NEW YORK – New York City’s top health leaders voted on Tuesday to lift the nation’s most stringent COVID-19 vaccination mandate implemented by former Mayor Bill de Blasio in the final days of his administration. . The program ends next week. Vaccination mandates for high-risk extracurricular activities in schools will also end.
Both votes were unanimous. The rules will expire on Tuesday, November 1, according to Mayor Eric Adams’ announcement in late September. From that moment on, private employers will have the possibility to keep the mandate if they wish, but it will no longer be provided for by the municipal health ordinance.
However, the vaccine mandate will remain in place for tens of thousands of city workers, many of whom have expressed frustration over having to abide by a protocol that is no longer considered necessary outside the public domain.
Adams, who kept the private sector mandate when he took office earlier this year despite protests, said in late September that the private government would end on November 1. However, he insisted that the city’s workforce of over 300,000 employees continues to lead by example and uphold municipal order. It is not clear when it could end.
The Democrat lifted the vaccination requirement for professional athletes in late March when the vaccine controversy surrounded Kyrie Irving of the Nets, arousing the ire of companies who shouted for double standards.
However, it is unclear how many private sector employees lost their jobs during their tenure or if they might not be eligible to get it back now that it’s finished. When asked directly about the city’s mandate, which saw more than 1,500 city employees laid off at the time of his September announcement, Adams said he doesn’t have an end date.
Representatives of the FDNY and NYPD trade unions were quick to criticize the decision as “arbitrary” and “capricious”.
The latest COVID developments in New York come amid growing caution about the emergence of new COVID variants, some of which have yet to be detected in the United States, which appear to be more vaccine resistant and contagious.
