No Plan To Bring Back Mask Mandate Despite Delta Variant: Mayor

NEW YORK, NY — New York City does not plan on bringing back a mask requirement amid rising coronavirus cases and the emergence of the more-contagious Delta variant, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

The mayor said on WNYC on Friday that New York City does not currently have plans to follow other major cities, like Los Angeles, in bringing back a mask mandate to combat the spread of coronavirus despite a doubling in the cases in the last month.

"No, not at this point," he told Brian Lehrer when asked if such a plan was on the horizon. "...We do not have a plan to change course at this point, but we're going to watch the data constantly to see if any adjustments are needed."

The question comes after Los Angeles County announced Friday that it will start requiring masks indoors regardless of vaccination status at 11:59 p.m. on Saturday given a rise in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.

More than 1,500 coronavirus cases were reported in the California county on Thursday, the highest total of new cases since mid-March, according to reports.

In New York City, the number of new coronavirus cases has doubled in the last month, jumping from about 200 in June to 400 in recent days, according to the New York Times. The positivity rate has also doubled from around 0.6 percent to 1.3 percent in the last few weeks.

About two-thirds of the new cases are now attributed to the Delta variant, which first appeared in February in the city, according to recent data.

But de Blasio said low hospitalization numbers prove the number of new cases are not yet cause for immediate concern. The number of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 stands at about 0.31 per 100,000 people, he said Friday.

"Hospitalizations is the indicator that tells us if folks are having serious negative experiences with COVID...we're not seeing any real movement in the hospitalizations and that's really important," he said.

The reason those numbers remain low, the mayor said, can be attributed to the city's high vaccination rate. The number of fully vaccinated New Yorkers means the rise in cases likely won't signal a wave of coronavirus as serious as past outbreaks, according to epidemiologists and the mayor.

"If you had laid out that scenario a year ago, I think you would have been inevitably right about where it was leading, the difference now is the high rate of vaccination in the city and the fact that we're adding to it every day," de Blasio said.

Around 64 percent of New York City's adults were fully vaccinated as of Friday, data shows.