New York – New York City expanded its array of coronavirus (COVID-19) mandates on Monday, setting vaccine requirements for children as young as five years old and for workers at all private-sector companies as the highly transmissible Omicron variant pushes into more American states.
The most-populous US city set a December 27 deadline for all 184 000 businesses within its limits to make their employees show proof they have been vaccinated, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
In addition, children 5 to 11 years old must get at least one dose by December 14 and those 12 and older need to be fully vaccinated by December 27 to enter restaurants and participate in extracurricular school activities, such as sports, band and dances.
“Vaccination is the way out of this pandemic, and these are bold, first-in-the-nation measures to encourage New Yorkers to keep themselves and their communities safe,” de Blasio, who leaves office next month, said in a statement.
De Blasio’s successor, Eric Adams, will evaluate the mandate and other strategies to combat the pandemic when he takes office in January, his spokesperson, Evan Thies, said.
The mandate means that many young people, or their parents, will need to scramble to get a shot to keep eating out or participating in after-school activities. Only about 27% of New Yorkers ages 5 to 12 have taken at least one dose and just 15% are fully vaccinated, according to the city’s website.
Vaccination mandates are a divisive issue nationally, and views among adults about having to vaccinate children differed in New York on Monday.
Pia Fernandez-Vega, a resident of the borough of Queens, who was with her 14-year-old daughter, said: “We are a free country. If we are going to be mandated to have the vaccine, I think our freedom is being suppressed.”
Eunah Ainslie, also from Queens, said: “I think the mandate is great.” Ainslie said her niece and nephew both got COVID-19 at their daycare centers and that she supports vaccines for children.
For adult New Yorkers, vaccination rates are much higher. About 89% have received at least one vaccine dose, topping the national rate of 83.5 per cent reported by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Many companies, including several Wall Street banks headquartered in New York, such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N), Morgan Stanley (MS.N) and Citigroup Inc (C.N), already require vaccines for anyone coming into their offices. (Reuters)
