NYC Schools Will Shut Down Over Coronavirus Spike, De Blasio Says

Updated 5:18 p.m.

NEW YORK CITY — New York City's schools will halt in-person classes Thursday after a key coronavirus level pierced a threshold for automatic closures, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced.

De Blasio tweeted Wednesday that the city's average COVID-19 positivity rate surpassed 3 percent.

"Unfortunately, this means public school buildings will be closed as of tomorrow, Thursday Nov. 19, out an abundance of caution," he wrote.

De Blasio, in later remarks, said the city's rate is exactly 3 percent. He said the move to all-remote learning will last at least through Thanksgiving and said officials soon will unveil plans for how school buildings can reopen.

The announcement followed a week of will-they, won't-they-close as the city's average coronavirus positivity rate skirted just below the 3 percent closure mark.

It also followed a more than six-hour wait for de Blasio to show up to his daily conference, which was scheduled for 10 a.m. Parents, students, teachers and other New Yorkers meanwhile hunkered over their computer screens for the potential announcement.

They couldn't find any hints on the city's COVID-19 data page either, as Wall Street Journal reporter Katie Honan pointed out on Twitter.

The restless New Yorkers included State Sen. Jessica Ramos, whose frustrations with the wait boiled over on Twitter.

De Blasio finally tweeted out the announcement at 2:12 p.m., shortly after principals received an email about the closure.

Tests from within schools themselves have shown a much lower rate — 0.19 percent, according to the Department of Education — than the city as a whole.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, during a testy news conference on Wednesday, said New York City's density means it will have to develop a new testing strategy for getting schools to reopen.

He also said the entire city could soon fall under an "orange zone" which sets other restrictions beyond school closures, including a rollback on indoor dining.

News that the city's schools would close while indoor dining and gyms remained open prompted some critical barbs from city politicos.

"It is a massive failure of leadership on the part of both the Mayor and the Governor to have allowed our schools to close before we got a handle on the virus spreading in indoor restaurants, bars, and gyms, (houses of) worship and other gatherings," Council Member Brad Lander said in a statement. "Schools should be the last things to close, not the first."