‘Indefinite’: NYC first to make vaccine mandate permanent
New York City has signaled that it may be transitioning to an era of post-pandemic mandates by saying that its vaccine mandate may last forever, even in a “low-risk environment”.
New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan told ABC7 on Friday that the vaccine mandate for private sector businesses has no end in sight.
“I think it’s indefinite at this point,” said Vasan. “People who have tried to predict what’s going to happen in the future for this pandemic have repeatedly found egg on their face, as they say. And I’m not going to do that here today.”
“I would love for me to sit here and say, I can give you a date or a data point for when we would lift those things,” he continued. “Right now, we are in a low-risk environment, and we will continue to evaluate that data.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams also seemed to admit that the city's vaccine mandate is no longer health-based, as reported by Frontline News.
In a CNBC interview earlier this month, Adams defended his decision to keep unvaccinated NBA All-Star Kyrie Irving off the court, saying that it’s about following the rules.
“It would send the wrong message just to have an exception for one player when we’re telling countless number of New York City employees, ‘If you don’t follow the rules, you won’t be able to be employed.'”
New York City would be only the second government to admit that its vaccine mandate is not based on health.
The first was the State of Israel, whose Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz was caught on hot mic last year admitting that the “green pass” - Israel’s vaccine passport system – is not based on epidemiology and is simply about pressuring the unvaccinated.
“I also think you can remove the Green Pass for outdoor restaurants,” Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked told Horowitz, as reported by Times of Israel.
“In pools, too, not just in restaurants. Epidemiologically that’s correct,” Horowitz responded to Shaked.
“The thing is, I’m telling you this, our problem is people who don’t get vaccinated. We need that they… otherwise… we will not get out of this,” the health minister added.
