Tech:NYC Digest: November 12

Tech:NYC Digest: November 12

November 12, 2020 • Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes

Thursday, November 12, 2020As NYC’s reopening and recovery efforts continue, the digest focuses on the resources that help you make decisions about your businesses and your lives as New Yorkers.Was this digest forwarded to you? Subscribe here.

The latest: Newark, Staten Island hotspots threaten NYC, schools could shutter soon; NYC airports open public testing sites for travelers; latest data shows 13 percent of New Yorkers returned to offices, lowest of any major US city; read how Oula is personalizing maternal healthcare in our latest Company to Watch.

Confirmed Cases:

  • New York State: 545,762 (+4,797)

  • New York City: 276,976 (+1,662)

  • Statewide Fatalities: 26,005 (+29)

  • Daily NYC Infection Rate: 2.3 percent (+0.1 percent)

General Updates:

  • The US is now averaging about 119,000 new cases each day — a 40 percent jump over last week — and not a single state saw an improvement in case counts. Forty-five states, including all those in the Northeast, saw increases. (Axios)

  • NYC is focusing more outreach to the two new hotspots in Staten Island, where the positivity rate is more than five percent. (Wall Street Journal) The two neighborhoods have together been marked as a “yellow zone” by state health officials.

  • Mayor de Blasio continues to warn that, as we move closer to a three percent positivity rate citywide, he will have to end in-person instruction at all public schools, even though infections linked to in-person learning have been minimal. (New York Times)

    • Candidates to succeed the mayor next year almost uniformly disagreed with this strategy and are calling for other activities that have been shown to result in more spread — like indoor dining — to be halted before children are taken back out of classrooms. 

    • H/T to Ben Max who has a handy thread on what each of them is saying.

  • And across the river in Newark, the positivity rate has spiked to a staggering 19 percent. In response, the mayor has ordered a 9pm weekday curfew for three of the city’s zip codes, a 10-person limit for all indoor and outdoor gatherings, the cancellation of all team sports activities, and a two-week ban on nursing home visits. (New York Times)

  • Congress remains deadlocked on any sort of agreement about a new stimulus bill as we enter the lame duck session. (POLITICO) Gov. Cuomo is hanging his hopes on President-elect Joe Biden’s pledge to create a “renewable fund” for state and local governments with pandemic-related budget shortfalls. (NY State of Politics)

The latest results: In Tuesday’s poll, most of you responded that you’re not planning to travel for Thanksgiving. And while family or friendsgiving plans at home are still an option, the new ten-person limit on private gatherings will likely impact what that looks like. Will your holiday plans be affected by the new capacity restrictions?

Today’s poll: With case counts rising, NYC leaders are warning the city could reinstate some restrictions, including closing school buildings back down. But one measure that remains unchanged is indoor dining, which many are saying is contributing to the surge. What do you think NYC should do with its indoor dining rules?

  • *|SURVEY: Indoor dining should be suspended|*

  • *|SURVEY: Indoor dining should remain open, but at further reduced capacity levels|*

  • *|SURVEY: Indoor dining should remain open at current levels|*

Find the poll results from all previous editions of this newsletter here.

Reopening:

  • NYC is a few weeks away from securing a 90-day stockpile of PPE and ventilators so the city is better prepared for a potential “second wave.” (Gotham Gazette)

  • All three NYC-area airports — LGA, JFK, and Newark — have opened coronavirus testing sites to the public. Here’s a good FAQ of various things to know about them, including what kinds of tests are available, how much they cost, and what processing and wait times look like. (Washington Post)

  • Gov. Cuomo signed legislation that allows gym members to more easily cancel subscriptions and requires businesses making an offer to consumers involving a renewal or continuous service (i.e., automatic charges after a free-trial period) to get a consumer’s affirmative consent before charging them. (New York Daily News)

  • If you’re commuting in and out of the city via car, cashless tolling goes live this weekend in both directions for the entire New York State Thruway. (Democrat & Chronicle)

Related reading:

  • With Covid And Trump Both Raging, Governors Face Pandemic Alone (Bloomberg)

Working:

  • New keycard and fob access data shows New Yorkers continue to be the most reluctant among American cities to return to the office. (Bloomberg) During the week of Nov. 4, only 13.1 percent of NYC workers were in the office.

  • IBM executive chairman and former CEO Ginni Rometty thinks working from home and other tech-driven trends will continue even after we have a vaccine. (CNBC) But she says there will be “different paces of investment” as businesses figure out longer-term digital acceleration strategies like cloud computing.

  • Apple has resumed flying US employees to China for business trips. (The Information) It’s offering employees up to $500 a day in bonus pay to encourage more people to take up the trips.

Related reading:

  • No Office, No Problem: Software Unicorn Gitlab’s CEO Warns You're Probably Doing Remote Work Wrong (Forbes)

One Company to Watch:OULA

What does your company do?

Oula co-founder and CEO Adrianne Nickerson: Oula is building modern maternity centers that combine the best of obstetrics and midwifery care to deliver a more evidence-based and personalized pregnancy experience.You started building Oula just over a year ago, not much before New York confirmed its first case of COVID-19. What’s it been like building a new company — much less a healthcare company — during a public health crisis?AN: From raising capital to hiring our first employees, we had to do all of it remotely. My co-founder and I both value and appreciate in-person time, and so it has been particularly hard not to be able to sit as a team in front of a whiteboard and work through the challenge of the day. It has forced us to think more intentionally about communication and building team culture.Read the full interview here.Request: please let us know as your return-to-office policies are developed and what considerations your companies are taking for developing them. Sharing this information is helpful to companies and employees across the NYC ecosystem and can be kept anonymous.

Recruit: A tech talent and job opportunities board from Tech:NYC and AlleyCorp compiles NYC tech workers looking for new roles and NYC-based tech companies hiring open positions. To contribute to the board, click here.

Events:

  • November 17: Virtual: #FunctionsNYC: What’s Next For Policing and Public Safety, with Center for Policing Equity co-founder Tracie Keesee and Elucd CEO Michael Simon. Hosted by Tech:NYC. (Details)

  • November 18: Virtual: New York’s Next Comeback, with Regional Plan Association president and CEO Tom Wright. Hosted by Capalino. (Details)

  • November 19: Virtual: Moonshots, Spinouts, and New Ventures, with AlleyCorp partner Wendy Tsu, X technology scout Tom Hunt, and Cornell Tech director of runways and spinouts Fernando Gómez Baquero. Hosted by Newlab. (Details)

  • November 23: Virtual: A Conversation with Wayfair co-founder and CEO Niraj Shah. Hosted by Tech:NYC, Cornell Tech, and Bloomberg. (Details)

Check these sources for verified information from government agencies and public health authorities:

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