New York’s State of Emergency is Over, and so are Cuomo’s Executive Powers

ITHACA, NY -- Cocktails to go are no more as of today, but so is New York’s disaster emergency status and  Governor Cuomo’s broad powers to combat the COVID-19 pandemic along with it.

Cuomo made the announcement at a press conference in Manhattan on Wednesday. The state of emergency was originally set to expire on July 5th.  

Cuomo said that the state is past the point of day-to-day monitoring, and thanks New Yorker’s for their efforts.

Cuomo said that there is still work to be done to completely clear the risk of COVID in New York, but emphasized that the state is in a new chapter of the pandemic. 

“The new chapter that we’re writing is the post-COVID emergency period,” said Cuomo, “The emergency is over.”

Over 70 percent of adults in New York have received at least one shot of a COVID vaccine, and according to Johns Hopkins University, New York’s 7-day average for positive cases of COVID-19 is at just 0.36%.

According to their respective Health Departments, Tompkins County’s 7-day average is at 0.32 percent, and Schuyler County’s is at 0.3 percent.

New York City was one the global epicenters of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, when Cuomo adopted broad powers to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Since March 7th, 2020, when the state’s emergency status began to mandate mask wearing, close business -- even dictate wedding capacities. 

Cuomo issued over 400 executive orders throughout the pandemic, but saw those powers partially stripped as he became embroiled in Scandal in March 2021. Since then, state Republicans began aggressively beating the drum to end the state of emergency status.

Cuomo’s  list of scandals include investigations into multiple allegations of sexual harassment, an investigation by the U.S. Justice Department into alleged misrepresentation of actual nursing home deaths in New York, and an investigation into the use of state resources for writing his book,  American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, Cuomo’s $5 million book deal.

He is currently planning fundraising events to race for a fourth term as New York’s Governor in 2022.