NEW YORK (WCBS 880) -- Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday that “Staten Island is a serious problem” and that parts of the borough could become an orange or red zone “this week.”
“Unless they dramatically change the trajectory of the infection rate, this week they will go into those zones,” Cuomo said at a briefing.
“Staten Island is a serious problem,” the governor said. “Staten Island is also a problem in terms of overburdening hospitals, and we’re running into a hospital capacity issue on Staten Island that we have to be dealing with over these next few days.”
To reach an orange zone in New York City, an area would have to hit a 3% positivity rate on a seven-day average and stay at that level for 10 days. The percentage for a red zone designation is a seven-day average of 4% for 10 days.
“So it’s a rolling average and then the zone has to stay at that level for 10 days,” Cuomo said.
The majority of Staten Island has been a yellow zone since Nov. 13. Cuomo said Saturday that the seven-day positivity rate for the entire borough was 3.90%.
The governor said upper Manhattan and parts of Nassau and Suffolk could also go into a yellow zone at the current rate.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday that the city's positivity rate on a seven-day average was 3.09%, slightly less than Saturday's 3.11%. All public schools in the city closed last Thursday after the city's rolling positivity rate hit a 3% threshold.
The mayor said there were 1,394 new cases in the five boroughs and 121 patients admitted to hospitals.
"The second wave is real. We can’t let up the fight now," de Blasio tweeted.