NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams’ newly minted health commissioner argued Friday that the city should indefinitely maintain its mask mandate for kids younger than 5 years old, striking a more cautious tone than his boss who recently signaled he wants to scrap the restriction sooner rather than later.
Dr. Ashwin Vasan laid out the case for continued coronavirus caution in his first COVID-19 briefing since taking over as the city’s health commissioner earlier this week.
The two primary coronavirus restrictions that remain in effect are the school mask mandate for kids younger than five and the vaccine mandate for the city’s private workforce — and Vasan said he believes neither of those requirements should be lifted anytime soon.
“I think it’s indefinite at this point,” Vasan said of the private workforce mandate, which requires all private employees in the Big Apple to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. “People who have tried to predict what’s going to happen in the future in this pandemic have repeatedly found egg on their face, as they say, and I’m not going to do that here today.”
In terms of the mask mandate for kids younger than 5, Vasan offered a personal plea for why it shouldn’t be rescinded for the time being.
“I would love nothing more than to send my son to day care without a mask,” Vasan said. “But as a scientist ... I want to keep him safe because he’s not eligible for a vaccine.”
Adams, who lifted the city’s Key2NYC vaccine mandate for indoor activities like dining earlier this month, struck a slightly different note in recent days when it comes to rolling back the mandate for toddlers.
When he was approached by a group of angry parents Thursday demanding that he drop the mask mandates for toddlers, Adams told them, “I got this. They’ll be unmasked.”
The debate over lifting the remaining mandates is playing out as concerns that a subvariant of COVID’s omicron strain — the BA.2 variant — could cause another surge in the Big Apple.
When asked about the subvariant, which is spreading quickly in other parts of the world, Vasan noted that “we are tracking these variants very closely.”
“Currently there’s no evidence that BA.2 causes more severe illness, increases risks of hospitalization or that our current vaccines offer less protection against it, but we continue to monitor this,” he said.
Dr. Celia Quinn, the mayor’s deputy commissioner for disease control, noted that, amid a slight uptick in overall COVID-19 cases citywide, cases of the BA.2 sub-variant have been increasing in recent weeks and that it accounts for about 30% of overall cases in the city currently.
“It may be a little bit more transmissible, and that’s why it’s increasing in proportion to the other circulating omicron strains,” she said. “So we’ll be watching the cases, hospitalizations rates and its impact on our health care system.”
Like his predecessor, Dr. Dave Chokshi, who recently stepped down as commissioner, Vasan emphasized the importance of getting vaccinated to protect against COVID-19.
Booster shots, he noted, are also a part of that.
“We need all eligible New Yorkers to get their booster as soon as it’s their time, and for many of you, that time is now,” he said. “Boosters are especially important for those at high risk of severe outcomes and those 65 and older — of which only 55 percent of New Yorkers have received their booster or additional dose.”
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