NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — New York Governor Kathy Hochul ordered state nursing homes and adult facilities on Sunday to provide full access to COVID-19 vaccine booster shots to all residents.
"We’ve got to do everything we can to protect vulnerable New Yorkers," she tweeted. "That means making sure everyone is able to get a booster."
Hochul's order came two days after she declared a state of emergency amid fears about a potential uptick in COVID-19 with winter spikes and the newly-identified omicron variant.
The emergency declaration, which goes into effect Friday, allows the state health department to limit non-essential surgeries, if needed, and boost hospital capacity.
No known positive cases of the omicron variant have been diagnosed in the United States at this time.
Starting Monday, the U.S. plans to ban travel from South Africa and seven other African countries to combat a potential spread.
However, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, reiterated his claim that he would not be surprised if the new variant was already in the U.S.
"It’s going to give us a period of time to enhance our preparedness," Fauci said Sunday about the ban on ABC's "This Week."
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health in the United States, emphasized that there is no data yet that suggests the new variant causes more serious illness than previous COVID-19 variants. It is also not yet known whether it is more resistant to protection provided by the vaccines.
“I do think it’s more contagious when you look at how rapidly it spread through multiple districts in South Africa. It has the earmarks therefore of being particularly likely to spread from one person to another. … What we don’t know is whether it can compete with delta,” Collins said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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