Coronavirus in N.Y.: Live Updates

From surgeon-quality personal protection to the home-stitched square and the bandit’s bandanna, New Yorkers pulled on a newly essential accessory and ventured into a landscape that changed yet again on Friday with the mandated wearing of masks in public.

The new rule, which took effect at 8 p.m. Friday night, would be striking anywhere, but more so in New York City, where teeming crowds and if-I-can-make-it-there chutzpah are baked into the national imagination.

“This is just the next step,” said a retired corrections officer, Stanley Woo, 63, sitting down to play chess in a park in Forest Hills, Queens, with his old friends and his new mask.

“Nobody likes it, but we’ve got to do what we’ve got to do,” said Amanda Neville, 43, inside her wine store, Tipsy, in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

The measure was intended to further flatten the curve of new coronavirus infections in New York, which has had more than 12,000 deaths because of the virus and more than 200,000 confirmed cases.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo offered some encouraging signs on that effort at his daily briefing on Friday: the three-day average number of hospitalized virus patients, considered one of the most reliable measures of the fight against the virus, dropped for the third straight day, by its biggest margin yet — almost 3 percent.

Still, the number of virus patients newly admitted to hospitals had remained high, at nearly 2,000 per day, and the governor announced 630 new deaths in the state.

Mr. Cuomo said the state’s economy could not fully reopen without more widespread testing, which would require both supplies and an operational capacity that the health system does not currently have.

“We cannot do it without federal help,” the governor said.

New York is not the only state to make face coverings mandatory: Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania are requiring that masks be worn in stores; likewise in Los Angeles and some surrounding California counties. New York’s order is the most expansive, requiring face coverings anywhere in the state where two people might come within two yards of each other, though for now there is no fine for disobeying.

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Reporting was contributed by Michael Wilson.