Mayor gets tougher on hosp staffs

Mayor de Blasio will issue an order Wednesday requiring staff at the city’s public hospitals to either get vaccinated or submit to weekly coronavirus testing, a City Hall spokesman confirmed to the Daily News, as New York continues to see a troubling uptick in COVID-19 cases.

The order, which de Blasio plans to announce at his regularly scheduled press conference, will cover staff at the city’s 11 public hospitals as well as those who work in clinics operated by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said the spokesman, Bill Neidhardt.

“It’s all about the safety of our health care facilities,” Neidhardt said.

The mayor hinted that an order was forthcoming earlier Tuesday, saying he didn’t want to preempt “any specific thing that we’re working on” after being asked if he’s mulling a mandate.

“I want to just say: We will this week be making an additional announcement and — it’s not a great phrase, but I’ll use it — we are deadly serious about getting people vaccinated,” de Blasio said at his daily briefing.

The mandate could prove controversial in that it will force unvaccinated hospital workers to choose between getting their jabs, undergoing uncomfortable coronavirus tests frequently or being barred from working.

But a visibly frustrated de Blasio suggested that the mandate is justified because of a recent spike in COVID-19 infections that comes as vaccine hesitancy remains persistent among several demographics, including public hospital staff.

“This is really getting insane at this point,” de Blasio said.

“We’ve got to be blunt about it. If you’re not getting vaccinated, you’re actually causing harm to other people.”

Nearly one-third of the city’s public hospital workers remain unvaccinated, according to state Health Department data. That compares to 40% of the city’s total population that remains unvaccinated.

Meantime, COVID-19 infections are back on the rise.

Driven by the extremely contagious delta variant of COVID-19, the city’s seven-day rolling average on positive coronavirus tests reached 1.72% Tuesday, with a total of 576 new cases, according to Health Department data.

That’s the first time since May that the city has reported more than 550 new daily infections.