Tag Archives: New York

New York, Florida tell hospitals to speed COVID-19 vaccinations or lose supply

By Carl O’Donnell and Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The governors of New York and Florida sought to accelerate the slower-than-expected rollout of coronavirus vaccines by warning hospitals on Monday that they would reduce future allocations to those that fail to dispense shots quickly enough.

In New York, hospitals must administer vaccines within a week of receiving them or face a fine and loss of future supplies, Governor Andrew Cuomo said.

“I don’t want the vaccine in a fridge or a freezer, I want it in somebody’s arm,” the governor said. “If you’re not performing this function, it does raise questions about the operating efficiency of the hospital.”

The U.S. federal government has distributed more than 15 million vaccine doses to states and territories around the country, but only around 4.5 million have been administered so far, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released on Monday.

The U.S. government has fallen far short of its target of vaccinating 20 million people by the end of 2020. Officials said they expect the rollout will pick up significantly this month.

Surgeon General Jerome Adams told CBS News that there are 15 million to 20 million doses of vaccine available.

“We should be hopeful about that while acknowledging we have got to do better and we are going to keep doing better,” Adams said. “And I promise you, you will see in these next two weeks numbers increase substantially.”

The United States had reported a total of 20.5 million COVID-19 cases and 351,480 deaths as of midnight on Sunday. On a seven-day rolling average, it is reporting 210,190 cases and 2,636 coronavirus deaths per day.

In Florida, where officials have put senior citizens ahead of many essential workers for getting the vaccine, Governor Ron DeSantis announced a policy under which the state would allocate doses to hospitals that dispense them most quickly,

“Hospitals that do not do a good job of getting the vaccine out will have their allocations transferred to hospitals that are doing a good job at getting the vaccine out,” DeSantis said at a briefing.

“We do not want vaccine to just be idle at some hospital system,” he added, though he did not say they would face fines.

Florida will also deploy an additional 1,000 nurses to administer vaccines and will keep state-run vaccination sites open seven days a week, he said.

New York has dispensed about 175,000 doses of the 896,000 it has received since mid-December, according to CDC data. Florida has dispensed 265,000 of the 1.14 million doses it received.

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said obstacles were slowing his goal to have 1 million residents receive a first of two vaccine doses by the end of January. A little over 110,000 residents have received their first dose so far, according to city data.

De Blasio urged the state to broaden early eligible groups beyond healthcare workers and nursing home residents to include essential workers such as teachers, police officers, fire fighters, grocery store personnel and people who are more than 75 years old.

New York City currently has 125 vaccination sites and plans to double that by the end of the month, the mayor said.

“This has got to be a seven-day-a-week, 24-hour reality going forward,” de Blasio said.

Monday also marked the first day when some Americans were due to receive their second vaccine shot, three weeks after getting the first dose. Among them was Maritza Beniquez, a healthcare worker in Newark, New Jersey.

“I now have body armor,” she said after receiving the dose in a video posted on Facebook by New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, who was part of a small gathering that witnessed the event.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen, Carl O’Donnell, Rebecca Spaulding and Peter Szekely in New York; Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg, Anurag Maan, Doina Chiacu and Susan Heavey; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

New York nurse given COVID-19 vaccine as U.S. rollout begins

By Jonathan Allen and Gabriella Borter

NEW YORK (Reuters) -An intensive care unit nurse became the first person in New York state to receive the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Monday, marking a pivotal turn in the U.S. effort to control the deadly virus.

Sandra Lindsay, who has treated some of the sickest COVID-19 patients for months, was given the vaccine at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in the New York City borough of Queens, an early epicenter of the country’s COVID-19 outbreak, receiving applause on a livestream with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

“It didn’t feel any different from taking any other vaccine,” Lindsay said. “I feel hopeful today, relieved. I feel like healing is coming. I hope this marks the beginning of the end of a very painful time in our history. I want to instill public confidence that the vaccine is safe.”

Minutes after Lindsay received the injection, President Donald Trump sent a tweet: “First Vaccine Administered. Congratulations USA! Congratulations WORLD!”

Northwell Health, the largest health system in New York state, operates some of the select hospitals in the United States that were administering the country’s first inoculations of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine outside trials on Monday.

The vaccine, developed by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, won emergency-use approval from federal regulators on Friday after it was found to be 95% effective in preventing illness in a large clinical trial.

