Coronavirus in N.Y.: Live Updates

N.Y.C. expects to begin reopening June 8. Five upstate areas were cleared for broader reopening.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Friday that New York City, one of the global centers of the coronavirus pandemic, would begin reopening on June 8, the first step in ending one of the country’s strictest lockdowns.

Since late March, the city has been all but paralyzed under the devastating weight of the outbreak.

Nonessential businesses were shuttered and restaurants were open only for takeout and delivery. Nearly 900,000 jobs vanished almost overnight, over 20,000 people died and more than 200,000 were infected as ambulances howled through empty streets.

In mid-May, other parts of the state began to reopen after meeting seven public-health benchmarks set by the governor.

New York City is the only region that has not met those criteria. As of Thursday, the last time the state updated its public dashboard, the city did not have enough hospital beds available or contact tracers in place.

But Mr. Cuomo said on Friday that he expected the city to meet the benchmarks by June 8. In Phase 1 of reopening, retail stores can open for curbside or in-store pickup and nonessential construction and manufacturing can resume, sending as many as 400,000 people back to work.

“I am proud of the way New York is figuring it out,” Mr. Cuomo said.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, appearing by video at Mr. Cuomo’s daily briefing, said, “We are on now the gateway to the next big step.”

The mayor and the governor cautioned that New Yorkers needed to continue taking precautions to keep the virus in check. More than 5,000 people in New York City tested positive for the virus last week — a steep drop from early April, when 40,000 people a week were testing positive, but still a significant number.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said this week that when New York City begins reopening at least 200,000 idled workers would return to their jobs.

This raised a big question: How will they get to work?

During the pandemic, New Yorkers have come to regard their city’s mass transit system as a gigantic rolling petri dish.

Ridership is down more than 90 percent, largely because only essential workers are supposed to be taking it now. But it is also because many people fear contracting the coronavirus on the transit system, even though subways and buses are being disinfected every day.

A sudden surge of riders would make it hard, if not impossible, to maintain social distancing, a fact underscored on Thursday when the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged commuters nationwide who return to their jobs not to take mass transit.

Mr. de Blasio this week said that he understood that many would feel uncomfortable returning to mass transit and that some would walk or bike, while others would drive or take cabs. But he offered little further guidance.