Coronavirus: New York Auto Show postponed by four months due to Covid-19

The annual New York auto show, where global carmakers planned to unveil 50 new models next month, has been postponed to late August due to the coronavirus.

Press days for the event that organizers say delivers a more than $330 million boost to the local economy are now scheduled to start on Aug. 26, the Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association said in an email Tuesday. The show will open to the public from Aug. 28 through Sept. 6.

“We are taking this extraordinary step to help protect our attendees, exhibitors and all participants from the coronavirus," Mark Schienberg, the president of the dealers association, said in a statement. “We have already been in communication with many of our exhibitors and partners and are confident that the new dates for the 2020 Show will make for another successful event."

The show coordinators said a week ago they already had installed 70 hand-sanitizing stations throughout the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center on Manhattan’s west side in preparation for the event. Dealers were trying to preserve the fate of the exhibition that dates back to 1900 after the cancellation of the Geneva International Motor Show, which was called off late last month for the first time since the World War II era.

But the preemptive measures that organizers were planning weren’t enough to temper concerns about the virus known as Covid-19. The National Guard is being sent to the New York City suburb of New Rochelle to help close large, public gathering spaces to slow down the spread of the outbreak, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said at a press conference earlier Tuesday. He referred to the one-mile square area being set up as a containment zone.

New Rochelle, a community in Westchester County north of New York City, has experienced more than 100 cases, while the city, with a population of 8.6 million, has recorded 36, the governor said.