The first 2.9 million doses began to be shipped to distribution centers around the country on Sunday, just 11 months after the United States documented its first COVID-19 infections.

As of Monday, the United States had registered more than 16 million cases and nearly 300,000 deaths from the virus.

Health officials in Texas, Utah, South Dakota, Ohio and Minnesota said they also anticipated the first doses of the vaccine would be received at select hospitals on Monday and be administered right away.

LOGISTICAL CHALLENGE

The first U.S. shipments of coronavirus vaccine departed from Pfizer’s facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on Sunday, packed into trucks with dry-ice to maintain the necessary sub-Arctic temperatures, and then were transported to UPS and FedEx planes waiting at air fields in Lansing and Grand Rapids, kicking off a national immunization endeavor of unprecedented complexity.

The jets delivered the shipments to UPS and FedEx cargo hubs in Louisville and Memphis, from where they were loaded onto planes and trucks to be distributed to the first 145 of 636 vaccine-staging areas across the country. Second and third waves of vaccine shipments were due to go out to the remaining sites on Tuesday and Wednesday.

“This is the most difficult vaccine rollout in history. There will be hiccups undoubtedly but we’ve done everything from a federal level and working with partners to make it go as smoothly as possible. Please be patient with us,” U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams told Fox News on Monday, adding that he would get the shot as soon as he could.

The logistical effort is further complicated by the need to transport and store the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine at minus 70 Celsius (minus 94 Fahrenheit), requiring enormous quantities of dry ice or specialized ultra-cold freezers.

Workers clapped and whistled as the first boxes were loaded onto trucks at the Pfizer factory on Sunday.

“We know how much people are hurting,” UPS Healthcare President Wes Wheeler said on Sunday from the company’s command center in Louisville, Kentucky. “It’s not lost on us at all how important this is.”

MORE DOSES ON THE WAY

More than 100 million people, or about 30% of the U.S. population, could be immunized by the end of March, Moncef Slaoui, the chief advisor to the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed coronavirus vaccine initiative, said in an interview on Sunday.

Healthcare workers and elderly residents of long-term care homes will be first in line to get the inoculations of a two-dose regimen given about three weeks apart. That would still leave the country far short of the herd immunity that would halt virus transmission, so health officials have warned that masks and social distancing will be needed for months to control the currently rampaging outbreak. Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla told CNN in an interview on Monday that most of the 50 million vaccine doses the company will provide this year have been manufactured, adding that it plans on producing 1.3 billion doses next year. Approximately half will be allocated to the United States, he said. But Bourla said Pfizer is “working very diligently” to increase the amount of doses available because demand is very high. At the same time, he said, the company has not reached an agreement with the U.S. government on when to provide an additional 100 million doses next year. “We can provide them the additional 100 million doses, but right now most of that we can provide in the third quarter,” Bourla said. “The U.S. government wants them in the second quarter so are working very collaboratively with them to make sure that we can find ways to produce more or allocate the doses in the second quarter.” Slaoui said the United States hopes to have about 40 million vaccine doses – enough for 20 million people – distributed by the end of this month. That would include vaccines from both Pfizer and Moderna Inc. An outside U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel is scheduled to consider the Moderna vaccine on Thursday, with emergency use expected to be granted shortly after. On Friday, Moderna announced it had struck a deal with the U.S. government to deliver 100 million additional doses in the second quarter.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen, Gabriella Borter, Lisa Lambert, Lisa Baertlein and Brendan O’Brien; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Paul Simao)

California bans private gatherings, New York expands hospitals to battle coronavirus surge

By Dan Whitcomb and Maria Caspani

LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK (Reuters) -California compelled much of the state to close shop and stay home on Monday and New York ordered hospitals to increase bed capacity by 25 percent, as the United States braced for yet another coronavirus surge during the upcoming holidays.

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s order came into effect one day after the state set a record with more than 30,000 new COVID-19 cases, triggered in areas of Southern California where fewer than 15% of intensive care hospital beds remain available.

In addition, five counties in Northern California surrounding the San Francisco Bay Area have voluntarily imposed the restrictions even before reaching the intensive care unit threshold. Combined, the areas cover about three-quarters of the state’s nearly 40 million people.

Dr. Celine Gounder said California had little choice. “Given how out of control the virus is at this point, we are having to dial up some of those restrictions again,” Gounder told CBS News. “Ideally, we should be more proactive than this.”

