91% of City Workers Vaccinated, but 2,300 Firefighters Called in Sick This Morning

By Yehudit Garmaise

      Out of 400,000 city workers, 9,000 city workers are on leave without pay this morning after choosing not to get vaccinated, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced this morning, when he said that 91% of the New York City’s municipal workforce has not gotten their shots.

     The vaccination numbers for the city’s first responders, however, are not quite so high: with 84% of the NYPD vaccinated, 77% of the FDNY, 88% of the Emergency Medical Services, and 83% of the Department of Sanitation.

     This morning at the mayor’s press conference, FDNY Commissioner Dan Nigro, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea, and Department of Sanitation Commissioner Ed Grayson all reassured New Yorkers that despite the staffing gaps, city services should be business as usual today. 

     “We are seeing good, normal response times and fire stations open across the city,” said FDNY Commissioner Nigro, “but that is because the FDNY who were vaccinated are “shouldering the burden” of extra work and emergency calls.”

     To protest the city’s vaccine mandate, 2,300 firefighters have called in sick today, Nigro said that “2,300 is a phenomenal number: It should be under 1,000.”

     “Since the mandate was issued, our medical spiked up, and we know that that is related to the mandate,” Commissioner Nigro said.

     “I would implore them: ‘If you are sick, you are sick. But if you are not sick, I want to see you back at work.’”

     When Commissioner Nigro was asked what he thought of the firefighters’ complaint that they only had nine days to comply with the vaccine mandate, he pointed out that members of the FDNY have had opportunities to get vaccinated since early 2021.

     “For more than 10 months, every member had every opportunity to get vaccinated,” Commissioner Nigro said. “The nine days is incorrect. The firefighters can get vaccinated and come off leave without pay.

     “They can come in, get vaccinated and move on.”

     “I asked them to rethink it. They are not just affecting New Yorkers, but their brothers and sisters, who are asked to fill in for them.”

     Commissioner Dermot Shea similarly reassured New Yorkers by saying, “There is literally no effect on service right now.”

     “We think we are in really, really strong shape,” Commissioner Shea said of the 85% of the NYPD that is vaccinated and at work today.

     Of the 15% of the NYPD who is not yet vaccinated, Commissioner Shea said that many have submitted requests to be excused from the vaccine mandate for religious or medical reasons, which are accommodations that the healthcare workers and the Department of Education workers were not offered.

     Although New Yorkers saw a slowdown in trash pickups last week while Sanitation workers briefly neglected their duties to protest the vaccine mandate, after Department of Sanitation New York (DSNY) Commissioner Ed Grayson directed his fleets to work over the weekend to recover.

    “We did experience a delay in trash pickups throughout [last] week,” said Grayson, who added that the DSNY has seen a huge increase in vaccination rates since the mandate. “With 12,000 tons [of garbage] coming out every day in residential areas, once you get behind, going to take a little bit of time to right the ship.”

 Credit: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office.