De Blasio says coronavirus shutdown coming 'in the weeks ahead,' possibly right after Christmas

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday said a new shutdown in New York City could be coming within weeks, possibly right after Christmas, as the Big Apple struggles to keep COVID-19 metrics low.

“Clearly these numbers I went over a moment ago, they're going in the wrong direction," de Blasio said at a press conference. "We are just on the verge of a huge breakthrough with a vaccine, but we’re also dealing with a second wave. We've got to beat it back, we got to protect lives, we got to protect our hospitals."

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De Blasio had announced that there had been 160 hospitalizations on Sunday, below the city’s 200 threshold. But the seven-day hospitalization rate was 2.89 per 100,000 people – above the 2.0 threshold. Meanwhile, there was a 5.51% positivity rate (seven-day average) and 2,813 cases; the city wants to be below 5% and 500 cases a day.

From that, he doubled down on his claim that a new lockdown was a solution to the numbers.

“So I think unfortunately, and I don't say it with anything but sorrow, but I do think it’s needed, we’re going to need to do some kind of shutdown in the weeks ahead, something that resembles the pause we were in in the spring,” he said.

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De Blasio said that would involve allowing essential work only, and while it is the state of New York’s decision, his choice for when that should take place would be “right after Christmas.”

“If we implement that with some good luck and hard work and with the vaccine starting to help us we could be out of that in a matter of weeks, but having stopped the worst of this surge,” the mayor said.

World Health Organization envoy Dr. David Nabarro has warned that lockdowns should not be the primary way that jurisdictions fight the pandemic, saying it makes "poor people an awful lot poorer."

“The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it,” Nabarro said in October.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo had warned that new restrictions could be coming in an interview with The New York Times over the weekend.

“If you extrapolate out at this rate of growth, you could be looking at the shutdown of New York City within a month,” he said.

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On Monday, de Blasio said he agreed with Cuomo and said it was because “we cannot let this virus keep growing, especially at a moment we are finally getting the vaccine and can turn the corner.”

Those remarks came as indoor dining was shut down in the city due to rising metrics – although New York’s own numbers showed that bars and restaurants accounted for just 1.43% of COVID-19 cases in the three months ending in November.

The city has not fully been open since the crisis began, with restaurants only ever allowed to re-open at 25% for indoor dining, and public schools partially re-opened enough to give schoolchildren in-person learning a few days a week at most.

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Asked if schools would be shut down in any such lockdown, de Blasio said it would be the decision of the state, but expressed support for keeping them partially open.

“Our schools are the safest places in New York City right now, our health care leaders have said it,” he said.

Fox News’ Thomas Barrabi and Ben Evansky contributed to this report.