This is our daily update of breaking COVID-19 news for Sunday, September 6th, 2020. Previous daily updates can be found here, and up-to-date statistics are here.
New York City is in Phase 4 of reopening now, which includes zoos, botanical gardens, museums, and gyms. A look at preparing for the spread of coronavirus is here, and if you have lingering questions about the virus, here is our regularly updated coronavirus FAQ. Here are some local and state hotlines for more information: NYC: 311; NY State Hotline: 888-364-3065; NJ State Hotline: 800-222-1222.
Here's the latest:
Wedding venues on Long Island and in upstate New York have filed a class action lawsuit against the state over regulations intended to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Bill and Ted’s Riviera restaurant in Massapequa on Long Island and the Diamond Mills Hotel and Tavern in Saugerties are the lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which accuses Governor Andrew Cuomo and other officials of a double standard in coronavirus restrictions, which have allowed indoor dining to resume in restaurants outside NYC at 50% capacity. Gatherings of more than 50 people, however, are prohibited.
Wedding venue operators say it's unfair that indoor dining is permitted, yet larger wedding receptions that could meet the 50% indoor capacity rule remain forbidden.
"The state has irrationally decided to discriminate against brides and grooms, their guests and wedding venues to make it impossible for these businesses to stay afloat," attorney Anthony Rupp, who is representing the venue owners, told the Daily Mail. "And literally they are going out of business by the day. By the day, these businesses are going out. No one wants to have a wedding with 50 people. The number of weddings with that many people are few and far between."
Responding to a different lawsuit filed by an upstate couple who are suing the state for the right to hold their wedding during a deadly global pandemic that has killed over 188,000 people and rising, Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker pointed out that at weddings, all guests are mingling with each other for hours, while restaurant dining consists of smaller parties that come and go at different times with little-to-no interaction.
"One hallmark of a super-spreader event is its size," Zucker wrote in a statement. "As [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] stated in June 12th, 2020 guidance, the more people with whom an individual interacts at a gathering and the longer that interaction lasts, the higher the potential risk of becoming infected with COVID-19 and COVID-19 spreading. As a group’s size increases, so does the risk of transmitting the virus to a wider cluster. A large group size also increases the chance that someone present will already have the virus and be contagious, even if entirely asymptomatic."
Rupp says he expects as many as 1,000 wedding venue operators to join the class action lawsuit, which comes as the death toll continues to rise from a coronavirus superspreader wedding in Maine in early August. As of Friday, 147 people were infected and three people died from COVID-19 as a result of the wedding, NBC reports.
None of the three people who died actually attended the wedding, which was held the Big Moose Inn at Millinocket Lake. The owners of the inn later admitted that the wedding reception had surpassed Maine's pandemic indoor gathering capacity limit of 50 people.
One of the three people whose death has been traced to the wedding was 88-year-old Theresa Dentremont, who was remembered as the "anchor of her family." One of Dentremont's relatives told the Boston Globe that she and her husband, 97, "weren’t taking any chances with their health during the pandemic because their ages put them at high risk for complications from the coronavirus." They were home in their cabin on the night of the wedding, and Dentremont later contracted the deadly virus from someone who attended.
Oneonta's Positivity Rate Drastically Higher Among Young People After Outbreak At SUNY Campus
1:15 p.m.: The rate of positive COVID-19 test results is drastically higher among young people in Oneonta after the SUNY campus there shut down in the wake of an outbreak, according to Governor Andrew Cuomo's office.
After dozens of students at SUNY Oneonta tested positive for coronavirus following large parties, state officials rolled out a "SWAT Team" in the city at three different sites to see if the outbreak had spread into the community. At the sites, 1,965 rapid tests were conducted, with about 91 positive cases found, or a 4.6 percent positivity rate. That's well above the less than 1 percent positivity rate the state has seen, on average, in the past month.
But nearly all of the cases—85 out of 91—were among young people ages 18 to 24, state health officials found.
The positivity rate was 11.5 percent among those tested in that age bracket, the governor's office said. (Some 738 out of 1,965 tests were from young people.)
Those tested outside of that age bracket (1,227 out of 1,965) had a positivity rate of .48 percent—lower than the positivity rate reported in all regions except the North Country, according to a press release from the governor's office on Sunday.
Cuomo's office said the results "show that the cases continue to be connected to ongoing spread among college students."
Last week, state officials announced SUNY Oneonta would go remote for two weeks after the outbreak. After cases continued to rise, the college canceled in-person classes for the rest of the semester and announced students who tested negative would be sent home.
