NYC’s De Blasio says private sector vaccine mandate puts health and safety first

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At a press conference on Monday, New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio said that a mandate will go into effect on Dec. 27 that all private sector employers in the city must require all their employees to be vaccinated.

Video Transcript

BILL DE BLASIO: Another really big important step in this is going to be a first in the nation step. You're going to hear from our health commissioner in a moment, and he will be issuing a commissioner's order for all private sector employers in New York City.

Um, it is time-- look, this is how we put health and safety first, by ensuring that there is a vaccine mandate that reaches everyone, universally, in the private sector. A lot of folks in the private sector said to me they believe in vaccination, but they're not quite sure how they can do it themselves.

Well, we're going to do it. We're going to do this so that every employer is on level playing field. One universal standard starting, December 27th. We're going to be working with businesses all over the city and that's almost 200,000 businesses that are not already covered by the Key to NYC guidelines, right now.

We're going to be working with the business community. We're going to be talking to them in the next days on how to put together the right plan to implement this. The specific guidance, the specific rules, will come out in December 15th.

Uh, we want to have a collaborative process. We want to make this work. And let's be clear, we have a great example with the key to NYC. All those restaurants, all those fitness clubs, all those entertainment facilities, movie theaters, all sorts of places, they've been working with us.

They gave us good advice up front. We came up with rules that worked. The vast, vast majority of implementing those rules really effectively. And I constantly hear from people that they know if they go into a place under Key to NYC, they're safe. And they feel comfortable, they're going to enjoy themselves. They feel comfortable in those settings because they know everyone's vaccinated.

And there was a lot of concern up front, would it work? Would it be Difficult you know what, businesses have adapted and handled it really, really well and we know that will happen again. We're going to set up a call center to handle concerns from businesses. We'll have a strong outreach effort as we've done previously to answer questions, provide the support they need. This is going to make a huge difference to make sure New Yorkers are safe going forward--