As the great Yogi Berra would say, it’s like déjà vu all over again.
New York finds itself in a wait-and-see scenario, as health officials now face the almost certain possibility that the heavily mutated coronavirus variant called omicron will arrive within days.
From Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to President Biden, to Dr. Dave Chokshi, the city’s Health Commissioner, experts grasped for answers after the discovery of the apparently fast-spreading variant, and local authorities grappled with the news that the strain had been spotted just across the border in Ottowa, Canada’s capital.
It could be weeks before scientists determine if the variant poses a particularly potent punch. But the U.S. government said Monday that early data suggests the strain is uniquely transmissible. The World Health Organization, meanwhile, labeled the risk level “very high.”
As disturbing developments compounded, New York City officials issued a vaccination requirement for more than 100,000 childcare workers and imposed a strengthened indoor mask advisory.
In an echo of the darkest days in the 20-month-old pandemic, Gov. Hochul and Mayor de Blasio both held COVID-focused news conferences, hoping to strike a balance to convey the potential dangers without fanning excessive fears about a mysterious variant.
The governor and mayor both stopped short of reinstituting outright mask mandates, and both focused heavily on the value of vaccines.
“We are very, very carefully watching this situation,” de Blasio said in his news conference, in which he was joined by Chokshi and Mayor-elect Eric Adams. “We have — obviously — a new situation here that we need to get all the facts on.”
De Blasio said he had spoken with Hochul in the morning and that the state and city were coordinating in lockstep and sharing information. The city’s new mask recommendation followed the contours of previous guidance, but modulated the language of the advisory to “strong.”
Scientists are poring over virus sequencing data at the city’s Midtown laboratories and at the Wadsworth Center laboratory in Albany. Chokshi said city officials expect it will be just “days before omicron is detected in the United States and very likely in New York City.”
De Blasio said the new vaccination mandate, which requires all childcare workers to get a jab by Dec. 20, had been in the works for “a while” but suggested its implementation was hastened by the new possible threat.
The mayor said the disclosure of the variant had bought valuable time “to get information and prepare.” Scientists in South Africa detailed the strain on Thursday after it was first spotted in nearby Botswana. After Thanksgiving, countries rushed to cut off travel from countries in southern Africa.
On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention altered its booster recommendation in light of the variant, calling on all eligible American adults to get an extra shot.
“Early data from South Africa suggest increased transmissibility of the omicron variant, and scientists in the United States and around the world are urgently examining vaccine effectiveness related to this variant,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, said in a statement.
It’s not clear if the virus blunts the effectiveness of vaccines. But it appears to carry more than 30 mutations on the spike protein that creates a path for COVID to infect cells.
“We don’t have reliable evidence yet about omicron’s speed of spread compared to delta, but it does have similar mutations to other transmissible variants, and there are some reports from South Africa indicating potentially rapid spread,” Chokshi said. “You may have heard some reports of milder illness in South Africa, but take them with a grain of salt. Rigorous investigations are still underway.”
Dr. Dave A. Chokshi, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. (Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
In New York City, more than 88% of adults have received at least one vaccine shot, according to city data. But de Blasio is pushing for eligible New Yorkers to get additional protection through a booster shot, and for the roughly 19% of adults who are either holdouts or who have only gotten an incomplete course to complete their inoculation.
“Based on everything we know, vaccination is crucial to any strategy for addressing omicron,” the mayor said. “We’re going to double down on our vaccination efforts.”
The state government was also working to escalate its attempts to get shots in arms, and Hochul announced the opening of a vaccination site in the upstate town of Queensbury, north of Albany.
Independent of omicron, the fast-spreading and now dominant delta variant has been causing headaches across the state as the holiday season arrives. The state is logging thousands of positive COVID test results a day, a significant surge since the sunny days of late spring, when positive readouts sank to just a few hundred daily.
Northern and western regions of New York are experiencing higher case rates, while New York City’s levels are lower, according to state data. Statewide, 90% of adults have gotten at least one shot, according to data from the governor’s office.
On Monday, Hochul tried to soothe the nerves of New Yorkers frazzled by the variant, promising that the state has resources to limit the pain caused by omicron.
“I am very concerned about this, but we know so much more — we’ve done this before,” Hochul said in her news conference in Manhattan. “Just get vaccinated, wear your mask, and you won’t have to worry.”
She noted she would go ahead with scheduled activities, including a Chanukah menorah lighting in Times Square on Monday night. But the governor, who declared a state of emergency on Friday, signaled she keenly recognizes the risks rippling from an evolving virus that seems unwilling to release the globe from its grip.
Hochul said she “fully” expects omicron to arrive in New York and that “we have to deal with the realities of a highly transmissible — we believe — omicron variant.” She said an executive order she issued Friday could help the state to open up hospital beds by pausing non-essential procedures.“A couple of months ago, did we anticipate that we’d need an executive order? No,” Hochul said. “We took that action, because it was necessary at this time.”