The threshold for a two-week shutdown of in person instruction at colleges is 100 coronavirus cases or 5 percent of the on-site staff and faculty, whichever is fewer, the governor previously announced.
In a statement released Saturday, SUNY Oneonta President Barbara Jean Morris said the university will crack down on students seen in a photo at a dorm "blatantly violating our strict safety protocols and code of conduct and putting themselves and others at risk."
"We are working to identify the students and will quickly issue disciplinary actions and possible suspensions," she said in a statement posted on the campus's Facebook page. "We will also step up our monitoring of these residence halls to prevent this behavior from happening again and to continue to protect the safety and health of our students."
She said it was "deeply disappointing" there is still "reckless and irresponsible behavior of a few" after the campus had to shut down.
Across the country, colleges are where COVID-19 appears to be rising, causing concern the virus could spread to local communities where campuses are located, the NY Times reports: "In a New York Times review of 203 counties in the country where students comprise at least 10 percent of the population, about half experienced their worst weeks of the pandemic since August 1. In about half of those, figures showed the number of new infections is peaking right now."
In New York State as a whole, the infection rate has remained below 1 percent for 30 days, Cuomo said.
"Our actions today determine the rate of infection tomorrow, so as the Labor Day weekend continues, I urge everyone to be smart so we don't see a spike in the weeks ahead," Cuomo said in a statement Sunday.
Of more than 85,000 tests reported to the state on Saturday, .85 percent were positive. Nine people died of COVID-19, according to the state's preliminary numbers, bringing the state's death toll to 25,359.
Serena Williams of the US (L) hits a return to Sloane Stephens of the US (R) during their match on the sixth day of the US Open Tennis Championships the USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, New York, on September 5, 2020
US Open Bubble Faces Challenges After Player Tests Positive
A card game attended by seven professional tennis players has had ripple effects on the U.S. Open, which is trying to hold the country's premier tennis tournament during a pandemic.
In June, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that the U.S. Open could be held at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing-Meadows, Queens—but without fans and with "robust testing, additional cleaning, extra locker room space, and dedicated housing and transportation." Strict guidelines were seen as necessary, especially after number 1 seed Novak Djokovic held a tennis tour in June, during which many players, including Djokovic himself, contracted coronavirus. So this year's U.S. Open has players operating in a quasi-bubble, most living in the Long Island Marriott in Uniondale and Garden City Hotel, and retrieving their own towels during matches.
Just before the Open began, French player Benoit Paire, the 17-seed, withdrew due to a positive COVID test. Tournament officials delayed a match between Alexander Zverev and Adrian Mannarino for nearly three hours on Friday because Mannarino had been played in the card game with Paire. The match was ultimately held, with Mannarino losing in four sets.
"I was preparing to go on court at 2:30," Mannarino told the NY Post. "The state department of health took over this decision to say I’ve been exposed to a positive case, so I should be quarantining in my room and can’t be able to go on the tennis court and play my match. They [the USTA] were trying to see if this decision could be changed."
The Post reported, "Indications were city officials stepped in to save the match... The state’s hard line means the Open is in danger of more cancellations if another player tests positive across the final week."
On Saturday, officials disqualified the doubles team of Kristina Mladenovic and Timea Babos, because Mladenovic had played cards with Paire. She told the NY Times that the game was only 40 minutes and everyone had worn masks. Part of the confusion appears to stem from protocols being developed in the moment. From the Times:
Health officials in Nassau County, where the players’ hotel is, decided that allowing Mladenovic to play would violate the county’s protocols, even though Mladenovic had been participating in the tournament all week.
The U.S.T.A., which was caught off guard by Nassau County’s sudden involvement in the tournament’s protocols, said in a statement that it was obligated to comply with the county’s ruling that all of those who had been in close contact with Paire would have to remain alone in their hotel rooms through a quarantine period that ends next Saturday. It was the third time in less than a week, and the second time in 24 hours, that the rules for players exposed to the virus had changed.
Number 2 seed Dominic Thiem said of Paire's positive COVID test, "There's so many people involved in this tournament. The possibility that somebody is going to be positive is pretty high. I just wish all the best to Benoit. Hopefully nobody else is positive, as well." He added, according to USA Today, "I think there is no safer place in the world right now than here. Maybe you can lock yourself somewhere in a cave or something, I don't know, in the middle of the sea."
Paire said that he has now tested negative, and has is suggesting that he may have had a false-positive test. He says he is not experiencing any symptoms.