In reporting more than 30,000 new cases on Sunday, the state exceeded its previous high of 21,986 set on Dec. 4, and notched a record high for hospitalized COVID-19 patients as well.

Nationwide, COVID-19 infections in United States are at their peak with an average of 193,863 new cases reported each day over the past week, according to a Reuters tally of official data.

There have been 14.7 million confirmed infections and 282,253 coronavirus-related deaths reported in the country since the pandemic began, the most in the world.

California has been under a stay-at-home order for all but essential services since March. The new order, which will last at least three weeks, bans private gatherings of any size, shuts all but critical infrastructure and retail operations, and requires everyone to wear a mask and maintain physical distancing.

But the sheriffs of Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties have said they will refuse to enforce the order.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said in a videotaped message that his office “will not be blackmailed” into enforcing the governor’s orders, and Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes said in a statement his deputies would not respond to calls to enforce violations of the mask mandate, stay-at-home orders or the ban on social gatherings.

FAUCI SEES ‘BAD TIME’ AHEAD

To avoid a critical shortage of hospital beds, New York state health officials will order hospitals to increase their capacity by 25% and ask retired doctors and nurses to come back to work, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday.

If the hospitalization rate fails to stabilize over the next five days, indoor dining in New York City will be halted, Cuomo said.

Dr. Anthony Fauci warned the nationwide surge could get worse after the year-end holiday season.

After millions ignored expert advice and traveled for the Thanksgiving holiday in November, Fauci anticipated Americans would once again behave recklessly during Christmas and New Year’s Eve festivities.

Spikes in the death toll typically appear about three weeks after surges in infections and hospitalizations.

“Mid-January is probably going to be a bad time,” said Fauci, appearing with Cuomo in his video news conference.

Anticipating U.S. Food and Drug Administration emergency authorization of the first vaccine within the coming days, the White House will host a vaccine distribution summit on Tuesday with governors, retail pharmacy chains and shipping companies, Health Secretary Alex Azar told Fox News.

The aim of the meeting was “to be very transparent and show the world how comprehensively we have planned out every aspect of this distribution,” Azar said.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb, Maria Caspani, Doina Chiacu, Lisa Lambert, Peter Szekely and Daniel Trotta; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Jonathan Oatis and Bill Berkrot)

David Dinkins, New York’s first and only Black mayor, dies at 93

By Derek Francis

(Reuters) – David Dinkins, who served as New York City’s first and only African-American mayor during the 1990s, died on Monday at the age of 93, police said.

His death appeared to be of natural causes, Detective Adam Navarro of the city’s police department told Reuters.

Born in 1927 in Trenton, New Jersey, Dinkins attended Howard University and Brooklyn Law School.

He eventually came to Harlem, the historically Black neighborhood in upper Manhattan, where he rose in the ranks of local politics.

“I’m feeling something painful in my heart right now. I’m feeling like a loss and an emptiness because he’s gone,” an emotional New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters on Tuesday. “But I also really feel his guidance still, his presence. And we’re going to keep going, we’re going to continue his fight.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James, Governor Andrew Cuomo and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani were among the many others paying tribute to Dinkins.

“For decades, Mayor Dinkins led with compassion and an unparalleled commitment to our communities,” James said in a statement. “New York will mourn Mayor Dinkins and continue to be moved by his towering legacy.”

“The first and the only Black mayor of NYC, he cherished our “gorgeous mosaic” & served the city & state over a career spanning decades with the hope of unity and a deep kindness,” Cuomo wrote on Twitter.

In Harlem, Dinkins formed part of a group of Black power brokers, known as the “Gang of Four,” that included congressman Charles Rangel, Percy Sutton and Basil Paterson, the father of future New York Governor David Paterson.

Dinkins defeated the three-term incumbent Democrat Mayor Ed Koch in the primary and then Republican prosecutor Rudy Giuliani in the 1989 mayoral race.

Giuliani, who would come back to defeat Dinkins four years later, was among the first to pay tribute.

“I extend my deepest condolences to the family of Mayor David Dinkins, and to the many New Yorkers who loved and supported him,” Giuliani said on Twitter. “He gave a great deal of his life in service to our great City.”

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) recognized the former mayor’s achievements in a statement on Tuesday. “Winning his election against all odds, he showed us what was possible at a time when opportunities were limited.”

New York, during Dinkins’ term, was battling high crime, a fierce economic recession and the AIDS epidemic.

