NEW YORK CITY - New York City's visitors must provide contact information to Test & Trace before getting their hotel and rental room keys, under an executive order Mayor Bill de Blasio signed Tuesday.
"We have to get serious about the fact that there's a real danger here," de Blasio said. "We have to confront it."
The executive order mandates hotels and short-term rentals join the effort to curtail the spread of novel coronavirus and get a completed Test & Trace form before completing check-in for guests from restricted states, de Blasio said.
About 15 to 20 percent of new cases have been linked to people who traveled outside New York City, according to Test & Trace Corps executive director Dr. Ted Long.
Visitors from states with high COVID-19 rates - and New Yorkers returning from trips to those states - must quarantine for 14 days, and De Blasio urged New Yorkers to avoid travel to those states for all but the most necessary reasons.
"If you have a choice in travel don't go where the problem is," de Blasio said. "You have to quarantine upon your return."
The Health Department will begin Tuesday providing COVID-19 tracking indicators and antibody rates by zip code on its COVID-19 data page, Dr. Dave Chokshi announced.
The Mayor's office also changed its tracking indicators to make more stringent its percentage threshold and look at hospitalizations on a seven-day rolling average.
Tuesday's indicators showed the city saw 328 new cases on a seven-day rolling average, 1.56 percent ot tests came back positive, and 13 percent of 44 patients who entered hospitals with a potential COVID-19 case tested positive.
De Blasio concluded Tuesday press conference addressing the topic of jobs, specifically the 22,000 city worker layoffs the mayor has warned may need be possible without federal stimulus.
When asked if that number took into consideration job rollovers and retirements, de Blasio said it did.
"We have to get ready for huge layoffs," de Blasio said. "That's what we're staring down the barrel of right now."