New York City aims to fully reopen on July 1 and allow businesses including restaurants, shops and stadiums to operate at full capacity, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Thursday, offering a tantalizing glimpse of normalcy even as his authority to actually lift restrictions on businesses was somewhat limited.
Mr. de Blasio, who made the remarks on MSNBC, said that gyms, hair salons, arenas, some theaters and museums should all expect to be open fully with no capacity limits. Broadway, he said, was on track to open in September.
“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.”
But so far in the pandemic, Mr. de Blasio has not had the authority to impose or lift capacity limits on such businesses. Those restrictions have been set by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and the state, and on Thursday, a spokesman for the governor maintained that Mr. Cuomo had the power to make those decisions.
Mr. de Blasio said that the city expected vaccinations to drive down new coronavirus cases over the next two months. From a second-wave peak of nearly 8,000 cases in a single day in January, New York City was averaging about 2,000 virus cases per day as of last week. Public health officials say that by July, if the city stays on its current trajectory, that number could drop to below 600 cases a day, perhaps lower.
“We now have the confidence we can pull all these pieces together, and get life back together,” Mr. de Blasio said. “This is going to be the summer of New York City.”
The city and the state have not always agreed on the best path forward.
A spokesman for Mr. de Blasio, Bill Neidhardt, called the full reopening of the city on July 1 a “goal that we know New York City can achieve.”
“We laid out a plan, we will back it up with skyrocketing vaccination numbers and declining cases. If someone wants to deny that, let’s have that discussion in public,” Mr. Neidhardt said. “We feel strongly we’d win that debate.”
Luis Ferré-Sadurní contributed reporting.
