In Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood alone, more than a dozen bars and restaurants have had to close temporarily amid a recent surge in infections among their workers and patrons.
Near the popular McCarren Park, about 30 people line up in a medical van offering rapid tests.
“It is very reminiscent of March 2020,” said Brooklyn resident Spencer Reiter, 27, who works in finance.
He and his friend Katie Connolly, a student who is also 27, came in for tests after friends tested positive.
“Looking at these lines… it’s kind of back to where we started,” Reiter said.
Katie Connolly agreed, saying, “It’s definitely terrifying.”
empty streets
The first wave of the pandemic brought New York to its knees in the spring of 2020.
The megalopolis of 8.5 million people, long known as “the city that never sleeps,” felt almost deserted for weeks, its empty streets looking like something of a post-apocalyptic world from a science fiction movie. She looked like
The only sound heard across Manhattan’s wide streets was the stress-inducing sound of ambulance sirens, while hospitals operated beyond capacity and morgues were forced to bring in refrigerated trucks to handle the massive influx of Covid victims. Was.
The disease has claimed the lives of at least 34,000 people in New York since the spring of 2020, and the city – Manhattan in particular – has never fully recovered its great vibrancy and energy of the pre-Covid days .
‘Very scary’
“We’re really just at the beginning, or maybe worse,” said Jolanta Czarlanis, 54, a Brooklyn resident. She came for the test after realizing possible COVID symptoms.
“It’s so scary,” Czerlanis, who works in catering, added. “We were hoping it was going to get better.”
The shockingly rapid spread of the Omicron version of COVID-19 has caused serious concern across the United States.
President Joe Biden predicted a “winter of grave illness and death” for those unaffiliated on Thursday.
The number of new daily cases nationwide stood at 86,000 on 1 December; By December 14, it had risen to 117,000, a rise of 36 percent in two weeks.
The US already leads the world in the most grim statistics. On Tuesday, it crossed 800,000 Covid deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
‘Omicron Happened’
What eats to bounce?
“Omicron happened,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said recently on CNN.
“And we have to be honest about the fact that it’s moving very fast and we have to move fast,” he said, something of a separation to make way for his chosen successor, Eric Adams. week ago.
De Blasio has made vaccination mandatory for all employees in the city and 184,000 companies and businesses in the city’s huge private sector, effective December 27. However, it is unclear whether Adams will enforce that requirement once he takes power.
In this typically festive holiday season, when New York traditionally welcomes an influx of tourists—and their money—a sense of panic has gripped Broadway’s iconic theater and music halls as artists and back-stage workers thronged Broadway. Among the positive cases have forced more. More cancellations.
Panic on Broadway
Radio City Music Hall announced late Friday that it was canceling the four remaining Christmas shows starring its famous “Rocket” dancers due to “increasing challenges from the pandemic,” the New York Times reported.
As for the multi-award winning musical “Hamilton”, it was canceled Thursday night without warning.
“We literally just flew in to see ‘Hamilton’ one day,” said Myron Ebston, who traveled with his wife, Dara Ebston, from Michigan.
“We arrived early this morning and the show has been cancelled,” he sadly told AFPTV.
Back in Brooklyn, Edouard Masih’s Lebanese grocery and catering business is open for now.
But he said he fears Omicron’s arrival will lead to a new exodus of more affluent New Yorkers to the posh suburbs in the city’s north, as it did in 2020 – leaving Manhattan feeling like a ghost town again.
This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed.
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