‘It’s going to be a very challenging few weeks’: de Blasio continues pushing vaccines, boosters and testing to fight Omicron in NYC

At his daily briefing on Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio highlighted the city’s immediate challenges due to the Omicron variant, reiterating that both vaccination and testing are the answers to keeping New Yorkers safe.

“Omicron is a real challenge, it’s going to be a very challenging few weeks. But the good news is based on what our healthcare leadership understands at this moment, we are talking about a matter of weeks. We’re gonna see a really fast upsurge in cases, we’re gonna see a lot of New Yorkers affected by Omicron,” de Blasio said.

That’s evidenced by the startling number of new infections that the city’s Health Department logged for Dec. 15, which hit five figures — 11,496 cases in all — and brought the citywide positivity rate to 9.24%.

The mayor added that this particular strain of COVID has been milder than previous cases, though the city is still waiting on additional research and data: “We do know that Omicron moves very fast, it’s very transmissible. It moves fast, we have to move faster. That’s why we’re focusing even more on vaccination.”

De Blasio highlighted the ongoing push to get everyone in the city vaccinated and urged those who are vaccinated to get their boosters.

Currently, about 6 million New York City adults and over 600,000 kids have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine with approximately 1.7 eligible New Yorkers who have gotten a COVID-19 booster.

“We’re doing really great with the group of kids in that 12 to 17 year old range [but] we gotta get more progress with the 5 to 11 year olds. This is one of the areas where we need to move faster,” de Blasio said.

The mayor also announced the mandate that would require vaccinations for over 102,000 employees who work in childcare and early intervention programs, which goes into effect immediately.

In addition to vaccinations, de Blasio said that testing would be another crucial part of the city’s safety as the holidays quickly approach.

“Testing helps us on so many levels. It helps to make sure that each person knows where they stand on a very personal level. When you get tested, you know what’s going on, you know what to do.”

De Blasio said that those who test positive can get help through the city’s Test and Trace Corps, although tracking down supplies has been difficult recently.

“We’ll get whatever you need whether it’s a hotel room to isolate in, whether it is food, medical support, [an] amazing array of supports, all for free.”

In the next coming weeks, he added that there would be 23 more testing sites — three mobile sites and 20 brick and mortar sites — across the five boroughs in addition to the 89 already established sites in New York. The sites will have supervisors in order to ensure a “measure of accountability.”