By Dan Katzive and Carol Tannenhauser
At a press conference in Times Square on Friday morning, Mayor Eric Adams announced that both the indoor school mask mandate and the requirement to show proof of vaccination for indoor venues will be suspended starting Monday, March 7th.
The mayor had indicated this past Sunday that these steps would be taken today if testing upon return from the school winter break this week continued to show low levels of infection.
“COVID is still here, but we are beating it back,” he said, citing the city’s 1.8% positivity rate. “We’ve done everything we were supposed to….We’ve got to get our economy going.”
Adams graciously thanked his predecessor Mayor Bill de Blasio for having the courage in the face of criticism from all sides to have put the mandates in place when needed. “He made tough calls,” and he turned out to be right, the current Mayor said. “Numbers don’t lie.”
In an accompanying statement issued Friday, the mayor indicated that other covid protocols, including increased ventilation, daily symptom screening, and test kit distribution would remain in place and that children may continue to wear masks if they so choose.
He emphasized in his press conference that teasing and bullying of children opting to remain masked would not be tolerated. Masks will continue to be required in schools with children under age 5 given that that population is not yet eligible for vaccination.
In addition to lifting the school mask mandate, the mayor also confirmed that the “Key to NYC” rules, including requirements that restaurants and gyms check vaccination status, will also be ended as of Monday, though establishments may still require proof of vaccination (and/or masking) if they chose. Note that, under New York State and Federal regulations, masks continue to be required on buses, subways and trains and in stations.
Lastly, the statement also announced the launch of a new color-coded risk assessment system for the city. Currently, the city is at alert level Green, or “low risk”. Mayor Adams acknowledged that “COVID changes,” so we must too. “We will pivot,” he added, “if we see a reason.”
Here here!! Bravo Mayor Adams, time to move on.
Best news in quite a while. “Papers please” culture needs to go yesterday.
“Papers please” culture? Equating a vaccine requirement with a police state is a bad take, but you know that already.
Except that is exactly what it is…
So?! God forbid if we are inconvenienced temporarily because of a global health crisis! How self centered is that?! Just be thankful the mandates are lifting. It was ALWAYS supposed to be temporary until the infections went way down. Too many people rely on bogus conspiracy theories these days, thinking these mandates were going to last forever. Unbelievable. SMH
Glad you’re on board with Voter ID , Brandon!
Please stop with that ridiculous word. It’s extremely juvenile! And doesn’t pertain to anyone or anything but NASCAR and Brandon Brown.
Do some research on digital ID. Might change your mind
Case number in the city does look promising. Not sure if tourists would bring more virus in and then we’d have to reverse course. I suppose only way to find out is to go ahead with the new rules.
Why do away with vax requirement? Unmasking makes sense only with vax requirement.
Tourism. There are many countries that won’t or can’t vaccinate children. Also who wants to go on vacation and be told to wear a mask and get injections? All the Democrat politicians enjoy trips to Florida. Rules are for ther and not for me.
The correct grammar here is “Democratic politicians.” Democrat is a noun. Democratic is the correct adjectival form.
A democrat is not necessarily democratic, but is still a democrat.
“White” is both a noun and an adjective.
That’s what capital letters are for. A Democrat is not necessarity democratic but is still a Democrat.
The Met Opera is still asking for proof of vax as well as the booster, and if you haven’t had the booster they’re requesting a letter from your doctor indicating why you’re exempt, which I think is ridiculous. Adults should be able to explain the situation themselves. I just hope everyone is on the same page soon.
Over 30 per day are still dying of Covid in New York. Sure, it’s lower than the 200 per day dying in January. I guess we now know the acceptable number of lives to lose so we aren’t inconvenienced with basic safety and hygiene measures. Hurray.
Does this mean WSR will return the mask-free newsboy logo to its masthead next week? Then I will know to be optimistic.
Oh dear I just noticed that…………absolute brainwashing………
I’m not sure that eliminating the vaccination requirement in restaurants and indoor venues is a wise decision. What’s wrong with being vaccinated? That’s precisely what got us to the safe level we’re at now? There continue to be morons from other states that are anti-vaxxing and can spread a resurgence of the pandemic in NYC, especially if a new strain of COVID occurs!
NYC has a massive foreign born population. Are you aware that many countries aren’t vaccinating children? These countries aren’t run by big pharma. They use actual science not political science.
Thank goodness. Now let’s clean up messes like this –
https://nypost.com/2022/03/05/newest-ny-board-of-regents-member-shino-tanikawa-has-history-of-anti-white-tweets/
Key to NYC never made sense because the vaccinated spread the virus as much as the unvaccinated, even Fauci said that. It just created a false sense of security.
I do hope that this new mandate doesn’t bring along with it a false sense of security. The prolific use of home testing may have led to a large number of unreported cases. Time will tell.
I think it’s too soon to stop masking in schools and cases may go up again.
yes, lots of states had home testing. I know people who got Covid— all of whom were home tested. Which mean unreported.. So, numbers were higher than reported .