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Rats Are Swarming Trash On New York’s Empty Streets

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New York’s rats didn’t get the memo on social distancing.

With the coronavirus lockdown emptying Manhattan’s sidewalks and shuttering restaurant kitchens, the city’s rat population has come out of the sewers in numbers residents say they’ve never seen before. Inside Edition’s recurring “Rat Patrol” series sent camera crews with flashlights into the dark to document it, and the footage — published May 8, 2020 under the title “Rats Are Swarming Trash On New York’s Empty Streets” — shows rodents running down sidewalks, climbing onto parked cars and tearing into overflowing trash cans in broad view, with nobody around to scare them off.

• Camera crews documented swarming rats in multiple neighborhoods, from the Upper West Side’s residential blocks to the cramped alleyways of the Financial District.
• The single heaviest concentration was filmed outside a Midtown Chipotle on Avenue of the Americas near Radio City Music Hall.
• Mayor Bill de Blasio addressed complaints about that exact Chipotle location a week earlier, promising action — yet Inside Edition’s follow-up footage found the swarms still in force.

Empty Sidewalks Become a Rat Highway

New York’s rats have always had the run of the alleys after dark, but the pandemic lockdown stripped away the foot traffic, honking cabs and late-night bar crowds that normally kept them cautious. With the sidewalks deserted, Inside Edition’s cameras caught rodents emerging from sewer grates and sprinting across open pavement in numbers that would have been unthinkable with pedestrians around. The Upper West Side — not exactly known for rat problems — turned up just as much activity as the grittier stretches downtown.

The Financial District’s narrow alleyways offered another hot zone, where restaurant closures left less food waste in dumpsters but also fewer humans to interrupt a feeding run. Rats that would normally scatter at the first footstep instead lingered in the open, working over trash bags in full view of the flashlight beams.

The Midtown Chipotle Nobody Could Fix

The worst of it was outside a Chipotle on Avenue of the Americas near Radio City Music Hall, where Inside Edition’s crew filmed rats swarming the outdoor garbage bins in force. That location wasn’t a surprise to City Hall — Mayor Bill de Blasio had fielded complaints about the exact same spot a week earlier during a press conference.

“We are certainly not going to ever let it get to a worse situation, we’re going to fight it back.”

De Blasio’s promise didn’t hold up on camera. Inside Edition’s follow-up visit to that same block found the rats still swarming the trash in the same numbers, undercutting the city’s assurance that the problem was under control.

Behavioral Changes in Urban Rats

Matt Frye of Cornell University’s New York State Integrated Pest Management Program explained the behavior shift to Inside Edition: with restaurant food waste all but eliminated by shutdowns, rats lost their usual, reliable supply and were forced into public spaces they’d normally avoid. That scarcity, according to Frye, has also driven heightened aggression among the rodents themselves — including fighting and cannibalism as competition for scraps intensifies. It’s a dynamic not unlike what’s been documented with other opportunistic urban wildlife swarming for scraps, as seen in viral raccoon-mobbing footage from suburban trash cans.

The Health Angle

Experts cited in the coverage were clear that there’s no evidence rats can contract COVID-19 themselves. The concern instead is what they can carry on their paws and fur after crawling through sewers and garbage — a reminder that even non-infected wildlife can become a vector for other pathogens when it’s suddenly interacting with human food waste at close range. It’s a different threat profile than, say, an aggressive insect encounter like the one in Giant Murder Hornet vs Rat, Cicada and Mantis, but the underlying story is the same: New York’s ecosystem of pests didn’t disappear when people went inside, it just got louder.

Inside Edition’s cameras went back to that Midtown Chipotle after the mayor’s press conference specifically to see if anything had changed. It hadn’t — the swarm was still there, still working the same bins, a week after City Hall said it wouldn’t let the situation get worse.