But it was his role in the 1991 Crown Heights riot that would most define his mayoralty.

The riot was sparked in the racially divided Brooklyn neighborhood by the acquittal of a young black man, Lemrick Nelson, in the killing of Yankel Rosenbaum, a 29-year-old Jewish student.

Speaking in 2011, Dinkins remembered his handling of the riot as one of his chief regrets.

“The thing that hurt the most, I suppose, was to be accused by some of permitting – holding the police back – and permitting young blacks to attack Jews,” Dinkins said, according to the New York Times.

“And this was untrue, inaccurate and not so, and that’s kind of painful. But if I had it to do over again, I would have said maybe 24 hours earlier to the police, ‘What you’re doing isn’t working,’ which I finally said.”

(Reporting by Derek Francis; additional reporting by Radhika Anilkumar in Bengaluru and Maria Caspani in New York; Editing by Robert Birsel and Bill Berkrot)

Johnson & Johnson ordered to pay $120 million damages in New York baby powder case

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Johnson & Johnson has been ordered by a New York state judge to pay $120 million in damages to a Brooklyn woman and her husband, after she blamed her cancer on asbestos exposure from using the company’s baby powder.

Justice Gerald Lebovits of the state supreme court in Manhattan reduced the payout from the $325 million a jury awarded Donna Olson, 67, and Robert Olson, 65, in May 2019 following a 14-week trial.

While upholding the jury’s liability finding, Lebovits wrote on Nov. 11 that the damages were too high, and the Olsons could either accept $120 million or have a new trial on damages.

The judge approved the lowered payout on Wednesday, court records show. It includes $15 million of compensatory damages and $105 million of punitive damages, down from an original $25 million and $300 million, respectively.

Johnson & Johnson said it will appeal the verdict, citing “significant legal and evidentiary errors” at the trial.

“We deeply sympathize with anyone suffering from cancer, which is why the facts are so important,” the company said. “We remain confident that our talc is safe, asbestos free, and does not cause cancer.”

Jerome Block, a lawyer for the Olsons, said they were satisfied with the result and confident it would stand.

He also said Donna Olson’s mesothelioma “is at an advanced stage, and we are hoping for the best.”

Donna Olson had testified that she used Johnson’s Baby Powder or Shower to Shower daily for more than 50 years.

Lebovits wrote that jurors could find that Johnson & Johnson was for many years “knowingly deceitful about” or “willfully blind to” potential health risks of its talc products, in part to maintain market share and profit.

The New Brunswick, New Jersey-based company is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court a $2.12 billion damages award in Missouri to women who blamed their ovarian cancer on asbestos in its baby powder and other talc products.

Johnson & Johnson has faced intense scrutiny of its raw talc’s safety following a 2018 Reuters investigative report that found it knew for decades about asbestos in its talc.

Internal company records, trial testimony and other evidence show that from at least 1971 to the early 2000s, J&J’s raw talc and finished powders sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Matthew Lewis)

New York governor expects coronavirus rates to continue rising into winter

By Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday he expected the rate of positive tests for the novel coronavirus to continue rising in the state into winter.

Both the state and New York City have seen positive test rates creep above 2% again in recent days in what Cuomo called a “new phase” of the coronavirus’s spread.

“The numbers are undeniable,” he told reporters on a conference call. “The best you can do is manage the increase.” He said cases may continue to rise until a vaccine became widely available.

Earlier on Monday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio warned that the city may soon enter a second wave of infections after grappling with what at the time was the world’s worst outbreak of COVID-19 earlier this year.

He said New Yorkers might see restrictions reintroduced, saying he now thought indoor dining at restaurants, even at restricted capacity, should be reconsidered, though he said that decision ultimately rested with Cuomo.

Stricter rules in nearby New Jersey were announced by Governor Phil Murphy on Monday in response to a rise in COVID-19 cases in the Garden State, and outbreaks among bartenders at several establishments.

New rules ban service while sitting at the bar and end indoor dining – still limited to 25 percent capacity – at 10 p.m., although outdoor dining is permitted to continue.

“As the night wears on people let their hair down and folks are just not social distancing as they should,” Murphy told a press conference.

He also announced the shutdown of interstate indoor youth sports events, up to and including high school age athletes, after seeing transmission increases among young team members, particularly those playing indoor hockey.

