NY wedding with 10,000 attendees shut down amid COVID-19

New York officials this week shut down a wedding expected to draw 10,000 guests amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) confirmed on Saturday.

Cuomo said during a press briefing that officials investigated the planned event that would violate restrictions on large gatherings in New York during the pandemic.

The governor said State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker signed an order “saying you can’t have a wedding in these locations that is over the gathering guidance.”

The event was scheduled to take place on Monday in the Williamsburg neighborhood of New York City. However, it was outside the targeted red, orange or yellow zones tracking clusters of COVID-19 cases.

Beth Garvey, special counsel and senior adviser to the governor, told reporters during the Saturday briefing that “the information that our investigation revealed was that upwards of 10,000 individuals were planned to attend.” Garvey said the order was served alongside the New York City Sheriff’s Office on Friday night.

Garvey said officials have not received any response to the order, although individuals served with the health notices can request a hearing.

“The city is aware if it,” Cuomo added. “I’m sure that they’re going to have people monitoring.”

“Look, you can get married. You just can’t have 1,000 people at your wedding,” he added. “You get the same result at the end of the day. You’re married. It’s also cheaper.” 

Cuomo on Saturday also announced a new strategy for combating COVID-19 into the fall and winter by targeting documented cases “block by block.” 

“For fall, we are going to deploy a microcluster strategy. We have been targeting all our actions either … statewide … or we reopened on a regional level. We are now going to analyze it block by block,” Cuomo said. “We have data so specific that we can’t show it because it could violate privacy conditions. We know exactly where the new cases are coming from.”