Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced his plans to sign an executive order Thursday that authorizes private businesses to refuse service to people who don’t wear masks, numerous sources reported.
“We are giving store owners the right to say, ‘If you’re not wearing a mask, you can’t come in,'” Cuomo said Thursday at his daily press briefing according to CBS News.
Today I am signing an Executive Order authorizing businesses to deny entry to those who do not wear masks or face-coverings. No mask – No entry.
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) May 28, 2020
Cuomo said that young people are the primary age group not wearing masks, possibly due to a common notion toward the beginning of the pandemic that adolescents and young adults were not at risk of developing severe symptoms.
“We have to culturize the masks,” Cuomo said according to Bloomberg. “It’s just a couple of months, when you think about it.”
“They are deceptively effective, they are amazingly effective,” Cuomo said, referring to masks.
He added that business owners have a right to protect themselves and their customers.
New York City, which became the epicenter of the outbreak in the U.S., had seen declining hospitalizations and daily fatalities, the latter dipping below 100 for a fourth day after peaking at more than 700 in April, Bloomberg reported.
Cuomo recently faced criticism for touting misleading statistics on nursing homes, where the virus ravaged elderly and vulnerable populations in the state. In late March, Cuomo ordered nursing homes and other adult care facilities to accept recovering patients, and omitted an unknown number of deaths from its official figures on coronavirus deaths in nursing homes. (RELATED: NY Gov Andrew Cuomo Uses Cooked Numbers To Defend Record On Nursing Homes)