N.Y. Creates ‘Containment Zone’ Limiting Large Gatherings in New Rochelle: Live Updates – The New York Times

With New Rochelle, a small city just north of New York City in Westchester County, emerging as the epicenter of the state’s outbreak, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Tuesday announced a targeted containment strategy to halt the spread of the virus.

“New Rochelle, at this point, is probably the largest cluster of these cases in the United States,” he said at a news conference on Tuesday.

[New York moves to limit large gatherings in New Rochelle.]

The state’s plan focuses on a “containment area” in New Rochelle, where it would deploy the National Guard to clean schools and deliver food to quarantined residents, Mr. Cuomo said.

The area is a one-mile radius centered around a synagogue in New Rochelle believed to connect many of the cases in the cluster, officials said.

Schools, houses of worship and other large gathering spaces within the area will be closed for two weeks beginning on Thursday, Mr. Cuomo said. Businesses such as grocery stores and delis would remain open.

The state did not plan to close streets or implement travel restrictions, Mr. Cuomo said.

“You’re not containing people,” he said. “You’re containing facilities.”

The cluster in Westchester County first came to the authorities’ attention last week, when a lawyer who lives in New Rochelle and works in Manhattan, Lawrence Garbuz, became the second person in New York to be diagnosed with coronavirus last week.

A 69-year-old man in New Jersey was the first person in the state to die from the new coronavirus, officials announced on Tuesday.

The man, who lived in Bergen County, had a history of health problems before contracting coronavirus, the state’s health commissioner, Judith Persichilli, said. He went to doctors last week complaining of a fever and a cough.

The man was admitted to Hackensack University Medical Center on Friday and subsequently had two heart attacks, Ms. Persichilli said. Officials said at a news conference that the man died on Tuesday morning.

The man, whom officials did not identify, was not known to have traveled outside the United States, but he did travel between New York and New Jersey, Ms. Persichilli said.

“We are sad to report the first death in a case of Covid-19 in New Jersey,” Gov. Philip D. Murphy and Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver said in a statement. “Our prayers are with the family during this difficult time.”

New Jersey on Tuesday also announced four new cases of the coronavirus, bringing its total to 15. The state’s epidemiologist, Dr. Christina Tan, said several of the cases were linked to a cluster of cases in New Rochelle, N.Y.

New York State continues to see a surge of coronavirus cases as testing becomes more widespread. On Tuesday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said 173 cases had been confirmed statewide.

The governor said 108 of the cases were in Westchester County. Only 14 people with the virus had been hospitalized, he said.

In New York City, the state had 36 confirmed cases, Mr. Cuomo said. Thirty people in the city were in mandatory quarantine, with more than 2,000 voluntarily isolating themselves, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

Mr. Cuomo and Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey have both declared a state of emergency and a public health emergency in their states. The action allows state agencies to move more quickly to prepare for a broader spread of the virus.

So far, more than 116,000 cases of infection have been reported globally, and more than 4,000 people have died. In Italy, where the virus is spreading quickly, the prime minister imposed strict travel limits across the country.

In the United States, more than 800 people in 37 states and Washington have tested positive for the virus so far, and at least 27 people have died.

New York Road Runners on Tuesday canceled the NYC Half, a half-marathon that was scheduled for Sunday morning.

New York Road Runners said in a statement it had decided to cancel the race, which attracts around 25,000 participants, because the safety of runners and spectators was paramount.

“We know this is a challenging time for everyone, and the cancellation of the NYC Half is disappointing news to many, but the resources necessary to organize an event with 25,000 runners on the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan have become strained,” the statement said.

Mayor Bill de Blasio had said on Monday that he saw no reason to cancel the race, which follows a course from Prospect Park to Central Park, but he added that could change at any time. Organizers said they searched for an alternative plan that would alleviate overcrowding and allow runners to “facilitate social distancing,” but could not find one.

Runners who registered directly with New York Road Runners can either get a refund of their $130 entry fee or an automatic entry into next year’s race for a separate entry fee. It was unclear what runners who registered through tour operators or charities would receive.

New York Road Runners canceled the New York City Marathon in 2012 after Hurricane Sandy.

[The New York Times is keeping an updated list of the school closings in the New York area here.]

New York City school officials announced late Tuesday that parent-teacher conferences scheduled at public schools this week would not be held in person, and would be conducted over the phone or by video chat instead.

Michael Mulgrew, the president of the city’s teachers’ union, said that canceling the in-person conferences was the “right decision” by the Department of Education, which continued to have no plans for mass school closings. No confirmed coronavirus cases in the city have been linked to district public schools so far.

At Cornell University, officials told students on Tuesday that they were to stay home after leaving for spring break, which starts on March 28, rather than returning to campus when the vacation ends.

Cornell officials said that there were no confirmed cases at the university but that all classes would be moved online after the break to minimize the possibility of community spread.

The move went further than those made by most other large private universities in New York State, which have so far made short-term shifts to online learning.