Across the Hudson River, New York City officials said they are worried about a new uptick in cases on Staten Island, one of the city’s five boroughs, and said they would spend Tuesday encouraging island residents to get a free test.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama/Mark Heinrich)

Factbox: Results of high-profile U.S. House of Representatives races

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrats were projected to retain their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in Tuesday’s election, but appeared to have failed in their goal of wresting more seats from Republicans.

Results were still coming in on Wednesday, but Democrats lost several of the most closely watched contests in sharp contrast to their convincing win in 2018.

Here are some of the most high-profile races in the 435-member House:

MINNESOTA’S 7TH DISTRICT

Long-time Representative Collin Peterson, one of only two House Democrats who opposed both articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump in 2019, was defeated by Minnesota’s former lieutenant governor, Republican Michelle Fischbach. The district in rural western Minnesota voted strongly for Trump in 2016.

SOUTH CAROLINA’S 1ST DISTRICT

Representative Joe Cunningham, who stunned Republicans in 2018 when he became the first Democrat to represent the coastal district in nearly four decades, lost to Republican Nancy Mace, the first female graduate of the Citadel military college.

GEORGIA’S 14th DISTRICT

Republican small business owner Marjorie Taylor Greene is a political newcomer who promoted online conspiracy theory QAnon in a 2017 video but later backtracked, saying it was not part of her campaign. She won a House seat in conservative rural northwest Georgia after her Democratic opponent dropped out.

TEXAS’ 21ST DISTRICT

Republican Representative Chip Roy defeated Wendy Davis, a Democratic former state senator who caught the national spotlight in 2013 by talking for over 11 hours to temporarily stop an anti-abortion bill. The central Texas district includes part of Austin.

NEW MEXICO’S 2ND DISTRICT

Freshman Democratic Representative Xochtil Torres-Small lost a rematch with Republican Yvette Herrell, who had been the loser two years ago and was endorsed by the conservative House Freedom Caucus’ political action committee. The district covers southern New Mexico including part of Albuquerque.

COLORADO’S 3RD DISTRICT

Republican Lauren Boebert, a pistol-packing gun rights activist who defied coronavirus restrictions to open her restaurant, spoke warmly of QAnon in May, but later said “I’m not a follower.” She defeated Democrat Diane Mitsch Bush, a university professor, in a largely rural district encompassing western Colorado.

These races remain undecided:

NEW JERSEY’S 2ND DISTRICT

Representative Jeff Van Drew, who was elected to Congress as a Democrat in 2018 but became a Republican after voting against impeaching Trump, faces a strong challenge from Democrat Amy Kennedy. She is a former schoolteacher who married into the famous U.S. political family. The district in southern New Jersey includes Atlantic City.

NEW YORK’S 2ND DISTRICT

Republican New York State legislator Andrew Garbarino is running against a Black combat veteran, Democrat Jackie Gordon, for the seat held for 14 terms by retiring Republican Representative Peter King. The largely suburban district on Long Island includes the eastern edges of the New York City metropolitan area.

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell, Susan Heavey and Andy Sullivan; Editing by Scott Malone and Mary Milliken)

New York police arrest 30 amid protests after deadly Philadelphia shooting

By Kanishka Singh

(Reuters) – New York police arrested about 30 people as hundreds of protesters took to the streets in Brooklyn late on Tuesday following a deadly police shooting in Philadelphia of a Black man armed with a knife.

“Approximately 30 people have been arrested,” a New York Police Department spokesman told Reuters by phone, without detailing the reason for the arrests.

He added that one NYPD officer suffered “non-life threatening” injuries during the late night protests. Police also said that their vehicles were damaged and some trash cans were set on fire in the demonstrations.

NBC News reported that a car attempted to drive through a group of police officials in Brooklyn.

The development in New York City came after the deadly Philadelphia police shooting on Monday of Walter Wallace, 27, who was described by relatives as suffering from a mental breakdown as he was confronted by law enforcement.

It follows months of anti-racism protests that have spread across the United States since the death in May of George Floyd, an African-American who died after a Minneapolis police official knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

The protests, which have sometimes turned violent, have aimed at achieving racial equality and opposing police brutality.

Philadelphia became the latest flash point in the United States on issues of race and police use of force, as Tuesday’s rallies began peacefully but grew confrontational as darkness fell, just as on the previous day.

