New York forces police and firefighters to get vaccinated against COVID-19

After the teachers and health personnel, the New York City Hall will force the police, firefighters and other municipal workers to get vaccinated against covid-19, a decision in the wake of other states and cities that tries to twist their arms to the anti-vaccines.

Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio announced this Wednesday that as of November 1, all municipal employees, including “police, firefighters and garbage collectors” will have to present a vaccination certificate in order to continue working.

“The battle is far from over,” de Blasio warned at a press conference. “Vaccination has made a difference and we have to go even further” and “vaccine is the way.”

Praising the performance of essential workers throughout the health crisis, he said that “it is time they showed their city the way to end the pandemic once and for all.”

The order comes with an incentive: ppromises to pay $ 500 in the next payroll to workers who have received the first dose before October 29. From that date, recalcitrant people will stop receiving their salary “until they present proof of vaccination” or may even lose their jobs, as has already happened among teachers and health personnel who have refused to be vaccinated.

Only prison staff will have until December 1, due to a lack of personnel at the Rikers Island City Jail.

In New York, only about 46,000 municipal workers remain unvaccinated, as 71% of the 160,000 city employees affected by this decision have already received at least one dose.

With more than 34,000 deaths from covid in its 8 million inhabitants, the city already requires the vaccination certificate for many indoor activities, such as restaurants, cinemas, theaters and gyms.

To enter restaurants, shows and gyms in New York you must be vaccinated against COVID-19

Until now, the mandatory nature of the vaccine had been limited to teachers and health personnel. The rest of the staff had the option of taking a negative test each week in order to go to work.

The most reluctant police

The main New York police union, the Police Benevolent Association, has already announced that it will appeal the order in court.

“Now that the city has unilaterally decided to enforce this order, we will proceed with legal action to protect the rights of our members,” President Patrick J. Lynch said in a statement on Twitter.

In the United States, the police have been more reluctant to the vaccine than in the rest of the population, despite the fact that according to the Officer Down page, 228 police officers have died from covid-19 so far this year, which makes it in the main cause of death in the act of service among the 356 registered fatalities.

Given the resistance of the population to get vaccinated, more and more cities and states are resorting to mandatory vaccination to stop the coronavirus that has killed 728,400 people in the country, 1,557 of them in the last 24 hours.

On Monday, the order decreed by the authorities in August that obliges the 800,000 public workers to be vaccinated came into force in the state of Washington.

San Francisco has also given its 35,000 officials until November 1 to get vaccinated. In Texas, the republican governor has prohibited the obligatory nature of the vaccine, even in private companies.

In Chicago, the city’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, and the president of the local police union, John Catanzara, have a pulse on vaccines and whether public authorities have the right to impose them.

The main police union has asked its adherents to refuse to report whether they are vaccinated or not, at a time when Chicago is once again in the lead in the United States in murder, with 639 homicides this year to June 13. October, 55% more than two years ago.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s administration plans to begin vaccinating children ages 5 to 11 against COVID-19 starting in November, a move that will make it possible for 28 million more people to be immunized in the country.

As of Wednesday, 77.1% of the population over 12 years old had received one or more doses of the anticovid vaccine. (I)