Expect To Wear Masks Until At Least June, De Blasio Says

New York City NY

10 March, 2021

1:17 PM

Description

NEW YORK CITY — Don't expect to hang up your mask anytime soon, New York City. Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday's that New Yorkers likely will be wearing masks to ward against the coronavirus until at least June. His prediction isn't necessarily a surprise — health officials generally advise mask wearing even after receiving COVID-19 vaccine protection — given the city's goal of hitting 5 million vaccinations by that month. But it served as a reminder that there's still a long road ahead given the rise of new variants in the city — a topic de Blasio and health officials devoted much of Wednesday's briefing toward. "I think the most important thing you can take away from today's presentation is that the basic steps people are taking to protect themselves work, and they need to keep doing it: not stop," de Blasio said. About 2.45 million doses of coronavirus vaccine have so far been administered in New York City, according to the latest data. The total is larger than the entire population of Houston, the fourth-largest city in the nation. And yet de Blasio repeated a near-daily mantra: "Supply. Supply. Supply." As in, the city's regular supply of vaccine still falls short of its capacity to administer 500,000 doses a week. De Blasio welcomed Gov. Andrew Cuomo's recent announcement that New Yorkers who are 60 and up are eligible for the vaccine, but he again called for "local control" to expand eligibility even wider. "How on earth are our sanitation workers not eligible?" he said. "How on earth our folks who work in our court system not eligible? And jurors and prosecutors — the people we need to bring back our criminal justice system — they're not eligible to be vaccinated. That makes zero sense, zero." When asked by NBC 4 reporter Andrew Siff when all New Yorkers will be eligible for the vaccine, de Blasio said "not yet." More than half of New York City's residents are now eligible for the vaccine, which is roughly 4 to 5 million people, he said. It'll take a substantial amount of time to get through them, he said. "So I don't think open vaccination happens in March," he said. "I don't think it happens in April. Maybe May, June would be my layman's sense." Jay Varma, the city's senior health adviser, agreed fully open vaccinations are still months away. "Based on everything we know about supply right now, I think the earliest we would estimate that that would happen would be probably sometime in May or towards the end of it," he said. "That would be really the earliest upper limit."