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During the pandemic, New York City was one of the earliest- and hardest-hit cities in the country. But as of Tuesday, the citywide positivity rate for the virus was 1.38% on a seven-day rolling average, as the city continues its phased reopening. For the first time since March, about 300,000 public elementary school students returned to classrooms Tuesday. Middle and high school students report by the end of the week.

On Wednesday, the city will also allow indoor dining -- which has been barred since March -- to return at 25% capacity.

\"We fought so hard as New Yorkers,\" Katz said. \"We can't give up the progress that's allowed us to reopen our city.\"

\"PHOTO:
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
PHOTO: Elementary school students are welcomed back to P.S. 188 as the city's public schools open for in-person learning, Sept. 29, 2020, in New York.
>

Beyond New York City, other areas of New York state are also seeing increases in COVID-19 cases. Statewide, there are 20 ZIP codes with an average positive test rate of 5%, which is five times the statewide average, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday. The clusters in Brooklyn, as well as Rockland and Orange counties, show overlap with large Orthodox Jewish communities, he said.

“That is a fact, so I will be directly meeting with them to talk about it,\" Cuomo said during his daily coronavirus briefing. \"This is a public health concern for their community. It’s also a public health concern for surrounding communities.”

As officials vowed to work with Orthodox Jewish leaders, some have highlighted a \"lingering distrust\" in the community stemming from how the city treated Hasidic mourners at a Brooklyn funeral in April versus Black Lives Matter protesters a month later.

\"The Hasidim were singled out for harsh criticism by Mayor de Blasio, who called their attendance 'absolutely unacceptable.' Those protesting racial injustice were accommodated and encouraged,\" Avi Schick, a former New York State deputy attorney general and the president of the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School, and David Zwiebel, executive vice president of Agudath Israel of America, wrote in an op-ed published in the New York Daily News on Tuesday. \"The point is not to compare the two issues but to highlight why the Hasidic community remains skeptical about whether the city takes their devotion to religious worship, education and ritual as seriously as it takes the priorities of other communities.\"

Their op-ed \"clearly & succinctly explains the double standard that Orthodox Jews often feel subjected to in NYC,\" Brooklyn Councilmember Chaim Deutsch said on social media. \"Yes, we can & will do better. It’s also important to understand where the distrust comes from.\"

Avi Greenstein, the chief executive officer of the Boro Park Community Council, a social service organization in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Borough Park, one of the areas seeing high rates of cases, told the Associated Press Tuesday that the city should be focused on outreach.

“There's a way to do it,” he told the AP. “There's no need to threaten fines.”

ABC News' Aaron Katersky and J. Gabriel Ware contributed to this report.

What to know about the coronavirus:

Tune into ABC at 1 p.m. ET and ABC News Live at 4 p.m. ET every weekday for special coverage of the novel coronavirus with the full ABC News team, including the latest news, context and analysis.

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