New York is again recommending the use of masks indoors and outdoors

Bloomberg – New York City’s health commissioner issued a health advisory on Friday urging residents to wear face coverings in crowded public places indoors and outdoors.

The move comes as the city is experiencing “unusually high simultaneous spikes” of Covid-19, flu and RSV, the health department said in a statement.

Covid-19 cases have continued to rise in New York since Thanksgiving, according to city data, although they remain well below the levels reached during the peak of the omicron surge in early December 2022. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention list the five boroughs of New York City as having a high level of risk of infection.

The warning “is particularly important for people who are – or meet – those who are at greatest risk of complications from Covid-19, RSV or the flu, such as those over the age of 65 and immunosuppressed people.

“The holidays are all about coming together and there is a way to get together safely, even when respiratory viruses in our city are unusually high,” said Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan.

He also urged New Yorkers to get vaccinated against the Covid-19 virus and the flu, even if they have been previously vaccinated.

Lacking the force of law, the warning probably won’t do much to change behavior in a city that has been accustomed to wearing masks for months. While some masks may be seen on people riding the subway or shopping in busy stores, they are no longer required on public transit systems or in schools.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg News reported this week that the city is shutting down its pandemic response lab, a much-vaunted effort to ramp up testing capacity at the height of Covid. City labs conducted fewer than a million Covid tests last month, up from 4.6 million in January, according to state data.