Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. I hope everyone has a great holiday weekend. New Yorkers deserved a holiday, deserved a chance to take it a little easier after everything we've been through. And what a beautiful weekend it was outside. And it is really an example of the fact that New Yorkers have a lot to be proud of, that there was so much to celebrate this weekend. Today, we are entering phase three, which is something else to celebrate, something you've earned by working so hard to get us to this day. But, at the same time, as we are celebrating how far we've come, we have to be real honest about some of the challenges we're facing. I always say, I think it's better to start with the bad news and then go to the good news. So, I want to talk about what happened this weekend. You know, we had a lot of people out there, very peacefully celebrating our nation's birthday and spending time together with family and friends, but we also saw too much violence this weekend. And this is something that we have a lot of work to do to address and is directly related to all the dislocation that's happened over these last four months with the coronavirus.
We particularly saw a concentration of shootings in Upper Manhattan, particularly in Harlem and Manhattan North command. This is something we have to double down on to address. And it's not because of one thing, let's be really clear. There's not one cause for something like this, there's a lot of different pieces. And, again, the fact that the court system is not working, the economy's not working, people have been pent up for months and months, so many issues underlying this challenge. But to address it, it's not just one answer either. It's going to take a lot of different pieces. Of course, it's going to take neighborhood policing, which has helped us get so far. We're going to have to double down on neighborhood policing efforts in Upper Manhattan. It will take the efforts of clergy and block associations and elected officials and civic groups and parents and the Cure Violence movement. I was up in Harlem on Friday, as we installed the Black lives matter mural. There's tremendous pride. There's tremendous energy in Harlem. There's history of people, making things happen for the better betterment of the community in Harlem, and we're going to see that again. We will never go back in this city and we're going to focus all our energies right now on addressing these issues in Upper Manhattan, and then many other issues beyond. Commissioner Shea, this morning, is meeting with the chief judge for the State and with the DA's for the five boroughs, working on how we all together confront gun violence, how we get the court system restarted, how we have a truly coordinated effort to fight this back. And I've – I know, I know everyone can and will work together to address this issue.
We've all come together in this city many times before. And what we've done in these last months is particularly notable. This disease, this unseen enemy that threw us such an extraordinary challenge without a roadmap, trying to figure out together how we would fight it back. New Yorkers should be very proud of how far we have come. So now, let me turn to the good news that phase one of the restart has been successful so far. Phase two has been successful so far. Today, we begin phase three and we begin phase three because of the hard work you've all put in. And I'm always going to thank you for it, and then I'm always going to remind you to keep doing what you're doing. The social distancing works. The face coverings work. We have to stick with it. But today is a good day, because about 50,000 people will come back to work and start their livelihoods again. A whole range of personal services will be available again. And we're starting simultaneously a lot of recreation activities in our parks – basketball, handball, volleyball, bocce, all we'll be up and running again. Dog runs will be open again. It will be more of summer again, because we did this hard work to get this far and we cannot let up now.
People are coming back to work and people are engaging their lives again in so many ways. And we see the evidence, which I'll go over with you. And look, it's incumbent upon all of us to make sure we do this safely. The City's going to keep working hard to make sure this has done safely. The MTA has been doing great work. We need them to keep doing it, because more and more people are coming back to the subways and buses. So, I'm going to compare this last Wednesday, July 1st to two weeks earlier, June 17th. And in that two-week phase, subway ridership up 18 percent – now, over 1.1 million riders a day. Bus ridership up 12 percent over the same period – now, also almost 1.1 million riders. Staten Island Ferry ridership up 15 percent – and that's why, starting today, we have gone back to the full rush-hour service that we had before the coronavirus hit. What's interesting is we do see more traffic into Manhattan on the East River Bridges and the Harlem River Bridges – three percent and seven percent, respectively – but very notably, mass transit usage is going up substantially faster than a car traffic, and that's in many ways a good thing and a good sign that people are feeling more and more comfortable and ready to engage. But, again, do it safely with the face coverings, with the social distancing, remembering how important it is to each other, to your family, to yourself, to stay safe.
Now, as we have moved ahead with outdoor restaurant seating, that's been huge success. We are not doing the indoors, as I said, but we've moved forward with the outdoor, and that's been a great success. People have really, really engaged it. Customers have come, the employees have come back to work. People have gotten their livelihoods back. Businesses have been saved. We've been very focused on making sure enforcement is strong at these restaurants that are now open, particularly on weekends, of course. So, we had 700 City personnel, including the Sheriff's Office out in full force over the July 4th weekend. And I just want to say, the Sheriff's Office has been doing tremendous work on many, many fronts. I want to thank the Sheriff and his whole team. People don't know a lot about them, but what they're doing has been absolutely crucial to fighting back this virus and making sure this city is safe in so many ways. So, thank you, Sheriff, and your whole team. So, a huge number of personnel out where most of the bars and restaurants are – a thousand businesses were inspected this weekend. 85 percent were in immediate compliance. Those that needed to make adjustments, the inspector stayed until issues were addressed. Sometimes that meant moving tables farther apart or dispersing crowds. This is going to be the model from this point on, a huge number of personnel out, addressing issues. But what we see is, overwhelmingly, both the restaurant owners and the customers are doing the right thing. Sometimes people need some help, sometimes they need some reminders, but, overwhelmingly we're seeing people are doing the right thing. Now, the restaurants, outdoors, I said, huge success – over 7,000 restaurants now have the outdoor seating under the Open Restaurant Program. We are going to continue to work with those restaurants to make sure they are able to do a great job for their customers, but also stay safe. So, what we're doing from this point on – any new restaurant that applies not only we're going to do the self-certification, but we're going to have immediately a call from a City official the same day they self-certify to go over the safety rules, to make sure that we address all issues upfront so people know exactly what they have to do to stay safe. I know our restaurant owners want to do things the right way. Sometimes, some extra communication helps, so that's what we're going to do.
Okay. Let's go over today's indicators. And, again, we keep looking at the trend here. It is a really good trend because of your hard work. And please, remember, every day we see progress, it's because of you, but it's also a day to remember we’ve got to keep at it, because we want to keep reopening and we want to have life come back to as much as normal as possible in this city. We can only do it with your hard work. So, let's look at the indicators. Number one, daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19, threshold of 200 – today, 62 patients. Number two, daily number of people in Health + Hospitals ICU’s, threshold of 375 – today, 276, a hundred less, that's fantastic. And, most importantly, percentage of people testing citywide positive for COVID-19, threshold of 15 percent – and today, the lowest we have ever seen, one percent. So, that's fantastic.
Just to give you a little bit of extra appreciation for what you've all achieved at the height of this crisis, we had 850 people admitted to the hospital for some suspected COVID-19 in a single day. Compare that to the 62 we're reporting today. At the height, we had 71 percent testing positive – compare that to one percent today – a lot to be proud of.
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