New York City will shut down all public schools Thursday as coronavirus cases continue to rise across the city, according to the schools chancellor Richard A. Carranza.
Carranza notified principals of the change Thursday in an email four hours before Mayor Bill de Blasio was set to give a press conference, according to The New York Times.
“As of this morning, November 18, the City has now reached this threshold of test positivity citywide and, as a result, the DOE will temporarily close down all public school buildings for in-person learning, Thursday, November 19,” Carranza wrote in the email, the outlet reported.
Bill de Blasio confirmed the news on Twitter.
New York City has reached the 3% testing positivity 7-day average threshold. Unfortunately, this means public school buildings will be closed as of tomorrow, Thursday Nov. 19, out an abundance of caution.
We must fight back the second wave of COVID-19.
— Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) November 18, 2020
“New York City has reached the 3% testing positivity 7-day average threshold,” he tweeted. “Unfortunately, this means public school buildings will be closed as of tomorrow, Thursday Nov. 19, out an abundance of caution. We must fight back the second wave of COVID-19.” (RELATED: Schools Haven’t Become Coronavirus Super-Spreaders Economist’s Analysis Finds)
Coronavirus testing in New York City schools showed that a low number of positive cases occurred, according to a report published by The New York Times. 16,348 staff and students were tested in the first three weeks of in-person learning and only 28 tests came back positive.
Mobile coronavirus testing sites in Brooklyn and Queens, where COVID-19 has been rising, tested 3,300 people since the last week of September. There have only been four positive results from the testing, The New York Times reported.
There were 5,088 positive coronavirus cases reported in New York on Nov. 17, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.