get life back to the normal levels it was before the pandemic, De Blasio said.
“This is going to be the summer of New York City,” the mayor said. “You’re going to see amazing activities, cultural activities coming back. I think people are going to flock to New York City, because they want to live again.”
De Blasio acknowledged the threat of new variants — but he said the vaccines are proving very capable of eliminating new outbreaks from those recently identified strains of the coronavirus.
Very ambitious goals for the city that was the epicenter for the coronavirus.