A bystander’s video of the shooting of Wallace was posted on social media on Monday and showed him approaching two police officers who had drawn their guns and warned him to put down his knife. The officers were backing up before the camera cut briefly away as gunfire erupted and Wallace collapsed.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh, Editing by William Maclean)

Wall Street veteran Ray McGuire to run for New York mayor

By Noor Zainab Hussain and Imani Moise

(Reuters) – Ray McGuire, one of the senior-most Black executives on Wall Street, is leaving his job at Citigroup Inc to run for mayor of New York in 2021, his spokeswoman said on Thursday.

Although McGuire is a longshot in the race, a successful candidacy would make him only the second Black mayor of America’s largest city, after David Dinkins’ stint as New York mayor in the 1990s.

“It is correct that he is exploring a run for mayor … he has taken the first step in doing that, which is that he has filed with the Campaign Finance Board in New York City,” the spokeswoman said.

Current Mayor Bill de Blasio will step down after his current term, as city laws prevent him from seeking a third term.

Citi’s chief executive, Michael Corbat, told employees that McGuire will leave the bank after 15 years in various roles to pursue his “lifelong passion for public service,” according to a memo seen by Reuters.

McGuire headed Citi’s corporate and investment banking unit for 13 years and was most recently also chairman of banking, capital markets and advisory. Prior to Citi, 63-year-old McGuire was at Morgan Stanley.

The move into politics for McGuire, who until recently held the title of vice chairman at Citi, comes after he was on a short list of candidates to head the New York Federal Reserve in 2018.

McGuire is not the first Wall Street executive to dabble in politics. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg was New York mayor from 2001-2013, and Phil Murphy, a former Goldman Sachs banker, is the current governor of New Jersey.

The New York Times first reported McGuire’s decision to run for mayor earlier on Thursday.

(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru and Imani Moise in New York; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli, Lauren Tara LaCapra and Steve Orlofsky)

Catholics, Jews say New York coronavirus restrictions violate religious rights

By Peter Szekely

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s recent measures to stem local outbreaks of the coronavirus have prompted demands from Catholics and Jews that courts void the restrictions because they limit religious freedom.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of New York of Brooklyn was set to hold hearing Thursday afternoon on a suit it filed in U.S. District Court in the borough on Oct. 8, while three Orthodox Jewish congregations filed suit on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Both actions argue that the state’s restrictions on religious gatherings violate the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment right to freedom of religion.

Cuomo issued an order on Oct. 6 that shut down non-essential businesses and restricted gatherings at religious institutions to as few as 10 people in certain targeted areas, including some Brooklyn neighborhoods, where infections have spiked.

Cuomo insisted that his infection-fighting measures were not intended to single out religious groups and were consistent with other steps he has taken to combat geographic “clusters,” which he has defined as “red zones,” where infections spread rapidly.

But he also blamed the Orthodox Jewish communities for causing some of the infection spread in their areas.

“They never complied with any of the close-down rules going back to March,” he said in a briefing on Thursday. “That’s why some find it shocking, because they didn’t follow many of the rules all along.”

In their complaint which is laced with historical references to persecution, the Orthodox congregations said Cuomo has outlawed “all but the most minimal communal religious worship.”

“For Jews, communal worship is an essential service for which untold thousands have risked and sacrificed their lives,” the congregations — Ohalei Shem D’Nitra, Yesheos Yakov and Netzach Yisroel — said in a 33-page complaint.

Brooklyn’s Roman Catholic diocese, meanwhile, was rebuffed on Friday in its request for a temporary court order to bar the restrictions from taking effect.

But the diocese said its case was still alive, with U.S. District Court Judge Nicholas Garaufis having set a hearing for 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) Thursday for arguments on its request for a longer-lasting preliminary injunction against the restrictions in 28 areas of Brooklyn and Queens.

In its complaint the diocese said it has complied with the state’s restrictions since the pandemic erupted in March, and that the new targeted measures are overly broad, infringing not only on worship services but also on ceremonies such as weddings and funerals.

“By causing the cancellation or severe curtailment of such services, the order would impose irreparable harm on the Diocese of Brooklyn and those it serves,” said the 22-page complaint.

The state’s targeted measures have sparked protests and occasional violence in some predominantly Hasidic Jewish areas of Brooklyn’s Borough Park neighborhood. In that area, more than 8% of coronavirus tests came back positive last week.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely; Additional reporting by Gabriella Borter; Editing by Tom Brown)