Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everybody. Well, the Summer of New York City continues and last week, amazing things. We had the Macy's 4th of July fireworks. We had the incredible parade saluting our hometown heroes. And the Summer of New York City is amazing because it's big events and special things, but also spontaneous things happen. And look at what happened yesterday with the celebration for Italy in their amazing victory in the European Cup. I want to tell you as a proud Italian-American, I am so proud of this Italian team. There were celebrations all over New York City, Arthur Avenue, up in the Bronx, Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, Greenwich Village. People came out to celebrate this beautiful victory. And I got to tell you, there's something of a metaphor here because this Italian national team, they were in really tough shape a few years ago, but like New York City, here's your metaphor, down, but never out, they rebuilt, they recreated, they came up with a new approach and found their way to victory. And that's going to be the story of New York City. A special shout out to the Italian goalkeeper, Gianluigi – excuse me, Gianluigi Donnarumma. Donnarumma, the goalkeeper for the Italian team. Amazing effort. Forza Donnarumma. Forza Azzurri. Amazing victory. And the people in New York City got to enjoy it with celebrations all over the city. And this is what the Summer of New York City is all about.
And the reason we are able to celebrate the Summer of New York City is because of vaccinations. The vaccination effort keeps growing, as of now 9,616,298 doses. Well on our way to 10 million doses soon, and we've used incentives as a crucial part of this. A lot of people have gotten great prizes because they chose to get vaccinated. We want to keep that going. The big prizes, some of them that have been very, very popular, we're going to continue to the end of July. So, if you're into some of these particular prizes, the $2,500 cash prize, I know that one's very popular, the staycation weekends, we're going to be running those for the next few weeks and this is your opportunity. If you have not yet gotten vaccinated, get into the game so you can get these amazing prizes. If you're 18 years old or older, you can enter the contest. Now, you have to get your first dose at a City-run site by 9:00 AM on August 1st to win one of those prizes. Then we're going to phase those out, but we're going to keep the other great prizes after August 1st. And those will continue at City-run sites – Citi Bike memberships, free NYC Ferry rides, NYCFC tickets, Coney Island tickets, great opportunities. And then beyond that, the referral initiative that we've been doing with grassroots organizations, with community organizations, houses of worship, very, very popular, that's going to be incredibly helpful because it brings money back into the community for everyone who gets vaccinated through those efforts. Anybody who wants to participate in that bonus referral effort, you can go to nyc.gov/vaccineincentives.
Okay, now, community efforts are where it's at. That's true with vaccination. That's true with keeping us safe as well. So, a wonderful community effort was launched this weekend. It's called Saturday Night Lights. This is part of how we build public safety from the grassroots up. Saturday Night Lights is a key part of our Safe Summer NYC plan. And the idea is to get young people a positive alternative. So, NYPD, Department of Youth and Community Development, local partners, altogether, opening 100 gyms citywide on Saturday nights to help kids have a safe place to be, a quality place to be, a warm, inviting place to be, obviously someplace free for them to be. It builds a connection between our police officers and our kids, because our officers are there for our kids. This is the focus on helping youth, that Commissioner Shea’s been talking so much about. It's a way to proactively keep people safe. Saturday Night Lights, a wonderful initiative. We've put $5 million into our Recovery Budget to make sure this could happen, and to have, in all five boroughs, gyms open on Saturday nights, 100 gyms. Police officers will be there playing with the kids – middle school kids, high school kids. And this is how you build trust, you build relationships, you build a sense of everyone's in it together. This is a really exciting initiative that I think has got to make a big impact this summer.
And continue on the theme of amazing things that are going to happen this summer, unprecedented things that are going to happen this summer. Another reason why New Yorkers are going to have an amazing summer and anyone who's not from New York City needs to come here this summer. Restaurant Week, launching next week in a new, amazing form, not just one week, five weeks, five weeks of Restaurant Week with great discounts, great specials from Monday, July 19th to Sunday, August 22nd. I want to thank NYC & Company. This is an amazing initiative. 500 restaurants participating across all five boroughs. This is going to be amazing. Think about restaurants you've always wanted to go to, here's the opportunity to experience them. And it's a wonderful, super Restaurant Week that is going to be really inviting, again, for New Yorkers, a special opportunity to come out and celebrate for folks who are not from here. This is the moment to be here. This is the Summer of New York City. We've gotten so much energy around this idea. I want to thank everyone in the restaurant community who's a part of it, but also in the City Council, really extraordinary efforts. I want to give the City Council a lot of credit. They really focused on how to bring our restaurant community back. With their help we've been able to do amazing things like Open Restaurants, Open Streets, cut red tape, make it easier.
Alright, let's go over our indicators for the day, and we're going to continue to analyze the indicators. Publicly, what we're seeing is, again, some greater number of cases and positivity, but we also see the thing we care about the most, thank God, hospitalizations staying very low and people not being put in dangerous results. So, let's go over the indicators. Number one, daily number of people admitted to New York City hospitals for suspected COVID-19 – today's report is 78 patients, confirmed positivity level of 6.10 percent. Hospitalization rate per 100,000, 0.28. Number two, new reported cases on a seven-day average – today's report, 328 cases. And number three, percentage of people testing city-wide positive for COVID-19 – today's report on a seven-day rolling average, 1.27 percent.
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