New York: Wearing masks indoor in public places made mandatory due to surge in COVID cases

In order to address the winter surge in cases, New York Governor Kathy Hochul has announced that people need to wear a mask indoor in public places to control the spread of COVID-19 infections. People, however, can avoid wearing masks if the businesses or venues have implemented vaccine requirements, according to the government press release. The decision to introduce mask mandate is based on the rise in the number of cases and hospitalizations. 

The new mask mandate in business and venue applies to both patrons and staff and will be in effect from 13 December 2021 to 15 January 2022. The state government will reassess the situation and decide on further requirements on 15 January. New York Governor Kathy Hochul has raised concern over the situation and stated that they can either control the COVID-19 situation at this point in time or the cases will continue to surge.

“We’re entering a time of uncertainty and we could either plateau here or our cases could get out of control,” Hochul said at a public appearance as per AP. 

New York Governor urges people to get vaccinated

Furthermore, Hochul said that the new measures introduced by the government will help in mitigating the spread of the virus during the holiday season. Hochul in the press release stated, "As Governor, my two top priorities are to protect the health of New Yorkers and to protect the health of our economy. The temporary measures I am taking today will help accomplish this through the holiday season."

She thanked the people of New York as more than 80% of the population is now fully vaccinated against COVID-19. New York governor further added that if the other people of the state also start receiving vaccines, they would no longer require such measures to curb the spread of virus. With the new decision of mask mandate, New York has joined several states like Washington, Oregon, Illinois, New Mexico, Nevada and Hawaii as they already have similar rules of mask requirement in place. 

COVID-19 situation in New York 

The state has reported over 68,000 COVID-19 cases in the seven-day period that ended Wednesday, according to AP. These are the most number of cases reported in any seven-day time since the start of February. Taking to Twitter, the New York Governor informed that as per the US CDC, 92.1% of adult New Yorkers have at least one vaccine dose and 79.7% of all New Yorkers have at least one vaccine dose of COVID-19. The total number of vaccine doses administered in New York is 30,904,286. 

(Inputs from AP)

Image: AP