Mayor Eric Adams vowed to "lead" New York City to its bounce-back.
ABC News
Mayor Eric Adams said Sunday amid skyrocketing city COVID cases that his “next move” will be to decide whether to mandate booster shots for municipal workers.
“That’s our next move, a decision,” he said on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”
“We’re going to examine the numbers. If we feel we have to get to a place of making that mandatory, we want to do that.”
City workers have been mandated since November to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
The coronavirus, fueled by the highly contagious Omicron variant, has been spreading in the Big Apple, with the latest daily figures released Saturday showing 49,724 new confirmed cases a day earlier. That number represented more than half the total tallied statewide, a record-breaking 85,476.
Big Apple hospitalizations hit 4,326, a figure “well above last winter’s peak,” tweeted Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine. The city’s daily death toll was 33, the state said.
By comparison, data released Friday showed the city recorded 43,985 new daily cases the day before and 3,925 hospitalizations, according to the state and Levine.
The state said 37 people died from COVID in the Big Apple.
For the state overall, data released Saturday showed that a day earlier, hospitalizations were 532 patients, to 8,451. Another 88 people died.
On Thursday, Adams released a plan that stated the city will “immediately study” if vaccine requirements would need to include compulsory booster doses. Public-school students may also need to be vaccinated for the next school year, according to the blueprint.
Last week, Adams issued executive orders cementing his predecessor Bill de Blasio’s vaccine policies — including the “Key to NYC” program that requires proof of vaccination to enter many indoor venues. In addition, he on Thursday revealed that he is keeping de Blasio’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates for public- and private-sector employees.
On Sunday, Adams reprimanded the minority of New Yorkers who have so far refused to get their shots.
“I say to those who are not vaccinated: Stop it. It’s time to get vaccinated. It’s time to have the booster shots. You endanger yourself, and you are endangering the public and your family as well.”
Currently, about 82 percent of Big Apple residents have received at least one dose of a coronavirus immunization, including just under 93 percent of adults, according to city data. As of late December, records showed that just 40 percent of eligible New Yorkers have gotten that extra dose.
Meanwhile, Adams encouraged parents worried about students catching the coronavirus to send their kids to school when classes return Monday after the winter break.
“I say to them: Fear not sending them back,” he told Stephanopoulos. “The safest place for children is inside the school. The numbers of transmissions are low, your children is in a safe place to learn and continue to thrive.”
Also Sunday, Adams predicted that “resilient” New York City will recover from the COVID-19 pandemic like it did after 9/11.
“I could always reflect on Sept. 11, 2001, when our center of trade was attacked. People looked at our city, and they focused on the 11th. I didn’t. I focused on the 12th. We got up. Retailers sold goods, teachers taught, builders built, and that’s where we are now,” he said on MSNBC.
“These moments may seem dark and despair, but we’re resilient, and we want to cycle out of COVID, regrow our economy and ensure that our city is safe.”
Hizzoner was responding to a question from the network’s Jonathan Capehart, who asked if the Big Apple would “really” rebound as Adams has predicted, given recent Broadway show and restaurant closures amid an Omicron-driven surge in cases, and increases in violent crime.
During a subsequent appearance on ABC, Adams vowed to “lead” the Big Apple to its bounce-back.
“This is an amazing city,” the mayor said. “Generals don’t lead their troops from the back; they lead their troops from the front. I’m going to lead my city into this victory from the front.
“We are resilient, we are going to get through this.”
Meanwhile, Adams also reiterated his intention to reform an NYPD anti-crime street unit at a round-table discussion in Harlem with relatives of victims of gun violence.
The mayor told the group at Our Children’s Foundation in Harlem that he believes most New Yorkers favor a return of the plainclothes squad.
“It’s unfortunate that the loudest voices have basically hijacked the entire conversation,” Adams said. “Every New Yorker is not saying they don’t want a plainclothes unit to go after people that are committing [crimes] with guns.”
“That is not what New Yorkers are saying to me,” he added. “When I speak to these mothers and say I want to put a plainclothes anti-gun unit in place, they say, ‘What took you so long?’ ”
In addition, during his pair of Sunday morning national TV appearances, Adams was asked about a recent war of words between him and about half of the City Council’s members, who ripped Adams’ promise to bring back “punitive segregation,” or solitary confinement, in city jails.
After the lawmakers signed a letter proclaiming that “New York City will never torture our way to safety,” Adams blasted them as “disruptive.”
On Sunday, Adams insisted he is “opposed” to solitary confinement but not “punitive segregation” for dangerous inmates — even though the city Board of Correction’s Web site classifies the terms as identical.
“I am opposed to solitary confinement. That is a draconian way to protect the city. But what I am saying is you cannot be an inmate, sexually assault a correction officer or another inmate, and then stay in general population,” the mayor said on MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show” with Jonathan Capehart.
“Punitive segregation is a human way of removing dangerous inmates to a location where they can get the services they need, so they can stop preying on other inmates, staff and preying on society,” he went on.
“It’s unacceptable to state you’re not going to remove dangerous inmates from an environment [where] other inmates are serving their time.”
Additional reporting by Reuven Fenton
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