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Cuomo Mandates Vaccination of Transit Workers, Urges Businesses to Serve Only Vaccinated Customers

Cuomo Mandates Vaccination of Transit Workers, Urges Businesses to Serve Only Vaccinated Customers

by Yehudit Garmaise

     Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced this morning that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the New York Port Authority are adopting the policy that all employees, in addition to healthcare workers, must be vaccinated or tested twice weekly, beginning on Labor Day.

    "If you are unvaccinated, the Delta variant should be a major concern, and you should be worried about it," Gov. Cuomo said.

     If the numbers of the of the quickly spreading Delta variant continue to go up, the governor said, nursing home workers and teachers will next be required to be vaccinated.

     “We are facilitating the testing and opening more state-run vaccine sites,” the governor said. “If you wait to act until it is obvious, it is already too late.

     “The political system normally wait to act when it is too late because politicians don’t like to make controversial decisions. Politicians like to make people happy.

     “People are going to be upset no matter what you do. We need to show leadership and do it for everyone’s safety.”

     Gov. Cuomo said that he knows his vaccination mandates will be controversial, but he feels that he is making the right decision because the US. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said that while vaccinated people are far less likely to become so ill with the Delta variant that they will become hospitalized, the CDC has said that vaccinated people can transmit the virus, which could result in a whole new pandemic with an ever-mutating virus that would require a new vaccine.

    Gov. Cuomo also asked private businesses today to serve and employ only people who are vaccinated.

     “I am asking private businesses to go to vaccine-only admission,” Gov. Cuomo said. “I believe this vaccine-only policy is in the businesses’ best interests.” 

     The governor said that businesses should use Excelsior passes, apps, and vaccination cards for customers to prove their vaccination statuses. 

     “Serving only vaccinated people is going to help your business, not hurt it,” Gov. Cuomo said. “We need say to people, ‘If you don’t have a vaccine, you can’t come in.’”

     The governor also strongly urged local governments to follow the CDC’s new mask guidance, however the state cannot yet mandate masks or vaccination without a law.

     “Locals should follow CDC mask guidance,” the governor said. “Don’t deny reality. Better safe than sorry.”

Photo: Marc A. Hermann / MTA


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