For the thousands of students who attend some of New York City’s private schools and universities, the list of those closing or canceling in-person classes grew on Tuesday.

In New York City, Columbia University, Fordham University, the New School, St. John’s University, Yeshiva University and New York University announced that classes would be canceled or offered online.

Rutgers University in New Jersey, a public university, said that it would cancel all classes for Thursday and Friday and that it would require all classes to be taught remotely until April 3. Officials asked students living on campus to leave as soon as possible.

Further upstate, officials at Syracuse University said in-person classes would be suspended from Friday through at least March 30. Courses would continue online.

Public schools in Scarsdale, a wealthy suburb in Westchester County, will be closed through March 18. Several public and private schools in Nassau County on Long Island also closed after two bus drivers tested positive for the virus, officials there said.

Many of New York City’s best-known private schools — including the all-girls school Brearley in Manhattan and the Quaker school Brooklyn Friends — said they would close until after spring break, meaning many students would not return to school until March 30 at the earliest.

No city public schools have closed, and officials have said they view mass closings of the system as a “last resort.”

With the spread of the virus on cruise ships drawing scrutiny, Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday announced new rules for passenger vessels arriving at, and departing from, New York City.

Travelers will now be screened by city health officials, the mayor said, and anyone with a temperature of 100.4 degrees or higher will not be allowed to board. Passengers returning to New York who live in the city and have a temperature of 100.4 or higher will be sent home to self-quarantine, while those who live outside the city will be sent to hospitals.

Speaking at a news conference, Mr. de Blasio, echoing the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, urged New Yorkers not to take cruises.

“We are following the guidance of C.D.C. and saying to all New Yorkers this is not a time to take a cruise,” he said.

The next cruise ship scheduled to arrive in New York is to dock on the West Side of Manhattan on March 15, the mayor said; the next arrival at Red Hook, Brooklyn, is scheduled for April 9.

Cruise ships have had some of the most high-profile coronavirus outbreaks so far.

More than 20 passengers tested positive for the virus on the Grand Princess, which was kept from arriving in San Francisco for days before eventually docking in Oakland on Monday.

An outbreak on the Diamond Princess, which quarantined at a Japanese port, killed eight passengers and infected more than 700 others last month.

Beginning as early as Wednesday, visitors to New York City jails will be screened and barred from entry if they exhibit flulike symptoms such as a cough or fever.

There are no confirmed cases of coronavirus inside the jails, but the city’s Department of Correction was running through emergency scenarios to prepare for a possible outbreak, a correction official, Patricia Feeney, said at a public hearing on Tuesday.

Sanitation inside the jails has increased, she said, including daily cleaning of all housing units, common spaces and buses. Showers are cleaned three times a day.

Officials are raising awareness about social distancing and, for instance, discouraging inmates from sitting on one another’s beds, Ms. Feeney said.

If people entering custody report flulike symptoms, they will receive a mask and be transported separately to the jail facility, where medical workers will attend to them.

Another correction official said on Tuesday that 88 cells are available to isolate inmates who exhibit symptoms or test positive for the virus.

In New Jersey, the commissioner of the state’s Department of Corrections was considering suspending all contact visits at New Jersey’s prisons, Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver said on Tuesday. If the suspension is implemented, visitors would only be able to see inmates from behind a partition.

The virus is also affecting the courts in New York.

A closely watched trial involving prominent opioid manufacturers is being postponed “out of an abundance of caution” since people from around the country were expected to fly in for it, said the New York State Attorney General, Letitia James, who promised that, “This trial will not be delayed a single minute longer than necessary.”

The trial, which was scheduled to begin March 20 on Long Island, involves the Sackler family who, along with other major opioid manufacturers and distributors, are accused of using fraud and deceptive marketing to promote the sale of prescription opioids.

The lawyer, 50, was struggling to breathe. His neighbor took him to a hospital in a suburb about 20 miles north of Midtown Manhattan. He seemed to have just pneumonia. Doctors put him in an ordinary room.

It would be more than four days before anyone figured out what actually ailed him: the new coronavirus. The discovery on March 2 that the man, Lawrence Garbuz, was infected was the first indication that the virus was circulating in New York through community spread.

Within days, it would emerge that Mr. Garbuz, who is from New Rochelle, N.Y., was part of a cluster of more than 90 cases, the largest concentration on the East Coast.

But the larger realization came as health investigators untangled Mr. Garbuz’s case by retracing his steps and interviewing those he came in contact with. Soon, the investigators would discover how just one undiagnosed case can wreak havoc on a hospital and spread anxiety across a region.

Reporting contributed by Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Alan Feuer, Thomas Fuller, Michael Gold, Joseph Goldstein, Matthew Futterman, Nicole Hong, Jeffery C. Mays, Jesse McKinley, Sarah Maslin Nir, Aaron Randle, Eliza Shapiro and Andrea Salcedo.