This is our daily update of breaking COVID-19 news for Friday August 7th, 2020. Previous daily updates can be found here, and up-to-date statistics are here.

New York City is in Phase 4 of reopening now, which includes zoos, botanical gardens, and professional sports (without fans). A look at preparing for the spread of coronavirus is here, and if you have lingering questions about the virus, here is ourregularly updated coronavirus FAQ. Here are some local and state hotlines for more information: NYC: 311; NY State Hotline: 888-364-3065; NJ State Hotline: 800-222-1222.

Here's the latest:

12 p.m. Two hundred drivers were stopped at city bridges and tunnels on Thursday, the first day of a new initiative to spread word of New York's quarantine rules for travelers from high infection states, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

"That number is going to grow greatly this weekend," de Blasio warned during his morning press briefing.

"These quarantines must be honored for the good of all," he added.

The mayor said the new checkpoints, which is being run by the city's sheriff office, would directly affect thousands of people traveling into the state, although he said that the message would reach many more.

In addition to officers manning bridge and tunnel crossings, public health officials and staff members from the mayor's office spent the day handing out informational leaflets at Penn Station.

The city’s sheriff, Joseph Fucito, has said that roughly 20 officers would start, although that number could contract or grow over time. He said the deputies will have access to license plate readers but added that the stops would be conducted on a random basis.

Back in March, the governor of Rhode Island ordered the National Guard to hunt down New York drivers to ensure that they quarantine, much to the dismay of Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Cuomo has said that states do not have the ability to impose widespread border control.

Under New York City's plan, drivers from one of the 35 states/U.S. territories that currently meet New York's quarantine criteria must fill out the state's form asking for itinerary and personal contact information. Those who violate the quarantine can be subject to fines of up to $10,000, while refusal to fill out the form carries a $2,000 penalty.

But similar to the state's enforcement at airports, it is not clear whether government officials can force travelers to quarantine against their will. Albert Fox Cahn, who runs the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a privacy advocacy group, has criticized the city's plan as "invasive" and "deeply dangerous."

He also argued it was misguided.

“Rather than addressing the city’s backlog in testing capacity and struggling contact tracing program, the Mayor is transforming this pandemic into a policing issue," Fox said, in a statement. "At a time when New York continues to suffer from community spread, conducting these dragnets of out-of-state travelers is just a distraction. Even if every driver complied with New York’s registration requirement, there’s simply no way that New York could confirm if travelers comply.”

Decision For NYC Public School Parents On Hybrid Learning Due Today

Families of New York City's roughly 1.1 million public school students must decide by the end of Friday whether to elect for full online learning rather than a hybrid plan with as many as three days of in-person instruction. Students whose parents have not filled out the Department of Education's online form will be registered for the hybrid plan by default.

After Friday's deadline, families that chose full-time remote learning can switch their child’s schedule back to in-person instruction, but only during certain times during the school year. Those enrolled in the hybrid plan can withdraw and go to full online learning at any time.

The decision is among the most consequential ones facing public school families, many of whom are wrestling with whether in-person learning can be carried out safely in the country's biggest school district. Even as the city boasts one of the lowest positive testing rates, that of 1%, many of the 1,800 schools are overcrowded and understaffed and equipped with outdated HVAC systems. Of the 15 largest U.S. school districts, 13 have opted to start the school year with online learning only. On Wednesday, Chicago, one of the few major school districts that had been planning for hybrid learning, bowed out amid mounting pressure from the teachers union and an uptick in infections.

In deciding to reopen classrooms, New York City will become a widely watched experiment in whether schools can function in a highly constrained environment while also limiting the spread of coronavirus. Under a plan that is yet to be approved by Governor Andrew Cuomo, the city's public schools could reopen its classrooms to students as long as the positivity rate for testing remained below 3%. At least two cases in different classrooms would trigger a complete school closure.

The outcome will have an impact not only on the health of children, but also on the economy, which has struggled to fully restart with parents forced to stay at home and watch their children.

With the election likely to hinge on the recovery, President Donald Trump has repeatedly pushed for all schools to reopen their classrooms even as outbreaks continue across most of the country.

On Friday, the Washington Post published an interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, in which he said that states with low levels of the virus can reopen with safety mechanisms in place.

"So if you're in one of those areas, generally referred to as the green states... with some overlap with others and generally, you can get back to school with the kinds of precautions that you do in general society," he said.

Other experts have also been supportive of the city's intention to reopen schools. In a tweet, Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, called New York City a "success story."

"This is South Korea level. And its awesome," he said, adding schools could reopen "with proper precautions."

But some have expressed doubts about whether the city's plan adequately protects both teachers and students. Some members of the teachers union have threatened to stage sickouts as well as a lawsuit.

There is also concern about the racial and income inequities that are deeply engrained in the city school system and the role they will play in how individual schools fare in reopening.

"I know that the PTAs on the Upper East Side that collect hundreds and thousands of dollars for their schools are going to be fine," Kaliris Salas, the parent of a rising fourth grader at Central Park East 1, an elementary school in East Harlem, told Gothamist on Monday during a protest in Lower Manhattan. "But the schools in our black and brown communities, the schools in East Harlem that have zero money in their PTAs, are going to be left in an even more vulnerable position, perpetuating the cycle of inequities."

To stay up to date on New York City's public schools plans, read Gothamist's frequently updated school reopening guide.