Background: Public health interventions have been implemented to contain the outbreak of COVID-19 in New York City. However, the assessment of those interventions, e.g. social distancing, cloth face covering based on the real-world data from filed study is lacking. Methods: The SEIR compartmental model was used to evaluate the social distancing and cloth face covering effect on the daily culminative laboratory confirmed cases in NYC, and COVID-19 transmissibility. The latter was measured by Rt reproduction numbers in three phases which were based on two interventions in implemented in the timeline. Also, a sensitivity analysis was conducted to test the stability of the modeling under a series of scenario to predict intervention effects. Results: From phases 1 to 3, slopes of cumulative confirmed cases decreased, indicating the increase in infection rate significantly declined (p < 0.05). The transmissibility also decreased from phase 1 to phase 3. The Initial, R0 was 4.60 in Phase 1 without any intervention. After social distancing, the Rt value was reduced by 68%, while after the mask recommendation, it was further reduced by ~60%. Interventions resulted in significant reduction of confirmed case numbers, relative to predicted values based on SEIR model without intervention. Conclusion: Our findings highlight the effectiveness of social distancing and cloth face coverings in slowing down the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in NYC. Implementation of those interventions may be powerful tools for preventing spread of respiratory infectious diseases such as COVID-19 in the future.