The New York Vaccine Deadline is approaching! The municipality expects a shortage of emergency personnel

As the deadline for requiring municipal workers to be vaccinated approaches, Mayor Bill de Blasio talked about the possibility of a shortage of emergency personnel.

New York City announced last week that it would require all city officials to be vaccinated, NBCNY reported. According to the mayor's office, the NYPD and NYFD have different deadlines than prison guards, but the message is the same: those who serve the community must take responsibility for protecting the residents of the community and themselves.

According to the mayor, the number of vaccinated city employees has risen since the order was announced. "Like health care workers before that, a lot of people flock to get vaccinated before the deadline, and we expect to see a surge in data," he said at a daily news conference on Wednesday. Apparently some people realize that not getting vaccinated will be forced leave, and they will go out immediately to get vaccinated, while others will get vaccinated a few days later. ”

The mayor said the possibility of a staff shortage does exist, especially given the NYPD's largest union pledged legal action on the city's latest vaccine order. The mayor said they had no replacements this time and expected the emergency personnel to be the initial shortage. "Overtime may be required to shift tasks based on specific needs. These organizations are used to crises and disasters, and they know how to keep things going," the mayor continued.

"We can't just look at overtime spending and budgeting, we should think about how to keep people safe, how to end the COVID-19 era, how we can turn the biggest crisis in our history into safety," Blasio said. Obviously, I want everyone to get vaccinated by Friday. If they don't, they're fired. I don't want to save that money, and if we had to pay more overtime to balance, obviously there would be resources to fix that. ”

De Blasio said that people who serve the city also have a responsibility to protect the people and communities in the city from all disasters, including the coronavirus. "It is this vaccine that has allowed us to fight COVID-19 and saved tens of thousands of lives. And there are still many city employees who are not vaccinated. ”

Starting last week, city employees can receive a $500 incentive if they get their first vaccination at a vaccination site run by the city, according to the mayor's office.

The new rules affect more than 160,000 workers (including police, firefighters and prison guards) who are not fully vaccinated. Union President Andrew Ansbro said last week that nearly 45 percent of New York Fire Department firefighters were not vaccinated and that they wanted to continue weekly testing. As of Wednesday, it was unclear the latest percentage of unvaccinated people at the New York Fire Department. De Blasio said The City would immediately begin negotiations with the affected unions. Henry Garrido, executive director of District 37, New York City's largest union of municipal employees, acknowledged the call for collective bargaining and said in a statement, "We want City Hall to slow down and sit down with us to negotiate." Garrido added: "We encourage all members to get vaccinated to protect themselves and their families."

The NYPD has approximately 34,500 uniformed personnel and 17,700 non-uniformed support personnel. New York Police Chief Dermot Shea said in an interview Wednesday that 73 percent of police officers had been vaccinated, compared with 800 officers the day before. Two commissioners who oversee the nation's largest police and fire departments said earlier this month that they support the authorization of members of their respective departments. Shay even passionately pleaded with the police to get vaccinated in a video.

More than 60 NYPD employees have died of COVID-19. In the early days of the outbreak, first responders and paramedics from the fire department worked around the clock, and as of last week, 16 workers had died from the virus.

(Compiled: sw)