Mayor Adams takes office
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Mayor Eric Adams was sworn in at the city’s New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square on Dec. 31, 2021. AP photo by Robert Bumsted
By Jacob Kaye
Mayor Eric Adams had originally planned on holding his inauguration inside the Kings Theater in Brooklyn, in front of thousands of people. But with COVID-19 cases reaching new highs in the city each day, Adams said he would scale the celebration back, adding that he didn’t even need an inauguration, just a “mattress and a floor.”
Yet, Adams took his oath office on an even bigger stage Friday, in front of the entire country, at the Times Square New Year’s Eve celebration.
But the scale of the swearing-in ceremony matches the enormity of the crisis the Queens-raised mayor faces in his first months in office, as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continue to climb, as New Yorkers wait in hours-long lines for tests and as children return in-person to schools following the holiday break.
On Thursday, Adams and some of his new administration’s top officials shared their plan for combating the pandemic. Though much of the new leader’s plan is similar to the plans and practices outlined by former-Mayor Bill de Blasio, Adams noted a few differences.
To start, the Bayside High School graduate said his administration would be less punitive when dealing with mandates and COVID-19 precautions imposed on businesses in the city.
“The private sector employer mandate will stay in effect in the new year with a focus on compliance not punishment,” said Dr. Dave Chokshi, the commissioner of the city’s health department. “The mayor-elect has charged the incoming team with standing up a dedicated unit to work with employers forgoing fines so long as employers help get their staff vaccinated.”
“We know businesses share our goals of keeping their staff and their clients safe and their doors open,” added Chokshi, who will stay on for the first few months of the Adams administration. “To put it simply, COVID is bad for business and vaccination enables not just health but also a healthy economy.
That’s not to say there won’t be fines – Adams said for those businesses that refuse to comply with city rules, there will be monetary punishments. But for business owners who are having difficulty implementing the precautionary measures, Adams said his administration would help offer resources instead of reprimand.
Adams also said that his administration would change the way it communicates the city’s COVID strategy. To start, the city will release a color-coded system to show the severity of the virus throughout the five boroughs.
Though he mostly only expressed support for de Blasio’s actions surrounding the pandemic, he said that he would have communicated the vaccine mandate for private businesses better, a policy he intends to keep.
“If there was one critique, as I stated, I think that the mayor, in a state of urgency with which he was faced — we could’ve all done a better job at communicating with our various stakeholders,” Adams said of the policy that went into effect last week.
The crux of Adams’ plan revolves around keeping the city moving while testing and tracing the virus and getting New Yorkers vaccinated, he said.
“We must learn to be smarter, live with COVID and ensure that we protect everyday New Yorkers,” he said Thursday. “We can't shut down our city again, we can't allow the city to go further into economic despair.”
Despite the differences in COVID strategy, much of Adams’ plan falls in line with the policies and practices started under the de Blasio administration.
“There won’t be a misalignment between the previous administration and our administrations,” he said.
Last week, Adams, de Blasio and Governor Kathy Hochul gathered to share their unified “Stay Safe, Stay Open” plan, which would see an increase in testing in schools and a new, shortened quarantine for students who are exposed to people who have tested positive for the virus.
Following the presentation of the school plan, Adams hesitated to commit fully to implementing the plan once he took office. On Thursday, he cleared up any doubt about whether or not he’d continue in his predecessor’s footsteps.
“We know so many parents, educators and children are anxious about what this means for our schools, what Omicron means for our schools, and how to reopen safely to fully reopen on Jan. 3 – we will implement the Stay Safe Stay Open plan,” said Dr. Ashwin Vasan, who will replace Chokshi in March.
Adams said his administration would also begin to analyze the viability of an extended mandate for booster shots.
“We will also study the need for what we're calling ‘the up to date mandate,’ which would require New Yorkers to have their booster shots under the vaccine mandates currently in place,” Chokshi said. “Studying it encompasses both following the emerging science on the importance of booster doses with Omicron, as well as understanding the impact of the mandate on the settings it would apply to by engaging with unions, the business community and other partners.”
Chokshi added that the administration had set a spring 2022 deadline for deciding whether or not it would implement a vaccine mandate for school children. Regardless of what Adams decides, he acknowledged that the ultimate decision about whether or not to require kids to get the shot will fall on the governor.
At the end of last week, around 15 percent of all COVID tests in New York City were coming back positive and around 25,180 New Yorkers were testing positive for the virus each day. Hospitalizations and deaths have also been increasing – there were around 250 people being hospitalized each day for the virus and 20 New Yorkers dying per day last week.
