Mayor Eric Adams proposed giving New York City workers a three-day workweek in order to jumpstart the local economy.
However, that period would then be extended to a five-day week, once the workforce returns to normal activities.
“I propose that we start with a three-day week, so that people see how safe it is to go back to work. Then we go back to a five-day week,” he said Thursday during a press conference.
“We can do this in a period of three weeks and then be in normal operation in our city,” he added.
Adams pointed out that the New York economy will be reactivated once the workers return to the office, since different industries depend on it.
“It’s time to get back to work. The COVID pandemic is here, but we have to learn to live with the situation in a smart way. The 30% office occupancy is a real challenge for us.”
New York State on Thursday reported 130 new COVID deaths, the highest number in a single day since the mass vaccination, and more than 11,000 hospital admissions, the highest total since the peak of the crisis in spring 2020.
Governor Kathy Hochul reported 84,202 new cases of COVID in the last day, which is 1,274 cases less than the single-day record of 85,476 that the president announced on the first day of the new year.
More than one in five New York COVID tests are testing positive these days, and the city has seen positivity rates approaching one in three tests over the past month.
Despite the number of daily cases, experts say that infections alone, which are milder with omicron compared to delta, are not their main concern.
As elected officials, experts and public health leaders agree, the primary concern is COVID hospitalization and mortality rates. Those critical indicators also show large increases over the past six weeks, in addition to a brief Christmas recession. New York City’s moving average for hospitalizations has risen 62% from its four-week averages and has grown nearly ninefold since Dec. 1.
The five counties now account for more than half of the more than 11,000 hospitalized COVID patients statewide. Totals for both the state and the city are currently the highest since late April 2020, the worst of the early pandemic.
Still, hospitalizations don’t tell the whole story. Some cases in the official count involve COVID-19 infections that weren’t what put patients in the hospital in the first place. Many have underlying conditions that exacerbate the severity of their COVID-related illnesses.
According to Dr. Fritz François, chief of hospital operations at NYU Langone Health, 65% of patients admitted to that system with COVID recently were hospitalized primarily for another cause and were found to have the virus.
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