The COVID positivity rate in New York City’s public schools has dropped to 0.03 percent, prompting Mayor de Blasio to declare on Friday that the virus is now “almost nonexistent” in the city school system.
“This is a testament to the vaccination effort and to the work of our educators and school staff and parents,” he said. “That’s a good sign for the fall.”
As of Friday, the city has conducted 1.5 million coronavirus tests in city schools, according to the mayor.
De Blasio was speaking during his weekly appearance on WNYC with Brian Lehrer, who, while lauding the schools for their efforts as well, pointed Hizzoner toward a more disturbing trend — the spread of the COVID Delta variant that’s sweeping through other parts of the U.S.
“I’m curious if you have any contingency plans if low-vaccinated areas in New York City experience resurgences because of Delta?” asked Lehrer.
De Blasio responded that he and top city health officials have looked “very, very carefully” at the variant and its impact. He said that, right now, he doesn’t intend to switch gears in terms of his approach to tamping down the virus.
“What we still see consistently is vaccination works. The more vaccinated people, the better,” he said. “The best answer to the variant is just kept deepening the vaccination effort.”
De Blasio stressed that about half of the city’s population is now fully vaccinated — 4.1 million people — and that an additional half-million have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
“If anything occurs where we have to make adjustments, we will make them quickly,” he said. “We don’t see any evidence at this point of the variants having a major impact here. … If there’s a trendline that happens over weeks or even months, there’s plenty of time to make adjustments. But we do not see that right now.”
Asked about the possibility of re-implementing COVID-based restrictions in areas hardest hit by the virus if the Delta variant takes hold, de Blasio was noncommittal.
“I can’t say that now, absolutely cannot say that now,” he said.