On a typically humming strip of New Rochelle’s northern business district, the owner of a Mexican restaurant paced a deserted sidewalk on Tuesday night. A newsstand employee idly watched a soccer match and offered hand sanitizer to inquiring reporters, his only customers lately. Trays of Chinese food were loaded into a minivan for another “drop and dash ” — the process by which Josh Berkowitz delivers meals to his neighbors in quarantine without making contact with them.
"People don’t want to touch New Rochelle with a ten-foot pole,” said Berkowitz, the owner of Eden Wok, a kosher Asian Fusion restaurant on North Avenue. “It feels like there’s a toxic haze over us. It’s a ghost town.”
Twenty miles north of Midtown, the Westchester suburb of New Rochelle is now the epicenter of what's believed to be the nation’s largest COVID-19 outbreak. On Tuesday, Governor Andrew Cuomo took the step of declaring a one-mile "containment zone" around the Young Israel of New Rochelle synagogue, the “hotspot” near an attorney's home and synagogue where the cases first surfaced. The cluster is now believed to account for at least 108 of the state’s 183 confirmed infections.
Starting Thursday, schools, houses of worship and other large gathering spots within a one-mile radius of the synagogue will be shut down for two weeks. The National Guard will be deployed to distribute food and clean public spaces.
As cases of community spread continue to rise in the city of 80,000 people, the escalating response should be seen as “literally a matter of life and death,” the governor said.
For the thousands of residents and workers inside the newly-designated containment zone, the latest measure elicited feelings of dread, anger, and confusion.
“It caught us all off guard,” said Rachel Zolottev, a longtime resident. “I got a phone call from my mom in Florida freaking out, saying we’re under quarantine. I had to tell her this wasn't like the movies."
Under the new policy, those not under mandatory quarantine may come and go from the one-mile zone as they please, and business owners will not be forced to shut their doors. Still, Zolottev said she planned to voluntarily close down the Krav Maga studio she co-runs with her husband for as long as schools remained shuttered. Her husband, who goes by Sensei Vladimir, will cease his regular trips to Manhattan for martial arts training.
Stressing she was happy to comply with any public health order, Zolottev added: “I’m not sure how effective it is to suddenly slam one area. When there are other parts of Westchester and New York not doing the same, how is that stopping the spread?”
Others wondered if the decision to deploy the National Guard was less a practical step than a display of political strength from the governor. “What are they going to do? Shoot the virus?” joked Raj Shaikhar, the owner of Jessica Newsstand.
Maria Salvo, a 31-year-old local resident, was more direct: “I think it’s a whole bunch of bullshit, to be honest with you.”
An employee cleans off a counter at Deannas Pizza, inside the containment zone
Some public health experts have warned that New Rochelle’s containment measures could be a preview of what’s to come for other cities, as the number of cases topped 1,000 in the United States on Tuesday. Appearing on MSNBC, Cuomo seemed to acknowledge that the dense cluster in New Rochelle might not be an outlier, but a reflection of the higher number of tests conducted in the area since the state’s first case was confirmed on March 2nd.
Due to insufficient testing, the current number of confirmed cases is “not statistically representative,” he said. “Our testing is so far behind the reality that there is probably is no connection between the two...And yes, I have no doubt that people have coronavirus and are walking around.”
(The Governor's Office has not responded to questions about how many tests have been performed statewide.)
Responses to the growing number of cases have included hatred and bigotry in some corners of the city. Berkowitz, the Eden Wok owner, said he received death threats over email containing both anti-Semitic and anti-Chinese threats (Berkowitz is Jewish, many of his employees are Asian). New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson and County Executive Greg Latimer held a press conference at the restaurant last week, though Berkowitz said their communication since then has been “abysmal.”
He called on the government to provide financial support to businesses struggling to pay rent under the containment, citing a similar program recently announced by Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The specter of the virus, and the national focus on the suburban area, has seeped into nearly every part of daily life, according to some New Rochelle residents. One MetroNorth commuter, who declined to give her name because she didn’t want to be associated with the topic, worried she would soon lose her babysitting job in Manhattan due to her employers' concern that she lived at the center of the outbreak.
As media and healthcare workers descended on New Rochelle on Tuesday, some local Airbnb hosts frantically placed calls to the company seeking to remove their listings, noting that they could not adequately screen guests. “I had an Airbnb guest last week who I believe is infected...just wanted to give you full disclosure,” messaged one host, after we inquired about a room.
But not everyone in New Rochelle was fretting over the outbreak. Inside the Beechmont Tavern, a bar on the southern edge of the containment zone, a group of Iona College students celebrated their early Spring Break. “Everyone was shouting ‘Happy Corona Day” after the administration cancelled classes on Monday, recalled Liam Geer, a junior at the nearby school.
The student and his friends, all members of the college’s bagpipe band, plan to march in three upcoming St. Patrick’s Day parades — in West Orange, New Jersey; Newport, Rhode Island; and Manhattan next Tuesday. While de Blasio has urged New Yorkers to avoid large crowds, he has declined to cancel the city's major parade, scheduled to proceed as planned in Manhattan on Tuesday.
“You know it’s not such a big deal since they haven’t canceled the parades,” said Greer, adding, "there's no way New York City cancels."
A few doors down from the bar, Amy Li said she was “very worried” about the virus. The owner of Chinese takeout restaurant Sun Hing, and a tenant of the above apartment, Li is now considering relocating her family to a relative's on Long Island for the duration of the containment period.
“So Mom, I’m going to skip two weeks of school?” her 9-year-old son asked in disbelief. He was against the idea at first, noting he’d miss his fourth-grade teacher and classmates. But he soon came around to it.
“You don’t know which person walking around has it,” he said. “Anyone could have it.”
For more on the evolving situation in New Rochelle, listen to this WNYC interview with New Rochelle resident Lisa Keller, who lives inside the containment zone. (She's also the mother of Gothamist's Arts & Culture editor Ben Yakas.) Keller tells WNYC's Richard Hake, "I watched helicopters circling my area for quite a long period of time. And I must say that was a little unnerving."
