Indoor dining will resume with limited capacity in New York City restaurants next month, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Friday, more than a month after the governor had banned it to combat a second wave of the coronavirus.

Starting on Feb. 14, the city’s restaurants can seat customers indoors at 25 percent maximum capacity, Mr. Cuomo said.

The announcement was a source of hope for the restaurant industry, an important driver of the city’s economic engine, which has been decimated by ever-changing virus-induced restrictions that have forced many restaurants and bars to go out of business and caused thousands of workers to lose their jobs.

After shutting down restaurants in March, Mr. Cuomo allowed the city’s indoor dining to restart in late September. He prohibited it again in mid-December as holiday travel threatened to increase transmission of the virus and overwhelm hospitals.

Restaurants and bars that have stayed afloat have relied on takeout and delivery, as well as outdoor dining, an increasingly untenable option as the frigid winter advances.

The governor’s decision comes at an incredibly precarious phase in the state’s battle against the virus, which has killed more than 42,500 people in New York State, the one-time epicenter of the pandemic.

While the state’s hospitalization and positivity rates have begun to trend downward after a post-holidays spike, more than 150 people have died each day this week and more than 8,350 remain hospitalized, a level not seen since early May.

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The state’s vaccine rollout has been sluggish, due in part to limited doses from the federal government; only 6 percent of New York’s population has been vaccinated so far. More than 40 cases of the more contagious British variant have also been detected statewide.

In New York City, the number of cases has steadily decreased after a recent peak in early January, but more than 30 ZIP codes are grappling with a seven-day average positive test rate of more than 10 percent. While the positivity rate in Manhattan is at 4.41 percent — well below the citywide seven-day average of 8.63 percent — other boroughs are still struggling with an alarming frequency of cases. In the Bronx, the rate has hovered around 10 percent, according to city data.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Friday that he had spoken to the governor several times in recent days about indoor dining. The mayor expressed concern with new variants and the vaccine supply, but said he understood that restaurants were trying to stay afloat.

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  “The whole idea here is to try to strike the right balance, and I know the governor is trying to do it,” the mayor said shortly before Mr. Cuomo’s announcement.

  Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, has made reopening the economy a tenet of his agenda in 2021, a delicate balancing act that requires weighing public health against the urgent need to resuscitate the economy and raise much-needed tax revenue.

  Earlier this month, he announced a budget proposal for $50 million in tax credits for the restaurant industry, which has often been frustrated by changing rules and guidance from the state.

  New York City eateries have suffered the brunt of the governor’s restrictions. Indoor dining restrictions for restaurants in most other parts of the state were lifted more quickly, and those restaurants have been able to operate at double the indoor capacity allowed in the city.

  On Wednesday, the governor lifted a range of lesser restrictions — including four-person-at-a-table rules and some limits on indoor dining — in dozens of regions upstate. But he delayed a decision on New York City’s restaurants, which provide billions in economic activity and more than 100,000 jobs, citing the city’s density.

  In justifying his decision to ease restrictions statewide, Mr. Cuomo declared bluntly that “the holiday surge is over.” There is, of course, no guarantee that cases will continue to trend downward, but Mr. Cuomo said he had to “deal with the facts that you know,” adding that, “if you are to anticipate possibilities and do nothing, you would be frozen in place, forever.”

  Emma G. Fitzsimmons contributed reporting.

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