De Blasio to city workers: get vaccinated—or be tested weekly
The mandate, which will go into effect Sept. 13, comes as Brooklyn is the borough with the second-lowest vaccination rates in the city
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced at a press conference on Monday that all city employees must be vaccinated against the coronavirus by September 13 or be subject to weekly testing. The new guidance, affecting more than 300,000 city workers including teachers, police officers, and sanitation workers comes a week after the mayor instituted identical requirements for hospital workers to adhere to by August 3.
These new vaccine mandates arrive during a precipitous rise of Coronavirus cases in unvaccinated communities in New York and across the United States as the Delta variant has spread across the country. During the Monday morning press conference, de Blasio said that the “number one way to fight [the Delta variant] is to get vaccinated,” calling September the “pivot point of the recovery … when many employers are bringing back their employees … when school starts full strength … when it all happens.”
Source NYC Health
Only 48 percent of Brooklynites are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 (the lowest in any borough besides the Bronx) and daily case counts have increased since early July with around 250 people testing positive in Brooklyn each day between the 15th to the 23rd of July. Several zip codes in Southern Brooklyn including Brighton Beach, Coney Island, Gravesend, and Homecrest have seen their positivity rates hover near 5 percent, the highest rate in the city.
Source NYC Health
De Blasio picked September 13 as the crucial date because it’s the first full day of school for New York Students and the nation’s largest teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers displayed their approval for the mandate saying in a statement from spokeswoman Alison Gendar that, “This approach puts the emphasis on vaccination but still allows for personal choice and provides additional safeguards through regular testing.”
Around 60 percent of New York Cities’ teachers are vaccinated, a higher rate than both the NYPD, which said last week that 43 percent of its workforce is vaccinated, and the FDNY at 55 percent.
Henry Garrido, the executive director of District Council 37 of AFSCME, the city’s largest public employees’ union, singled out issues with the mayor’s plan saying that “If City Hall intends to test our members weekly, they must first meet us at the table to bargain … New York City is a union town and that cannot be ignored.”
De Blasio was adamant on Monday however, arguing that “When it comes to the health and safety of our workers in the midst of a global pandemic, we have the right, as employers, to take urgent action to protect people’s health, to protect their lives.” De Blasio said that New York City was “leading by example” with these mandates and that he would allow “No more excuses, no more delays … It’s quite clear the Delta variant has changed the game. Now it’s time to focus on one thing and one thing only—vaccination.”
Only hours after de Blasio announced the vaccine mandate for city workers on Monday California governor Gavin Newsome declared that all public employees in California would institute a similar mandate for its state employees.
Brooklynites interested in taking the vaccine can find the shots nearest to them at https://vaccinefinder.nyc.gov/
