‘We are ready’: NYC mayor says city to fully reopen on July 1

Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to fully reopen New York City on July 1, with no more restrictions on businesses.

“We are ready for stores to open, for businesses to open, offices, theaters – full strength,” de Blasio told MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Thursday, citing the pace of the vaccination campaign in America’s most populous city.

“This is going to be the summer of New York City. You're going to see amazing activities, cultural activities coming back. I think people are going to flock to New York City, because they want to live again,” he predicted.

The mayor asked New Yorkers to remain “smart” about public health issues, but said he was confident that life could be brought back on track to normalcy soon.

De Blasio said he believed that vaccine hesitancy in New York was more a matter of convenience than a matter of ideology and thus will not prevent the city from reaching a point where Covid-19 would have “no room to run anymore.”

Covid-19 infections have been on the decline in New York City since a small surge in late March, with rolling daily average cases approaching the 1,700 benchmark this week. The city also introduced Covid-19 passports this month, the first region in the country to do so. The system is supposed to give people with a vaccination or a recent negative test access to public venues.

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