>
NYC mayor Eric Adams FINALLY scraps Covid vaccine mandates for city workers — but 1,400 refuseniks who were fired will need to reapply to get their jobs back
- The mayor announced the major change on Monday morning
New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Monday that he would soon reverse the vaccine mandate for city employees.
Starting Friday, proof of vaccination will no longer be required to work for the city. The more than 1,400 city workers who lost their jobs for not being vaccinated 12 months ago will still have to reapply to get their jobs back, though.
The mayor said that because the vast majority of workers are vaccinated, and because there are tools like Paxlovid available to prevent serious infection, the mandate has ‘served its purpose’.
It comes as pressure on the mayor to lift remaining Covid orders mounts. Former employees filed a $250million lawsuit in January, wanting to be compensated for lost income. They cited leading US officials such as President Joe Biden who declared the pandemic over last year.
The price of the vaccines in the US is set to rocket. While Americans have been able to get the jabs free over the past two years, out-of-pocket costs could soon be upwards of $100 for some.
‘As we near our third year with COVID-19, we continue to evaluate existing measures and adjust them as needed,’ Anne Willaims-Ison, NYC deputy mayor for the Health and Human Services, said in a statement.
‘The City’s vaccine requirement is one such measure and has yielded significant results with 96 percent of city workers vaccinated with the primary series.’
Dr Ashwin Vasan, the commissioner of NYC health, said: ‘We’re grateful that we can now, as we leave the emergency phase of the pandemic, modify more or the rules that have gotten us to this point.’
Those fired for refusing the vaccine included firefighters, librarians, teachers and other city employees. In total, 1,430 employees were initially affected.
Police officers who were fired because of the mandate were given their jobs back as part of a September decision by the state supreme court.
‘The vaccine mandate was an improper infringement on our members’ right to make personal medical decisions in consultation with their own health care professionals,’ Patrick Lynch, president of the city’s Police Benevolent Association, said at the time.
These mandates were announced in October 2021 under then-Mayor Bill de Blasio. He said at the time it would ‘end the Covid era’.
Mayor Adams took office on January 1, 2022 and kept the orders in place. The deadline for receiving the shot for city employees was February 11.
When the order was put in place, the Delta variant was still the nation’s dominant strain.
Initially, the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid vaccines were more than 90 percent effective at preventing infection from the virus.
Only a month later, the vaccine-resistant Omicron variant emerged, plummeting the protection even people with booster shots had from infection.
Many argued that the change in the effectiveness of the shots made the mandate moot, with unions and city workers protesting to have if lifted in the days leading up to the deadline.
It was reported that 4,000 employees, around one percent of the city’s workforce, were still unvaccinated on the deadline day.
By the end of the workday, just 1,400 employees were still unvaccinated. They were placed on unpaid leave and later terminated.
This is a developing story