Photograph: Seth Wenig/APPhotograph: Seth Wenig/APCity, said he recently started learning Brazilian jiu-jitsu because of physical altercations with visitors who are unvaccinated against Covid-19.
As New York City and other government entities begin to lift vaccination requirements, many in the hospitality industry say they welcome the moves and think they will help restaurants and bars. “We need to be smart and safe but continue to live our lives, and we can’t continue such strict mandates indefinitely when there isn’t as strong a justification for them anymore,” said Andrew Rigie, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance.
Since then, Covid case, hospitalization and death numbers that spiked during the Omicron wave and have plummeted.on 27 February that the city would lift the requirements on 7 March if Covid indicators remained low. But Dr Stephen Morse, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center, continues to worry about a new variant emerging that catches people by surprise like Omicron did. By waiting another month or two to lift restrictions such as the vaccine mandate, he said, we would gain “perhaps more time to get more people vaccinated in other parts of the world, which would reduce the evolution of new variants”.
People in bars and restaurants are often close together “and obviously it’s a setting where people cannot wear a mask since they are eating and drinking”, El-Sadr said. “I don’t think it’s an onerous requirement and as people are moving around and mixing and coming from other parts of the country, it makes the requirement for vaccination become more important.”