Why it will not be easy for New York to return to normal after a pandemic

The factors that have made New York one of the worst coronavirus-hit cities on the planet - its density, ever-jammed public transport and tourism - make it harder for the city to get back to normal. The newspaper writes about this in detail The New York Times.

When will New York launch the economy?

Over the past two weeks, nearly 190 thousand New Yorkers have tested for coronavirus, which is a record high. The increase in the number of tests crucial to containing the outbreak of the pandemic occurred after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans to hire 1000 specialists to track the contacts of each infected person.

Governor Andrew Cuomo created a plan to return New York to a familiar life. He presented the plan based on seven criteria, and asked Bill Gates, restaurateur Danny Meyer, New York Knicks owner James L. Dolan, and dozens of other top-tier New York business consultants to give him advice on how best to just restart the economy.

But despite all the plans and initiatives of the authorities, there is still a long way to the resumption of normal life in New York City. The factors that have made the city the epicenter of the US pandemic - its density, tourism, and dependence on mass transit - make it difficult to return to any semblance of normalcy. The city is still far from meeting the public health indicators needed to reopen, from bed availability to new hospitalizations.

While states such as Colorado, Georgia and Texas have abandoned some restrictive measures, New York is moving in this direction cautiously: only in the second half of May, partial opening of business is expected, mainly in rural areas.

No one can answer the question of how long it may take to restart the New York economy, the state governor said last week.

Key to economic recovery

The virus killed more than 25 thousand people in New York, which exceeds the number of deaths in all countries of the world (except the USA). Judging by the numbers, the outbreak in the state is on the decline.

The key to resuming the economy is containing the virus. This will require an extensive testing and contact tracking infrastructure, unlike anything ever seen in the United States, public health experts say.

Even when the new public health apparatus is fully equipped and launched, it will only lay the foundation for residents to feel safe returning to normal life. However, many of them may decide to stay at home.

The decision about when to open again requires a balanced approach: the longer New York closes, the more the spread of the virus will decrease, reducing the need for testing and contact tracing. But economic damage to the city and state will continue to grow.

On the subject: 4 stages, 7 criteria: Cuomo presented a detailed plan for quitting quarantine in New York

According to the state, only in mid-March, when the shutdown of most enterprises began, more than 830 thousand people in New York alone filed unemployment claims.

Cuomo said that his indicators, in accordance with the recommendations of the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will serve as a guide for re-opening the state by region. At the same time, the city will almost certainly be one of the last to return to normal life.

Questions and problems

On a daily basis, Bill de Blasio discusses important issues and concerns of the city with senior officials in an endless series of teleconferences and secure video chats. Among the most pressing questions are how to organize the transportation of almost six million passengers on the subway every day, or how 1,1 million schoolchildren could return to school. But they have not yet received a response from the city or the state.

School classes were canceled for the remainder of the school year. The United Federation of Teachers has already announced that they will wait until the widely available testing, contact tracing and disinfection system is ready and operational. Only after that they will facilitate the reopening of schools. The union also offered to experiment with conducting classes in schools on different shifts.

“Until the schools are open, some of the working New Yorkers will not be able to leave their homes,” said chief adviser to the mayor, Alison Hirsch. "There is an argument that one of the reasons for keeping schools closed is to keep forcing anyone who can work from home to continue to work from home."

Bill de Blasio said he plans to reopen schools in September. The opening of schools is part of the last phase of New York's return to normal, following the opening of restaurants and hotels.

What are the authorities doing

The mayor of New York plans to open 160 km (100 miles) of city streets to make it easier for residents to adhere to the rules of social distance.

The state governor ordered the metro to stop providing XNUMX-hour passenger service. This will make it possible to thoroughly disinfect cars and stations at night, as well as save the subway from the homeless.

To reopen New York before the vaccine becomes available, monitoring and eradication of the virus, wherever it appears, will be required. The approach itself is not too complicated, and it has long been used to control diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV. But in order to contain the virus and rediscover the city, even partially, New York must learn to cope with thousands of new infections per day.

The Harvard Global Health Institute conducted an analysis for The New York Times. It was assumed that all patients with coronavirus symptoms would be tested, and that each positive result would lead to testing of 10 of his contacts. In this scenario, the institute considered one model according to which 1 new cases per day are projected in New York on June 4. This number of cases will require 180 New Yorkers to be tested daily. This means that the number of tested can be more than twice as much as at present.

According to a more favorable model, by June 1, 2 new cases per day will be recorded in the city, New York will still need 233 tests per day.

The city already meets state requirements for a testing level of approximately 8300 per day. But the above models suggest that people will continue to practice social distance. When they begin to return to work, the numbers can be much higher.

Ideally, people should do the test daily, said Dr. Melissa Cushing, director of clinical laboratories at NewYork-Presbyterian / Weill Cornell Medicine.

To move to the next step, which involves tracking each contact, it will be necessary to drastically reduce the number of new positive infections.

In New York, this figure should be in the range of 100 to 300 new cases per day, said Dr. Thomas Frieden, former director of CDC. City data show that although the number of new cases has declined, they still range from 600 to 1200 per day. .

Track new infections

At the beginning of the outbreak, there were 50 people in the city who were searching for people who had contact with COVID-19 patients. Now there are 200 of them.

These specialists search for people who have been in contact with infected people for 30 minutes or more within 48 hours after the onset of the disease.

The city will employ at least 1000 people as part of its tracking program. But this need can be many times greater: according to the metrics of the governor of the state, more than 2500 specialists are required for the city of New York alone. The mayor promised to achieve this figure in June. But officials acknowledged that this could take a lot more time.

But to be truly effective in containing the virus, according to experts, even those who do not have the symptoms of the disease need to be tested because they can transmit the virus. Such a testing strategy has been found to be effective in South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.

New York officials have not yet suggested taking this step.

New realities and rules of the game

Large and small enterprises will have to come up with new ways of working in a world where the virus can still spread with every interaction between people.

How to better organize the business will become clearer when restrictions on two industries - construction and manufacturing - remain partially open in parts of New York State. The experience of these enterprises provides useful information for solving the problems facing the business.

The owners of some enterprises have already begun to adapt to the new realities. For example, managers at Gear Motions found that they had to deal with human fear. To combat fear, the company began to massively inform employees about the virus, creating a system for sending text messages to each of them. According to Dean Burrows, president of the company, so far no one has tested positive for coronavirus in Gear Motions factories.

On the subject: How resourceful New Yorkers survive during quarantine: from online work to services in exchange for food

Other companies have studied the possibility of using special devices that buzz, reminding them of the need to maintain social distance, and show the whereabouts of employees to help track contacts in case someone gets infected.

At La Guardia Airport, where huge outbreaks continued during the outbreak, about 20 workers were tested for the virus in the last half of March. This prompted the port administration, which manages the facility, the developer and work teams to develop a new security plan. Now all workers at the construction site are required to wear face masks, and to create contactless entry points, turnstiles were dismantled. In addition, if a person has a positive virus test result, construction stops in the area where he worked, the area is disinfected, and those who worked with this person are quarantined for 14 days.

Since the adoption of the new work system, the number of positive tests on the site has been reduced to “low single digits” every week, said Rick Cotton, head of port services.