If you see someone failing to practice social distancing, rat them out, Mayor Bill de Blasio urged Saturday as part of a new city effort to corral the coronavirus.
“We still know there’s some people who need to get the message. And that means sometimes making sure the enforcement is there to educate people and make clear we’ve got to have social distancing,” Hizzoner said in a video posted to Twitter
To do that, is “simple,” he explained.
Snap a photo of an offending person or crowd, set the location on the image, and text it to 311-692.
“Action will ensue,” de Blasio vowed.
“Sending that photo in is going to help make sure that people are kept apart, and that’s going to stop the disease from spreading. And that’s going to save lives,” he said.
Repeat offenders face fines as high as $1,000 — and that could make the ‘New Squeal’ plan more dangerous than COVID-19.
Pitting stranger vs. stranger with such high stakes “could result in acts of random violence,” warned retired NYPD sergeant Joseph Giacalone.
“Maybe he should be figuring out why he didn’t have enough PPEs for cops and EMS workers,” the ex-sarge said of the mayor.
“I’d rather yell at them,” said out-of-work waiter Edwin Mendoza. “If you take a picture, that could cause a scene … People can hurt you.”
But Chris Colon, 26, works as a hospital clerk, and felt differently.
“With the way thing are now, I would snitch on anybody,” said Colon. “Have you seen how many people died in New York?”
The initiative came as new city data showed reason for cautious optimism: 513 new deaths were reported in 24 hours — 209 fewer lives lost than for the day before.
On Friday, 722 deaths were reported in the city, but the previous two days saw an increase of under 600 new deaths in the same 24 hour span, the data show.
The total death toll in the five boroughs climbed to 12,712 with 126,368 total cases, up 4,220 from the day before, the city’s Department of Health revealed.
The mortality total includes 8,448 New Yorkers whose COVID-19 cases were confirmed before their deaths, as well as 4,264 untested but “probable” victims.
Statewide, too, there were reasons for cautious optimism.
The death toll fell to 540 in the past 24 hours, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in his late-morning daily briefing from Albany — the lowest single day sum in more than two weeks.
The total number of dead across the state was 13,362. Of those, 36 died in nursing homes, which Cuomo called “the single biggest fear in all of this — vulnerable people in one place. It’s the feeding frenzy for this virus.”
Still, “If you look at the past three days, you could argue we are past the plateau and starting to descend, and that is good news,” Cuomo said of the state’s gradual decline in daily deaths and ICU hospitalizations.
The single day death toll had been 630 just the previous day. But people are still being hospitalized by the thousands each day.
On Friday, nearly 2,000 people with severe COVID-19 symptoms were admitted to hospitals throughout the state, but the number of patients so sick they needed ventilators has declined, “Which is very good news,” Cuomo said.
But reopening the state too quickly could have disastrous consequences, warned the governor, who said widescale testing for the gub muist come first.
“Everybody wants to reopen,” he said. “The tension on reopening is: How fast can you reopen and what can you reopen without raising that infection rate?”
Additional reporting by Dean Balsamini and Isabel Vincent