New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Friday that bowling alleys across the state can reopen at limited capacity, as well as cultural institutions such as museums in New York City.
Cuomo said that bowling alleys will be allowed to open on Monday at 50% occupancy. Guests must wear a face covering and every other lane closed. Museums, aquariums, and other “low-risk indoor cultural arts” institutions can reopen in New York City on Aug. 24 at 25% maximum occupancy and timed ticketing to stagger the number of groups indoors at once.
Cuomo’s decision to allow bowling alleys to reopen signals that the state, a former coronavirus hot spot, has reduced the coronavirus infection rate to a sufficient extent. State health officials reported last week that the rate of coronavirus tests coming back positive out of all people being tested each day had fallen below 1% for the last several weeks.
Guidelines for reopening bowling alleys on Monday are stringent. In addition to lowering the max capacity to 50% and mandating that people occupy every other lane, food and alcohol services will be offered by wait service only. Guests will not be allowed to go to concession areas or bars in an effort to limit contact with others.
Cuomo said the new round of reopenings is “reflective of the actions that New Yorkers took” to slow the spread of the virus, adding that those actions also allowed schools to reopen safely for in-person learning. School districts get the final say about reopening buildings for classes in person, though, and Cuomo said he has heard from “many more nervous parents and teachers” about the school reopening process. He said people are especially worried about the coronavirus pandemic being compounded with the seasonal flu.
“I think there’s going to be many more safety concerns,” Cuomo said. “Everybody’s going to have flu-type symptoms because it’s the fall. Everybody’s going to look symptomatic, testing is going to be harder, because we have to do the COVID tests, and we have to do the flu tests.”
New York has ramped up its testing capabilities in recent months, conducting about 72,000 or more tests each day since the end of July. The rate of tests coming back positive in New York City, which experienced the state’s most severe coronavirus outbreak in the spring, has fallen below 3%, a threshold considered safe by the World Health Organization.
