You are reading

Mayor de Blasio Refuses to Release Complete Neighborhood Breakdown of COVID-19 Cases

Mayor Bill de Blasio at a May 19 press briefing on COVID-19 (Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

March 27, 2020 By Allie Griffin

Mayor Bill de Blasio has repeatedly said that he has no plans of releasing a neighborhood breakdown of coronavirus cases, despite numerous requests from reporters and the public.

The mayor has only released borough breakdowns of the number of cases each day as the pandemic worsens and has said the city hasn’t seen any clusters.

In Queens, more residents have died from COVID-19 than in any other borough. The overall number of cases in Queens has swollen to more than 8,000 as of this morning and 124 of those cases resulted in deaths.

However, those singular figures are the only true data released for a county of 2.2 million people — larger than many cities across the U.S.

A neighborhood breakdown could help depict where resources and aid, as well as more public outreach and education is needed in Queens, experts say.

For example, Elmhurst Hospital has been called the “epicenter of the epicenter” after anecdotes from staff members and patients have painted a dire picture inside the hospital’s walls. In just a 24-hour span this week, the hospital lost 13 patients to COVID-19, officials said.

Council Member Francisco Moya — who was born in Elmhurst Hospital, later worked there and now represents the neighborhood — believes a neighborhood breakdown of COVID-19 cases, as well as data on the current operating capacity of hospitals across the city should be available.

“That information would reveal neighborhoods where the City needs to improve its community outreach and show us where we need to be allocating resources like ventilators, gloves and facemasks accordingly,” a spokesperson for his office said.

De Blasio said his administration has opted not to provide a neighborhood breakdown of cases because the information is continuously changing and he wants to avoid inaccuracies.

However, other places like Nassau County and Los Angeles provide daily numbers of COVID-19 cases for each community within their borders.

The Mayor’s Office released a map this evening that provides a neighborhood breakdown of coronavirus cases — but it only shows the percentage of those tested who came back positive. It doesn’t disclose the neighborhoods that have the most cases.

Theoretically speaking, one neighborhood could have tested 10 people and all 10 were positive for COVID-19, so 100 percent of cases would be positive. Meanwhile, another neighborhood could have tested 1,000 people and had 500 come back positive so only 50 percent of cases would be positive.

Council Member Moya will continue pushing for a higher level of transparency from the Mayor, his office said.

“This information is not academic; it’s part of the solution.”

The numbers by neighborhood codes

email the author: news@queenspost.com

2 Comments

Click for Comments 
Larry Penner

So much for his promise to be the most open transparent and honest administration in the history of municipal government.

Reply
Larry Penner

So much for his promise to be the most open transparent administration in the history of municipal government.

Reply

Leave a Comment
Reply to this Comment

All comments are subject to moderation before being posted.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Recent News

Fresh Meadows MS-13 gang associate sentenced to nearly a half-century in prison for murder of Corona teen in Kissena Park: Feds

An MS-13 gang associate from Fresh Meadows was sentenced to 45 years in federal prison on Tuesday, Aug. 26, for the 2018 slaying of a Corona teenager in Flushing’s Kissena Park.

Juan Amaya-Ramirez, 27, and his co-defendant Oscar Flores-Mejia, 25, from Elmhurst, who is also an associate of the transnational criminal organization, pleaded guilty to the murder of 17-year-old Andy Peralta in Brooklyn federal court last September.

Plant Powered Metro NY helps reverse chronic illness with food and community

Aug. 28, 2025 By Jessica Militello

When Northern Queens resident Sherika Sterling discovered Plant Powered Metro NY’s Jumpstart program, she was struggling with a list of health issues that she thought she would have to deal with her entire life. After joining the program and changing to a plant-based diet, she was able to reverse many of her chronic ailments, including being pre-diabetic, after being equipped with practical tools, knowledge and plant-based recipes.

AG’s office launches investigation into death of man run over by police officer in Flushing Meadows Corona Park

The New York Attorney General’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI) has launched a probe into the death of a civilian on Saturday, Aug. 23, following a motor vehicle collision involving NYPD officers in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

At approximately 4:37 p.m., an NYPD officer from the 110th Precinct in Elmhurst was driving westbound in a marked police cruiser, a 2015 Ford Taurus, at around 10 miles per hour in front of the Queens Theater on United Nations Avenue South, across from the Unisphere, when the vehicle ran over a man who was allegedly lying face up on the roadway prior to the collision, police said.