De Blasio urges New York companies to order employee vaccinations

[ad_1]

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday urged private businesses in New York City to vaccinate their workers against the coronavirus and indicated he would introduce similar measures to hundreds of thousands of municipal employees.

The mayor’s comments came just days after he announced that all employees in the public hospital system will either have to receive a vaccine against the virus or undergo a weekly check-up.

The move reflects growing concern that New York, like much of the United States, is on the verge of another wave of the pandemic. In just a few weeks, the number of cases in the city has tripled, to an average of more than 650 per day, while vaccination rates have stabilised.

“If people want freedom, if people want jobs, if people want to live again, we have to vaccinate more people,” Mr. de Blasio said Friday during his weekly radio appearance on WNYC. “It is clearly time for whatever mandates we can deliver.”

“I appeal to all New York City employers, including our private hospitals: move immediately to some form of delegation, whatever the maximum you feel you can do,” he added.

Across the country, government officials and private companies are increasingly debating whether vaccination should be ordered, as the highly contagious Delta type of virus is rising in many areas. However, moves to adopt such measures have been limited.

Some hospitals and healthcare systems, including NewYork-Presbyterian and Trinity Health, have announced mandates for vaccines, in some cases leading to union protests. The National Football Association said it may penalize teams for which players refuse to be vaccinated. Delta Air Lines will require new employees to be vaccinated, but it won’t expect the same from its current workers. A federal judge ruled this week that Indiana University may require vaccinations for students and staff for the fall semester.

Requiring vaccinations was less common among municipal governments, which faced strong opposition from unions. Last month, San Francisco became one of the first major US cities to announce that all of its workers, numbering more than 35,000 people, would have to receive a vaccine or take serious disciplinary action.

The authorities said the move would come into effect after the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of at least one of the three vaccines now being administered under an emergency order. They added that after the agency’s approval, San Francisco employees will have 10 weeks to get vaccinated. A subset of workers, those in high-risk settings such as prisons and nursing homes, must be vaccinated by September 15.

However, for government officials who have seemed concerned about imposing a coronavirus vaccine on the general population, requiring public officials to get the vaccines is a potentially powerful tool to mitigate another wave of the pandemic, experts say. Mr. de Blasio’s efforts to attract private employers may also seem critical, as many companies return to in-person work in the fall and students return to school.

Although nearly five million New Yorkers have received at least one dose of the vaccine, the pace at which new shots are given has slowed. Nationally, 57 percent of Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine; 49 percent were fully vaccinated.

New York City officials have tried everything from mobile vaccination sites to at-home vaccination visits to offering incentives like cash and movie tickets, but they haven’t yet seen a spike in vaccinations. Even vaccinations among employees of many city agencies — including the police department, fire department, and public schools — have remained below the citywide full vaccination rate for adults, 65 percent.

“We have reached the limits of pure volunteerism,” Mr. de Blasio said Friday. “It’s time for more mandates.”

Other cities with a high number of cases have taken more limited measures. Chicago has urged residents traveling to certain states to get tested when they return, and the city’s mayor has warned that restrictions on business and activities may soon be imposed. Los Angeles recently reinstated requirements for indoor masks, including for vaccinated residents. But a city official said he’s also considering mandating a vaccine like the state of San Francisco.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron recently announced that residents will be required to show evidence of vaccination, a recent negative test or recovery from Covid-19 to enter most public events and places, including restaurants and cinemas. The country’s vaccination dates soared in the days after the announcement, although the demand has also led to protests.

A spokesman for Eric Adams, the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City and a potential successor to Mr. de Blasio, said Mr. Adams had approved “the mayor’s plan to test high-risk workers more frequently” but declined to say whether Mr. Adams supported vaccine requirements.

“The increase in positive tests and hospitalizations is concerning, and Eric has consistently said that people who have not been vaccinated should be vaccinated ASAP,” spokesman Evan Theiss said.

