NYC Considers Mask Guidance, as Some Restaurants Mandate Vaccines

     Mayor Bill de Blasio said that he will clarify whether he will reinstate mandatory mask-wearing in New York City on Monday, which will be almost a week after the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued new mask guidance for Americans who live in areas in which COVID is once again rising because of the highly contagious Delta variant.

      Judging from the mayor’s comments from the last week, he is much more focused on vaccinating all New Yorkers, rather than requiring masks beyond what is already required in healthcare facilities, mass transit, and other crowded setting. 

     “Our focus is vaccination,” the mayor said today. “On Monday, we’ll give a shape of things to people to help guide them, while emphasizing the thing that’s absolutely irreplaceable is vaccination.”

       Because New York City, whose test positivity rate has been creeping up for weeks, reaching 2.68% today, has seen at least 50 new COVID-19 infections per every 100,000 residents on a seven-day average, all five boroughs of the city are considered the CDC to be again considered areas with “high or substantial” COVID transmissibility rates.

     “Other states, and other cities, have done other things, [like reissuing masking requirements], but we are focused on getting vaccination front and center, making sure every strategy supports vaccination first,” the mayor said.

      Despite the city’s efforts to provide a plethora of tempting incentives: including $100 debit cards, 1,000 conveniently located vaccination sites throughout the city, plus mobile units, which the mayor told BoroPark24 yesterday that he will be providing more of in the near future, nearly 41% of the city’s population has not gotten their first shots yet.

     After announcing this week that the city’s municipal and healthcare workers must vaccinated or submit to weekly testing or risk unpaid suspensions, starting this fall, the mayor urged the private sector to adopt similar vaccination mandates of their employees.

    Today, New York City restaurateur Danny Meyer, was the first private owner to adopt a vaccination mandate, when he said that his hospitality group’s 18 restaurants in the city will require proof of vaccination from both employees and customers.

     “The whole ballgame is vaccination,” de Blasio said. “Every single organization out there — whatever you are, whomever you are, big, small — get going on requiring vaccinations in any form because that’s what’s going to save us.”

     “Would you ever consider going back to something like 25% seating capacity?” the mayor reported Meyer being asked.

     “[Restrictions are] so yesterday," Meyer responded. "We don’t ever want to do that again. We want to use vaccination to ensure that we can be fully open.”