PUBLISHED 5:21 AM ET Feb. 01, 2021 PUBLISHED 5:21 AM EST Feb. 01, 2021
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As the restaurant industry continues to struggle during the COVID-19 pandemic, lawmakers are considering a bill that would extend state liquor licenses for one year at no cost.
The measure, sponsored by Syracuse Sen. Rachel May, comes as restaurants have been forced to either close indefinitely or greatly reduce their staff during the crisis.
“Our restaurants and bars have faced enormous challenges during the pandemic,” May said. “These businesses are cornerstones of our personal and social lives that need help right now. This is one step we can take to help ease some of their burden after nearly a year of intermittent closures and reduced capacities. We must do what we can to help restaurants and bars thrive as we hopefully enter the final stage of the pandemic, and to kickstart a pivotal part of our economy.”
ALBANY â Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Friday that the state will allow wedding receptions to resume March 15 at 50% venue capacity or a maximum of 150 people. Events must also be approved by the local health department.
âGoing forward, we are very excited about the possibility of reopening venues with testing.â Gov. Cuomo said Friday. âWe demonstrated it in Buffalo at the Buffalo Bills playoff game. Seven thousand people tested before they went into the stadium. Weâve had virtually no cases of spread from that game, 7,000 people.â
âWeâre not going to have the full vaccine for many, many months. In New York, we want to use testing as the key to reopening events and we tested it in Buffalo and we want to start to extend it,â he said.
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Credit Thomas O Neil-White
“The micro-cluster zones are down all across the state, he said. You look at where they where Erie County was: 7.8. They’re down to 5.1. So you see a drop in both the Orange and the Yellow zones. Given the progress they’ve made, the restrictions are lifted in those zones.”
Cuomo said the lifting of restrictions is due, in some part, to the way the state rebounded in the week after what he called the “holiday surge” from Thanksgiving through the New Year.
“I think at this point,” Cuomo said, “it’s safe to say the holiday surge was anticipated. The holiday surge did happen. But the holiday surge is over. If you look at the numbers over the past week, you see positivity [rates] on the decline. Our high point was 7.9%. We’re down to 5.6%.”