New Manhattan beep calls for ‘urgency’ against ’cron surge
The city’s soaring COVID numbers call for a stronger response, the new borough president of Manhattan said Sunday.
The city needs to create a website to self-report positive test results and an expanded definition of what constitutes being vaccinated for going to work and eating out, Borough President Mark Levine told the Daily News.
“We need to take action to slow this wave because 50,000 cases, even mild, are going to disrupt every sector of life in this city,” he said, referring to Friday’s record-breaking number of new COVID cases in the city.
“The biggest change we need is urgency in messaging to communicate to people, not by forced shutdowns or legal restrictions,” Levine said, “but just messaging that for the next two weeks people need to, if they can, avoid large gatherings, work from home and just generally try to limit in-person social activities.”
He said he would like the city to change its policy that has required municipal employees to go into the office since the fall and proposed a “hybrid option” allowing them to work from home at least for the duration of the current surge in cases.
Levine said a website for New Yorkers to self-report positive COVID test results would let the city do a better job tracking the outbreak and connecting COVID patients with services. Such a step already has been taken in localities elsewhere, including Washington.
In recent months, authorities around the country also have been weighing whether to expand the definition of “fully vaccinated” from the status quo — two shots of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines or one of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine — to cover booster shots as well.
Levine said the city should take that step, pointing to the relatively low rate at which New Yorkers have gotten boosters. About 2.1 million booster shots had been administered as of Saturday, compared with 6.8 million initial doses, according to the city Health Department.
The city should start requiring workers in high-risk sectors like health care to get the booster shots, eventually expanding the mandate to cover activities like indoor dining and going to the gym, he said.
“Just to message that you don’t get to call yourself fully vaccinated until you’ve had that third shot would be important for the public to hear,” said Levine, who was chairman of the City Council Health Committee before he was sworn in as borough president Saturday.
Levine also called for weekly COVID testing of all students and staff at public schools, saying that should be the default policy. The city is planning more widespread testing at schools starting Monday, but parents must opt in for their kids to participate.
Among the other items in his 16-point action plan, he said, the feds should take a greater role in New York’s COVID response. He wants the Federal Emergency Management Agency to set up “multiservice” centers with testing and vaccination at locations like the Javits Center on the far West Side.