Tech:NYC Digest: August 9

Tech:NYC Digest: August 9

August 09, 2021 • Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes

Monday, August 9, 2021

Happy Monday! In today’s digest, it's the last day for kids to get full two-dose protection before school starts, the Assembly makes impeachment moves, Yelp anticipates vaccine requirements with new features, and a new award recognizes the city’s best outdoor dining and open streets setups.

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By the numbers:

  • New positive cases statewide: 3,615

    • New positive cases, NYC: 1,934

  • Statewide Fatalities: 12

  • NYC Positivity Rates: 

    • NYS reports: 2.6 percent (no change)

    • NYC reports: 3.1 percent (no change)

  • Statewide Vaccine Progress:

    • Percentage of adults (18+) with at least one dose: 76.6

    • Percentage of total population with at least one dose: 64.3

(For fuller breakdowns, find the state’s numbers here and the city’s numbers here.)

The latest in COVID news:

  • For the first time since February, the US is averaging more than 100,000 new coronavirus cases per day. The Delta variant surge is far greater in states where large portions of the populations remain unvaccinated. (New York Times)

    • New York accounted for about 4,400 of those daily cases — a figure not seen since early May. (NBC New York)

    • That’s much better than places like Florida, where more than 20,000 daily cases are being reported, but it’s still enough to include most of the state in the CDC’s assessment of outbreaks across the country.

    • The Delta variant continues to grow as the dominant strain in NYC, now accounting for 83 percent of all sampled positive cases. (NY1)

  • Less than 50 percent of children in NYC ages 12-17 are fully vaccinated, and city officials are concentrating efforts on increasing that number. The new academic year for public school students begins in five weeks, which makes today the last day children can get a Pfizer shot and have full two-dose protection by then. (Gothamist)

  • New studies show that the Delta variant is making herd immunity harder to reach. The Delta variant’s increased viral load makes it as contagious as chickenpox and requires more fully vaccinated people to reach herd immunity. (Bloomberg)

  • Beginning today, Canada opens its road crossings and airports to American travelers who are both fully vaccinated and test negative for COVID-19 within 72 hours. The US, however, isn’t yet reciprocating for Canadians. (AP)

In other news: 

  • Following the Attorney General’s explosive report into sexual harassment complaints against Gov. Cuomo, the State Assembly’s Judiciary Committee met this morning to consider drafting articles of impeachment. It’s a process that’s expected to drag on into the fall — unless the governor resigns before then. (Gothamist)

    • According to Assembly Member and Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Lavine, on August 16 and 23, the law firm hired to head the impeachment investigation will brief members of the committee on its findings. Following that, public hearings will welcome testimony from independent experts.

    • Only after those meetings will the committee decide on whether to recommend articles of impeachment, and Lavine said today there is no estimated date for when they would be introduced or voted on.

  • If the Assembly proceeds with impeachment, the governor would be automatically removed while the trial is ongoing. In anticipation, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul is quietly preparing to step in as acting governor. She’d be the first woman to lead the state. (New York Times)

  • Gov. Cuomo, for his part, has reportedly been trying to cut a deal to avoid impeachment, promising not to seek a fourth term if impeachment talks are scuttled. (THE CITY)

  • Over the weekend, the state’s highest-ranking appointed official and Gov. Cuomo’s top aide Melissa DeRosa resigned from her post, and at least two women included in the AG’s report have confirmed their intention to file their own criminal complaints against the governor. (NPR)

In preparation for NYC's coming vaccination mandates, restaurants, movie theaters, and other types of businesses are scrambling to make sure they’re prepared to comply. Tech tools will have a key role to play here.

  • All NYC businesses must begin requiring proof of vaccination for guests in indoor settings by August 16, with full enforcement beginning September 13. (CNBC)

One new tool: Yelp is rolling out a pair of new features that will share establishments’ policies on COVID-19 vaccinations. (Axios)

  • The updates will allow users to see if a business requires proof of vaccination to visit and whether its staff is fully vaccinated. (Axios)

  • Once businesses activate these features, users will be able to filter results by vaccination policies and other previously introduced filters like contact-free services, outdoor dining setups, and face mask policies. (The Verge)

It’s not a comprehensive solution — businesses on Yelp aren’t required to provide those details, but it’s one way to help narrow down your next outing. 

Yelp has also acknowledged that, in providing these features, it would also have to “proactively” monitor businesses’ Yelp pages to protect them from being targeted by anti-vaccination or anti-mask backlash.

In other reading:

  • Inside One Company’s Struggle to Get All Its Employees Vaccinated (New York Times)

  • Silicon Valley has a new recruitment strategy: The four-day workweek (Protocol)

  • Business Travel Resumes, Hesitantly (New York Times)

  • Bluecore, a New York City-based marketing tech maker, raised $125 million in Series E funding valuing it at $1 billion. Georgian led the round and was joined by investors including FirstMark, Norwest, and Silver Lake Waterman. (TechCrunch)

  • Cadence, a New York-based remote patient monitoring and telehealth startup, raised $41 million in funding from rounds led by General Catalyst and Thrive Capital, with Adam Boehler, Chelsea Clinton, and Martin Ventures also participating. (BusinessWire) 

  • Harlan Capital Partners, a New York City-based investor, closed Harlan Special Opportunities Fund IV at $111 million. (PR Newswire)

  • OffLimits, a New York-based plant-based cereal startup, raised $2.3 million in family, pre-seed, and seed funding from Science, Crosslink and Canaan, and others. (TechCrunch)

  • Polywork, a New York City-based professional social network, raised $13 million in Series A funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the round and was joined by investors including Caffeinated Capital, Goldcrest Capital, Bungalow Capital, 20VC, Elad Gil, Nat Friedman, Anthony Pompliano, and Ari Emanuel. (Silicon Republic)

  • August 11: Virtual: The Return to the Office, with Suzy chief people officer Anthony Onesto, CommonBond VP of People Keryn Koch, Silicon Valley Bank managing director Meeta Kapadia, and Vivvi head of people Lauren Gill. Hosted by Tribeca Venture Partners and Silicon Valley Bank. Register here.

  • August 11: Virtual: Fostering Innovation Post-COVID, with Refraction CEO Esther Lee, Company Ventures’ Urban Tech Hub executive director Robinson Hernandez, and others. Hosted by Savills. Register here.

  • August 17: Virtual: A Better Meeting, with Calendly chief product officer Annie Pearl, Mural CEO Mariano Suarez-Battan, and others. Hosted by Protocol. Register here.

  • October 6 – 7: In-Person: 2021 Propelify Innovation Festival, with Tech:NYC founder and executive director Julie Samuels, Capsule CEO Eric Kinariwala, Noom CEO Saeju Jeong, Bowery Farming CEO Irving Fain, and others. Hosted by TechUnited:NJ. Use code WeInventTheFuture to register for a free general admission ticket for a limited time here.

A coalition of design and planning organizations created the 2021 Alfresco Awards, an initiative to honor the innovative, community-oriented outdoor setups built by restaurants and other neighborhood establishments.

And ladies and gentlemen, the results are in! Check out the winners here (and see photos of them all here). They each get a cash prize and major bragging rights.

And don’t forget to support the restaurants you love (or ones you’ve been eyeing) during

, which goes until August 22.

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