In front of a cinema in the Greenwich Village neighborhood, Thisbe has his entrance ticket in hand and his vaccination card against Covid-19. Since Tuesday that certificate is the “open sesame” for many activities in New York where the pandemic left its mark.
“I feel more comfortable if everyone is vaccinated in the cinema,” explains this 17-year-old student, who is waiting for a friend to see Pablo Larraín’s Chilean drama Ema.
Does the obligation to vaccinate threaten freedom? At the entrance of the small cinema Thisbe dismisses that question.
“It is your decision if you do not want to be vaccinated, but it is a selfish choice,” explains the young woman who received her first dose in April, as soon as she could, to “protect her family.”
Restaurants, museums, concert halls, bowling alleys, aquariums, discotheques, closed swimming pools and gyms … From Tuesday it is necessary to show a certificate have received at least one dose of anti-covid-19 vaccine, your photo or a digital pass on your phone, to access a long list of indoor activities.
From Broadway to the Met Opera, the most prestigious cultural sites that will reopen from September clearly announce it: without vaccination there is no access.
The cities of San Francisco and New Orleans took similar steps.
“On terrace”
In New York, establishments have until September 13 to adapt before the first controls, but from now on the new rules are being announced in numerous shop windows.
Elena Batyuk, manager of the Reggio cafe-restaurant, wants to do pedagogy during that time. “What I want to avoid is clients getting angry at my team or yelling at them,” he explains.
“Asking people for their medical information … telling them what to do is not my thing,” he snorts. “But if that’s what they ask of us (…), everyone will be welcome here. Only some will be in Terrace“Elena sighs.
In the city of more than 8 million inhabitants, about 75% of adults have received at least one dose, according to the mayor’s office, which is trying to reactivate the vaccination promising $ 100 for every first dose.
“Hit first”
A few miles from Greenwich Village, at her little Brooklyn bar called Paul’s, Jillian Wowak fully supports mandatory vaccination, in a rush to leave the pandemic behind.
“Those who do not get vaccinated, somehow I feel that they are playing with my money,” explains this manager who asks her clients to be immunized. “You can’t keep one here mask to eat or drink. If I have to make space between the clients, I can accommodate only four people, “he ironically.
Throughout the city there are empty windows, despite the resumption of activities in the spring. Most foreign tourists have not returned yet and the emergence of hypercontagious delta variant makes fear a new blow.
“We were the first and the most affected” in the spring of 2020, recalls Diane Gnagnarelli, a 62-year-old theater teacher, who recalls that one of her nephews who lived near a city hospital where refrigerated trucks were transformed into makeshift morgues.
“Here we live on top of each other, so with the delta variant (…) we are forced to trust science,” she adds, convinced that some form of compulsory vaccination it will eventually prevail.
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