At least 10,300 city workers thumbed their noses at Mayor Bill de Blasio’s COVID-19 vaccine-mandate deadline Monday — refusing to get a jab or participating in a suspected sick-out even as Hizzoner says the requirement is crucial to keeping New Yorkers safe.
Officials said roughly 2,300 firefighters called out “sick,” more than double the usual 1,000, leaving 18 fire and ladder companies “temporarily out of service” and many more undermanned — although Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro insisted the department was still functioning “quite well.”
The troubling figures come after a weekend where 3,500 more city workers rushed to get vaccinated ahead of Monday’s deadline, according to de Blasio.
After 5 p.m. Friday, 3,564 city workers received at least one dose of the vaccine — making them part of the surge of 22,472 municipal employees who’ve received a shot since the requirement was announced Oct. 20, the mayor said Monday.
The most recently released city data shows that 91 percent of city workers have gotten at least one jab. That figure includes those workers who were previously required to get vaccinated, such as teachers and city public-hospital staffers.
Monday’s deadline involved the final batch of city workers who had yet to be required to get vaccinated. Of that group of 160,000 workers, more than 21,000 of them, or 13 percent, had not gotten a jab by Monday.
About 9,000, or roughly 45 percent, of the final group are unvaccinated and on leave without pay, while an estimated 12,000, or more than half of the group, have applied for an exemption based on medical or religious reasons and are still allowed to work while waiting for a decision on their cases.
The 10,300 figure includes the 9 percent and the 1,300 firefighters on an alleged sick-out, although it’s unclear how many of the latter are not vaccinated.
When adding up the number of city workers in the final group not vaccinated and the holdouts from previous deadlines, the total is about 34,000 unimmunized city workers — 9 percent of the Big Apple’s 378,000-member workforce.
“We said we would climb the ladder of vaccination mandates,” de Blasio said from City Hall during a virtual press briefing. “Time and time again, we’ve put the mandates in place, and they’ve worked.”
“This mandate was the right thing to do, and the proof is in the pudding.”
Eighty-four percent of the NYPD, 77 percent of city firefighters, 88 percent of medics and 83 percent of sanitation workers have gotten at least one dose, the mayor noted.
“City workers are doing the right thing,” he said. “I want to thank everyone who got vaccinated.”
Despite a firefighter union leader warning early Monday of potentially dozens of shuttered fire companies and slower response times, de Blasio claimed hours later, “Firehouses are open, no firehouses closed, [and] response times [are] normal.”
Out of 350 FDNY units, 18 are “out of service” at the moment, although zero firehouses are “closed,” according to the department head.
“The department is functioning quite well,” Nigro said during the press conference.
Still, he conceded that there are “understaffed” teams, ascribing blame to “hundreds” of smoke eaters staying home, falsely claiming they are sick.
“There are understaffed units,” said Nigro. “That understaffing could end immediately if members stopped going sick when they weren’t sick.”
He declared that short staffing would end “once the members come to their senses and stop using medical leave improperly.”
Meanwhile, the city’s Police Department reported relatively few mandate-induced absences.
Just a few dozen department employees were placed on unpaid leave Monday after refusing to get inoculated against the virus. Thousands more unvaccinated NYPD workers remain on the job with pending religious and medical exemption requests, according to the head of the department.
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea announced that 34 cops and 40 civilian members of the force refused to get vaccinated and are currently off the job without pay.
Democratic mayoral nominee Eric Adams implored the mayor to meet with municipal-union leaders about the vaccine-mandate fallout but again deferred to de Blasio on the matter, saying he did not want to “aggravate” the situation.
“I believe in mandates. What I think the mayor should do [is] sit down with the unions so we can get to this place together,” said Adams, the Brooklyn borough president and leading mayoral contender.
“I’ve made it clear what my thoughts are on it. But I’m not going to aggravate the situation, because we’re talking about police and fire, we’re not talking about something that’s not public safety,” he said. “I don’t want to aggravate this to create a more hostile environment. It’s very sensitive.”
But Adams’ opponent, Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa, called into question de Blasio’s mandate, saying it was prompting city firefighters, cops and other emergency-services workers to stay off the job — and all for nothing, because the local COVID-19 positivity rate remains low.
“What is the emergency situation in our city that has triggered off this demand of de Blasio that all of these civil servants must have at least one vaccine by today?” Sliwa said during a press conference at a Manhattan firehouse. “Has there been an uprise in the percentage of those infected by the Delta variant?
“The answer is no,” Sliwa said. “It’s at an all-time low. And yet, the mayor is insistent.
“This [mandate] jeopardizes public safety, when you call 911 because there are thugs out in the streets, as we’ve seen, who are firing shots, or like we saw on Nostrand Avenue, throwing Molotov cocktails into a deli,” he said, referring to a Saturday night incident in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.
Additional reporting by Julia Marsh, Reuven Fenton and Craig McCarthy
