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The Big Apple’s vaccine mandates for private employers and city workers will remain in effect, even as Mayor Eric Adams plans to end its vaccine passport and requirements that school students mask up.
“When we talk about the employee mandates, it’s imperative for the businesses to continue to create a safe environment for their employees,” Hizzoner told reporters Monday at an unrelated press conference in The Bronx.
He argued the decision was backed by advice from the city’s top public health officials, who he said had determined that the passport program could be lifted but the inoculation mandates should remain.
“We need to keep in place the mandate for those who are professional employees or workers, and that includes city workers as well,” he added. “It sends a mixed message if we lift it in one area and we don’t do the same thing with city employees and others. Employees have to be vaccinated.”
The comments came a day after Adams announced that starting March 7, the City Hall would lift its masking rules in city schools and stop requiring that patrons seeking indoor service at bars, restaurants, nightclubs, gyms and other venues show proof of vaccination.
City Hall said the coming changes just hours after Gov. Kathy Hochul ended the state’s mask mandate for students, but allowed districts to keep the policy in place.
Adams said Sunday the reduction in COVID mitigation measures would only take effect if there were no unforeseen spikes in case numbers.
But the remaining rules will keep Kyrie Irving, the Brooklyn Nets superstar, off the Barclays Center hardwood, Adams confirmed Monday.
“I want Kyrie on the court. I want to get that ring so badly, I want it. But there’s so much at stake here,” he told the hosts of financial cable network CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” program,
“We want to find a way to get Kyrie on the court, but this is a big issue,” Adams told the program. “I can’t have my city closed down again, and it would send the wrong message just to have the exception for one player I can when we’re telling a countless number of New York City employees if you don’t follow the rules, you won’t be able to be employed.”
Adams’s interview came after he rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street.
“Ringing this iconic opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange is not only how New York’s economy opens up every morning, but how the worldwide economy opens for business every day,” he said in a statement.
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