NYC’s Office Workers to Return May 3, Top Doctors Attribute Mostly Lowered COVID Rates to Vaccines

By Yehudit Garmaise

    While 80% of the city’s workforce is already back at their frontline worksites, such as those in healthcare, public safety, and education, on May 3, Mayor Bill de Blasio is bringing back the city’s office workers.  

   Out of consideration for parents and for people with healthcare concerns who might find it hard to come back in several weeks, the mayor said that the city will allow for New Yorkers to continue to work remotely full or part-time.

    However, after the mayor’s announcement of the return of the city’s office workers in May and Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s move last week to reopen fitness classes and end the 11pm curfew of many businesses, one reporter at the mayor’s press conference this morning pointed out that many ZIP codes in New York City continue to have COVID positivity rates of 15%, and at least 30 ZIP codes show positivity rates of 10% or more.

   “Given this state of affairs, why isn’t there a greater sense of concern and worry that the infections aren’t coming down as sharply as you think they should be?” asked a reporter.

  “[COVID positivity rates that are not coming down are] absolutely what we are concerned about right now,” said Jay K. Varma, MD, the mayor’s senior advisor for public health. “We think that it is of critical importance that people maintain that vigilance [with safety protocols].”

  At the same time, however, Dr. Varma pointed out that the results of clinical trials, real world experience and the data from other populations, such as the U.K. and Israel, which have vaccinated most of their populations, all show that the vaccine is effective.

  Mitch Katz, the CEO of the city’s Health + Hospitals agreed.

   “I am very pleased to see decreases in the number of deaths and decreases in the number of patients who are seriously ill and require ventilation, and I believe that is because of the success of the vaccines,” Dr. Katz said.

   “Once we are able to vaccinate the entire population, you will see that that cases themselves begin to decrease more dramatically.”

Credit: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office.