Brad Lander, a city councilman who recently won the Democratic primary to be the city’s next comptroller, called on Friday for a vaccine requirement for all municipal workers and a vaccination requirement for residents seeking to participate in activities such as movies and dining in restaurants.

updated

July 23, 2021, 10:06 PM ET

“The delta variable requires us to take bolder action if we are to save the lives of our neighbors and bring about an economic recovery for our city,” Mr. Lander said in an interview, referring to guidance from health experts.

Mr. de Blasio indicated he would “seriously consider” a mandate like that in France, and suggested that San Francisco’s restriction on its workforce was “the shape of things to come – more and more states of various kinds”.

Kathryn Wilde, president of the New York City Partnership, a major business group, said about a quarter of the companies her group surveyed said they require vaccinations for workers returning to the office. Others offer regular testing and incentives for those who haven’t been vaccinated.

But Ms Wild said employers thought it would be difficult for them to order the vaccination on their own.

“Employers in New York City would be relieved if the federal government issued some kind of vaccine mandate,” Ms Wild said.

Some of the city’s business leaders said such a requirement would be a burden on employers, who would have to overcome the complexities and legal responsibilities of controlling the vaccination status of their workers.

This issue can be particularly thorny for small, family-owned businesses.

“How do you tell someone in your family that you should get vaccinated or you can’t come to work?” said Randy Pearce, president of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce.

President Biden has so far been reluctant to adopt the requirements for vaccines or masks, despite calls from some public health experts that insisting that people get the vaccines is the only way to ensure that a larger proportion of the population is vaccinated.

Understand the state of vaccine mandates in the United States

On Friday, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said it was not the role of the federal government to enforce a nationwide mandate.

“There will be institutions, there will be businesses from the private sector and others making decisions about how to keep their community safe,” Ms. Psaki said. “This is definitely appropriate.”

Ms. Psaki also said there was “encouraging data” showing that the five states with the highest infection rates – Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri and Nevada – had seen a rise in the number of people vaccinated.

“This is a good sign,” she said, adding that “in the past 10 days, more than 5.2 million Americans have had a chance.”

Despite his appeal to private employers, Mr. de Blasio did not provide details on how to expand vaccination efforts among the more than 300,000 people working for city government, saying only, “We will say things when we are ready to say them.”

Only recently did the mayor become receptive to adopting the condition he placed on 42,244 employees of the city’s general hospital, an idea that has been discussed for several months, according to a city official familiar with the deliberations and unwilling to be publicly identified speaking on such matters.

The official said Mr. de Blasio initially resisted the move, fearing that anything against the mandate would be unpopular and spark union resistance, but that the ferocity of the Delta formula eventually affected him. In recent days, the mayor said, the mayor has become more comfortable with the idea of ​​placing similar requirements on a larger scale across the municipal work force.

Another city official, who also did not want to be identified, said Mr. de Blasio plans to announce plans next week – possibly as early as Monday – to expand weekly testing requirements to other unvaccinated city employees.

Many city workers are represented by unions that have already voiced opposition to vaccine mandates.

State employees, including those who work in New York’s public transportation system, are not currently subject to vaccine mandates.

In May, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo said the state did not have the authority to impose such a requirement until the vaccines received full federal approval, which is expected to come sometime in the fall.

Most state employees, including transport workers, are not subject to regular testing requirements. Beth Garvey, acting attorney for Mr. Cuomo, said there were no immediate plans to impose new testing requirements on state employees.

For the most part, she said, unvaccinated state employees should wear masks, maintain social distancing, and undergo health checks every day.

Ms Garvey also said she did not believe state officials currently had the authority to introduce French-style requirements for proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test in certain places, such as eating.

Although the state had previously imposed such requirements on certain places and large events – creating a vaccine passport that proved controversial – the state of emergency declaration that allowed these measures has expired.

But Ms Garvey said private businesses, including restaurants and entertainment venues, could still impose such restrictions on customers.

Reporting was contributed by Livia Albeck-Ripka, Tim Arango, Louis Ferrer-Sadorny, Joseph Goldstein, Nicole Hong and Dan Levine.

[ad_2]