NEW YORK — New York City officials will provide “further guidance” on indoor masking early next week, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday.
At a news briefing Thursday morning, a reporter asked de Blasio about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recently-released indoor mask guidance.
“I’m curious, you know, even if you won’t mandate indoor masks at the moment, why not just suggest people wear masks indoors in public places right now, given the prevalence of the Delta variant?” the reporter asked.
“We’re going to have more to say on that at the beginning of next week,” the mayor responded. “The bottom line here is, there’s a lot of places where masks are mandated right now: our schools, hospitals, congregate settings, mass transit. And then we’ve advised everyone who is unvaccinated to wear a mask.”
“So that’s been out there for quite a while. We’re going to be providing further guidance at the beginning of next week,” he added. “But I want to keep the attention focused on the thing that will make the difference, which is vaccination.”
The CDC on Tuesday recommended that both vaccinated and unvaccinated people wear masks indoors in parts of the U.S. that are seeing COVID-19 resurgences.
De Blasio has said that the five boroughs will require city workers and public hospital and health clinic staffers to get vaccinated — or tested for COVID-19 on a weekly basis — but has yet to make any changes to the city’s current indoor masking rules.
Politicians including Councilman Mark Levine and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams earlier this month called for a new indoor mask mandate, but de Blasio at the time maintained that vaccination “is the answer.”
“Let's address the problem by getting more people vaccinated, and going right at it and knocking down this variant,” he said at a briefing on July 19. “You know, a mask doesn't arrest the progress of the variant. Vaccination does.”