Andrew Cuomo Threatens to Shut Down Playgrounds: ‘No More Basketball’

Gov. Andrew Cuomo threatened Wednesday to shut down playgrounds if New Yorkers failed to properly distance themselves during the coronavirus crisis.

“No close contact sports in a playground,” Cuomo said during a press conference.”No basketball, for example. You cannot do it.”

He urged all New Yorkers to voluntarily adjust their behavior at playgrounds to keep the levels of social density at advisable levels.

“If there is noncompliance with that, we will then make it mandatory and we will actually close the playgrounds,” he warned.

Cuomo said the current social distancing practices were working and urged New Yorkers to continue self-isolating.

“This is everything,” he said. “Slowing the hospitalization rates coming into the hospitals are everything so the hospitals can deal with the rate of people coming in.”

He also warned the youth to take the crisis seriously.

“You may think that you’re a superhero. You’re really not. You can catch it and you can transfer it, which makes it dangerous to the people you love,” he said.

Cuomo said New York was looking at an increase of hospitalizations as a result of the virus for the next 21 days until the state reached the “apex.”

Until then, Cuomo said the government would work to increase hospital capacity and increase beds, staff, and equipment.

Currently, he said, New York had 53,000 hospital beds but predicted that it would soon need 140,000.