#Cuomo announces more NYC bars, restaurants hit with violations

More than 130 New York bars and restaurants — mostly in the Big Apple — were slapped with violations by the state over the past three days for flouting coronavirus safety protocols, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday.

“I want establishments to know that we will continue to diligently enforce the law. That’s what this is – it’s enforcing the law,” Cuomo told reporters during a conference call as he announced the new statistics.

The Cuomo-controlled State Liquor Authority issued 52 violations on Friday, 53 on Saturday and 27 on Sunday to eateries and pubs violating social distancing and face mask rules – and over the weekend 10 establishments had their liquor licenses suspended.

“This is primarily in New York City-based,” Cuomo said of where the violations were issued.

In addition to the Big Apple, SLA investigators were also out in Nassau and Suffolk counties over the weekend as part of Cuomo’s crackdown on bars and restaurants, but “no violations were issued in Nassau and Suffolk,” the governor noted.

“But they were issued in The Bronx and Brooklyn and Manhattan and Queens and Staten Island,” he explained.

If a bar or restaurant gets three violations, then the establishment will automatically have its liquor license suspended under Cuomo’s orders.

“Three violations and you lose it. Three strikes and you’re out,” said Cuomo, who added that since the start of the pandemic, a total of 40 pubs and eateries statewide have had their liquor licenses suspended.

The governor said he’s “sympathetic” to the “plight” of the establishments financially-ravaged due to the COVID-19 crisis, “But we also have to protect public health and we accomplish nothing if we have to roll back some rules and regulations on bars and restaurants.”

Cuomo said that the SLA has been tough on New York City and the downstate area because “Many of the local governments in upstate New York are more aggressively enforcing the rules.”

“The state effort is supplementing the local effort,” said Cuomo. “So we are seeing greater compliance by the local governments outside of New York City. So that’s why we are focusing on New York City because we can only supplement.”

Still, said Cuomo, “Most bars and restaurants have been great — really have been great.”

“It’s always the same — it’s a handful of bad actors that ruin it for everyone,” Cuomo said. “And it’s the bad actors that actually wind up hurting the good ones.”

Meanwhile, the governor said that state has seen a slight uptick in the number of New York kids sickened with the rare Kawasaki-like inflammatory disease potentially linked to the coronavirus.

The state now has 240 confirmed cases of the condition, called multisystem inflammatory syndrome or MIS-C, which is up from about 15 since last month, Cuomo said.

“But, New York is not a good gauge of this because the number of cases is coming down across the board, right?” Cuomo said, explaining, “We have not seen it increasing significantly in New York.”

During the conference call, Cuomo said that the state “will be investing in” 20 companies to boost the production of personal protective equipment should New York get hit with a second wave of the killer bug.

The Empire State Development Corp. “has identified 20 companies that we will be investing in that will increase their manufacturing capacity of PPE and part of that agreement will be that those companies will make that PPE available to the state of New York City for our healthcare facilities when and if we need it,” said Cuomo.

If a second wave of the coronavirus were to come, said Cuomo, “We can’t be scouring the globe and paying exorbitant prices for medical equipment.”