Cuomo Suggests NYC Change 3% Coronavirus School Closure Threshold

NEW YORK CITY — The city’s 3 percent coronavirus threshold for closing schools is due for a rethink as the rate hovers just below the automatic shutdown mark, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

Cuomo has repeatedly signaled in recent days that New York City leaders could set a different standard for closing schools.

“Now we know that schools are actually safer than the surrounding community and we should rethink that 3 percent,” he said Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

City officials set the threshold long before students returned to classrooms at a time — as Cuomo put it — when the positivity rate typically was 1 percent and 3 percent seemed unthinkable.

The once-remote possibility of school closures neared reality last week as the city’s positivity rate hit 2.83 percent, prompting Mayor Bill de Blasio to warn parents to make alternative plans for their children as soon as Monday.

The rate dropped back down to 2.57 percent on Sunday — and de Blasio told parents that schools will remain open.

Cuomo said on “Morning Joe” and elsewhere that the 3 percent threshold is one city officials decided on, and could change.

The infection rate in schools is much lower than the rest of the city, he said.

“Why not leave the children in the schools rather than have them around run around the streets where the infection rate is five times as high?” he said on “Morning Joe.”

“So if the schools hit the 3 percent what I'm suggesting to the parents and the teachers and the Mayor is let's take a second calculus which is the infection rate in the school,” he said. “We know New York city is at 3 percent. Let's add an element of the infection rate in the school and if the school is below a certain threshold, let that school reopen. But the parents and the teachers have to agree. There is no fiat here.”