New York is the largest media market in the United States, with over 8,500 filming permits filed across the five boroughs in 2019.
In response to COVID, New York went into lockdown in March 2020, which is when filmings also stopped occurring across the city. From April through July 2020, only one permit was approved for a filming event in Brooklyn.
The lockdown had an obvious effect on filmings-- namely, they did not happen. The Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment resumed granting film permits in August 2020, where 7 were issued across the city. However, this was not enough to raise the number of overall media filmings in NYC in 2020, and the totals amounted to less than a third of what they were the year before.
2021's film permit numbers have already surpassed 2020's, but they are still less than half of 2019's amount. This may be due to a number of factors, such as COVID vaccine requirements on sets and social distancing. The NYC film industry is slowly recovering.