New York City is entering its third pandemic winter with the least amount of public health rules in place since COVID-19 prompted a citywide shutdown in March 2020. Mayor Eric Adams rescinded the vaccine requirements for private employers and for public school students participating in extracurricular activities. Gov. Kathy Hochul this month ended the mask requirement for public transit.
New Yorkers can largely go about their lives as though, as President Joe Biden said recently, “The pandemic is over.” Yet public health experts, watching cases rise in Europe, are expecting New York City to experience another winter surge in infections. While they expect it to be less severe than last year’s jump in infections, they say they are worried by the city’s near total lack of rules meant to prevent virus transmission.
“The concern is that relaxing the precautions right now is going to make the city a lot more vulnerable to a surge in the coming weeks and months,” said Dr. Bruce Y. Lee, a professor at CUNY’s School of Public Health. While hospitalizations and deaths are low, cases have risen slightly in the city in recent weeks, from a seven-day average of 1,980 new cases on Sept. 4, to 2,132 on Sept. 23, the latest day for which data is available, according to city records. The city’s coronavirus dashboard labels this growth in cases as “stable.”