Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well good morning, everybody. It is hard to believe it, but we are now in the month of July, now beginning the fifth month that we've been fighting together against the coronavirus. So, it's been a long battle and it will continue to be, but as we enter the month of July, it begins with thinking about July 4th and the meaning of it, thinking about the pride we feel in our city, in our country, in each other, as we fight together in common cause. It is a reminder of what July 4th is all about – one of the most profound concepts underlying what happened in 1776 was the fight for freedom. We are fighting shoulder to shoulder in a fight for freedom from the coronavirus and the people of this city have been earning, every day, more and more of that freedom through hard work and work together. So, we today can talk about some additional steps forward we're going to make.
Today we can talk about some of the things that are going to advance because we've been doing the right thing together, but there is also some tough news today. And as I've said before, I want to always start with the bad news and then go to the good news. And the bad news is regarding a situation that we've seen now all over the country. Look, all of us in leadership at this moment in history, we have to be willing to make tough decisions and we have to be willing to look at the facts and act on the facts. Let the facts take us to the right decision. We know a lot of other parts of this country, very sadly, made decisions based on something other than the data and in the heat of the moment. And now what we're seeing in Florida, what we're seeing in Texas, even California that tried really hard to get it right, slipping backwards. We see a lot of problems and we particularly see problems revolving around people going back to bars and restaurants, indoors. And indoors is the problem more and more, the sciences showing it more and more.
So, I want to make very clear. We cannot go ahead, at this point in time, with indoor dining in New York City. Look, even a week ago, honestly, I was hopeful we could, but the news we have gotten from around the country gets worse and worse all the time. We're going to work with the State of New York and we have been working together throughout this crisis. We're going to work with the State of New York to figure out what is the exact right way to do this, how to postpone indoor dining until the right moment, what the approach would be to determine when it makes sense to go about it again. As I said, we have been in absolute unity with the State on the focus on data. The data in this city and this state's been getting better all the time, but the data around the country has been getting worse and worse and worse – in the last few days, shockingly worse. And what Dr. Fauci said about the potential in other parts of the country, for the surge that gets so bad, that we could be talking about 100,000 cases a day in the United States. We've got to honor those facts and it is not the time to forge ahead with indoor dining.
But it is the time to double down on outdoor dining. And so far, we have 6,600 restaurants that have taken advantage of our Open Restaurants initiative. I believe there are many more that could benefit from it. We're going to have a huge outreach effort. It's been going on for days, but it's going to deepen over the next few days with Small Business Services, that department and the Department of Transportation, going out into communities, helping to show restaurants that qualify that they can take advantage of this right away, get a lot more business and do it in a safe way, which is outdoors. So, I am very convinced we can help restaurants survive, we can help bring in a lot more revenue to them. We can help bring back a lot of jobs, but do it safely and do it outdoors. Now, outdoor dining unquestionably has been a great hit. And I think the bottom line is that outdoors is working period. This is one of the things we've learned. Outdoors is where we need to be to the maximum extent possible this summer as we fight back this disease. Face coverings are working. We've learned some things that actually make sense. Social distancing works. We now have seen through experience the power of doing things outdoors, the power of the face coverings, the power of the social distancing. So, let's double down and let's make sure that New Yorkers can do as much outdoors as possible going forward.
So, that begins with today's very good news. We announced it before, but today is the day our New York City beaches open today. We are ready for a great holiday weekend. The lifeguards are ready to go. New Yorkers can stay cool. This is something people have been waiting patiently for – maybe not always patiently for, but it's here and that's going to help a lot. But now we're going to go the next step with the outdoor pools. And we were not sure before whether we got available to open some of them, but now we will be able to open some of our biggest outdoor pools and some of the outdoor pools in the communities hit hardest by the coronavirus. And for families, for kids in particular, this is going to be so important, something to look forward to and to enjoy this summer and a place to stay cool. Fifteen outdoor pools will open in the next few weeks. There's a list on your screen. Three open on July 24th, the remainder open hook – excuse me – on August 1st. Now it's not all of our pools. The truth is we had to choose the ones that we thought would have the maximum benefit for the communities hit hardest, the largest pools that we could open, the ones for folks who were the farthest from the beaches. We had to make some choices, but I think these 15 pools are going to make a big, big difference for people in communities all over New York City. Now, again, we're going to do it the right way. There will be social distancing, there will be face coverings when you're not in the pool. We're going to do this with all the standards the State has rightfully set for keeping people safe. And, yeah, there are restrictions. It's going to be different. There's going to be spacing when people are waiting in line to go in, there's going to be a lot of things to make sure we really hold on to the progress we made on health care, but it will all be worth it. And for our kids, in particular, it's going to help for them to have a better summer.
Okay, speaking of young people, they've been through a lot. I've talked about this a lot. They have been through so much. We have to be there for them and a very good result of the budget process, working with the City Council that really prioritized young people and I give them credit for that – $115 million will now be invested in summer programming. And that's going to reach 115,000 young people in this city. And I want to tell you about a couple of the pieces. One, so important, we're going to use young people as social distancing ambassadors and ambassadors for our Test and Trace program, getting the word out in communities. They'll get paid to do this good work, give them meaningful productive work to do, rewarding work to do, and they'll help us to keep people safe. We're also going to have summer camps, combining our pre-existing efforts, the COMPASS initiative, Beacon programs, Cornerstone programs, we're going to have a summer camp initiative. A lot of it will be online. Some of it will be outdoors. All of it will be done safely, but it'll be very enriching for kids. And then the Summer Bridge program, this takes what we have done, historically with summer youth employment, makes a variation on that for the coronavirus moment, makes sure that our young people will get financial support, that they'll be able to work on career readiness and be able to explore the future and do important community service. A lot of that again will be online, but it will be very positive and rewarding for our kids. They'll make a difference in their communities. They'll prepare themselves for their future. It will help our kids on the right path and help them to get compensated because we want our young people to have a positive and productive summer.
Now let's turn to our indicators. And again, today, good news in New York City, which you have earned. Indicator number one, daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19, that threshold is 200 and today there are 61 patients. Indicator two, daily number of people in Health + Hospitals ICUs, that threshold is 375 – today, 293 patients. And most importantly, the percentage of people testing positive citywide for COVID-19, threshold of 15 percent – today, two percent. That's the number we've been at most of the time in the last few weeks and that is a very, very good number.
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