More than 10,000 police, firefighters and other New York City officials were sent on unpaid leave on Monday, November 1, for failing to comply with Mayor Bill de Blasio’s orders to vaccinate all city workers against COVID-19. On Monday, November 1, the New York Post reports.
According to the newspaper, about 2.3 thousand firefighters in New York went on sick leave because they do not want to be vaccinated. Due to a shortage of employees, 18 city fire stations were closed.
Firefighters left their jobs after numerous protests, pointing out that many of them have already been ill with COVID-19 and have natural immunity, which is not taken into account in the order of the city authorities on compulsory vaccinations.
According to the City Hall of New York, as of last night, 22.8 thousand municipal employees remained unvaccinated.
“The situation remains unstable. We are hiring employees to return units to service or move other units to the area for duty, “- quotes the publication of the words of the representative of the Fire Department Jimi Long.
On October 20, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced mandatory vaccinations for fire and police officers. According to the head of the city, those who refuse the vaccine will be sent on unpaid leave. This applies to those who did not receive at least one dose of the vaccine before November 1.
De Blasio in his Twitter wrote that more than half of workers who have not yet been vaccinated have filed requests for exemption, and these requests are being processed.
Representatives of the firefighters’ trade unions, in turn, asked the mayor to give them more time to decide whether to get vaccinated or not.
“If someone dies because of the slow response to emergencies, it will be on the conscience of Bill de Blasio and his excessive powers. I hope that this fool will correct the situation as soon as possible, ”she wrote in her Twitter– Nicole Malliotakis, Brooklyn member of Congress.
She urged the mayor to return the opportunity for unwilling to vaccinate to remain in service after weekly testing for antibodies.
Earlier, on October 20, the head of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Rochelle Walenski announced that a mutated “Delta” strain of the AY4.2 coronavirus, which had previously been identified in several European countries, was being recorded in the United States. However, there are currently no data on the appearance of its clusters or an increase in the number of cases.
Information about a new strain of coronavirus identified in the UK appeared on October 19 on the pages of the Financial Times. Scientists Jeffrey Barrett of the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge and director of the Institute of Genetics at the University of London, François Ballou, spoke about the dangerous variation of the AY.4.2 coronavirus.