New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio maintained Monday that the city does not need to reinstate a face mask mandate even though coronavirus infection rates are ticking back up in the Big Apple due to the highly contagious Delta variant.
Local public health experts have pleaded for a resumption of indoor mask-wearing amid the recent infection spike, but de Blasio said in his daily briefing that he’d be “doing a disservice” by heeding those calls and argued the focus should be exclusively on vaccinations.
“Let’s address the problem by getting more people vaccinated and going right at it, and knocking down this variant,” he said from City Hall. “You know, a mask doesn’t arrest the progress of the variant — vaccination does. So we’re gonna go where the real impact is, that’s the bottom line.”
According to the latest Health Department data, more than 69% of adults in the city have received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine and more than 64% are fully immunized. But when accounting for the entire population, 41.9% of New York City residents still haven’t gotten vaccinated, the data shows.
Meanwhile, the city’s test positivity rate — which provides a snapshot of how fast the virus is spreading — has been steadily rising for weeks, with the seven-day rolling average reaching 1.69% on Monday, Health Department data shows.
The troubling trend is driven by delta, which has become the city’s most dominant virus strain after months of plummeting infection rates.
Manhattan Councilmember Mark Levine, who chairs the City Council’s Health Committee, called on the de Blasio administration over the weekend to again require all New Yorkers — regardless of vaccination status — to wear masks in public indoor settings like grocery stores, movie theaters and restaurants.
Noting that the city’s COVID-19 case growth has exploded by 203% in just the past two weeks, Levine said Monday that the resumption of such a mandate could protect New York against suffering a major virus resurgence.
“We can’t ignore what’s happening here,” Levine wrote on Twitter.
Dr. David Chokshi, de Blasio’s Health Commissioner, countered in the briefing that the new wave of infections are almost exclusively impacting unvaccinated individuals and suggested those who have gotten their shots should not have to adjust their way of life as a result.
“Our concern is primarily for people who remain unvaccinated, which is why the single most important thing that we can do to keep individuals as well as our communities, our city safe is to get as many people vaccinated as possible,” Chokshi said.
However, the de Blasio administration does not appear to have an additional plan of action immediately in the works to boost vaccinations.
Asked about the fact the nearly one-third of city hospital staff remains unvaccinated, de Blasio simply said he’s “very hopeful” that will soon change, but stopped short of supporting a vaccine mandate for that demographic.
“Those conversations are going on right now,” he added.
De Blasio was more adamant about the Central Park concert he has planned for next month to celebrate the city’s “comeback” from the pandemic.
“You’ve heard some of the initial acts. They’re amazing,” de Blasio said, referring to his previous announcement that Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Jennifer Hudson are among the Aug. 21 concert’s headliners. “There’s a lot more coming, that’s all I can say. It’s going to be one of the most memorable concerts in the history of New York City.”
It’s not just New York City that is seeing a delta-driven surge in coronavirus infections.
Statewide, the coronavirus test positivity rate is also going up, with the seven-day rolling average count clinching 1.26% Monday, according to New York State Department of Health data.
Outside of New York, the delta variant is wreaking even more havoc, with states like Missouri reporting skyrocketing infection rates amid a persistent hesitancy to get vaccinated among certain demographics.
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