New York State will allocate a combined $65 million to local health departments, including in Nassau and Suffolk, to support the distribution of COVID-19 booster shots for vaccinated individuals, Gov. Kathy Hochul said Tuesday.
And Hochul, who announced last week that staff in all health care facilities across the state must be vaccinated, says she is looking to expand that mandate to all state-regulated facilities and congregate settings. Such a mandate would likely include nursing homes, group homes for the disabled and prisons.
“We are exploring all of our options to expand this,” Hochul said during her first COVID-19 briefing Tuesday at the University at Buffalo. “We have to let people know when they walk into our facilities, that the people taking care of them or their loved one in this setting, is safe and will not spread this.”
Hochul, who took office last week after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo resigned amid allegations he sexually harassed nearly a dozen women, said the booster shot funding would go directly to municipalities to set up vaccination sites in their communities. She did not answer questions from the media during the briefing.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have recommended a third shot for immunocompromised individuals as the effectiveness of the vaccine wears off and is expected to authorize it for all Americans at least eight months after their first shot. The Biden administration has set Sept. 20 as the launch date for booster shots, pending approval from the Food and Drug Administration and CDC.
Hochul said she was also seeking the legal authority to require staff and teachers at all public and charter schools statewide to be vaccinated or submit to weekly testing.
Her administration announced on Friday that masking would be required indoors at the state’s public and private prekindergarten to 12th grade schools for 2021-22, including for adults and all who already had been vaccinated. But the new governor said she would be “flexible” in re-evaluating those measures based on local infection and vaccination rates.
“Kids are resilient. They can handle a mask on their face,” she said. “I am not leaving open ended mandates. We will do it now and we will assess. Because there will be parts of our state where the numbers will drop.”
Meanwhile, the Locust Valley school board has hurriedly set a 4:30 p.m. meeting Tuesday to re-evaluate its policy on masking in schools. Currently, the district allows parents to choose whether children will wear masks or not.
Following a raucous meeting Monday night, board trustees were advised by an attorney that the 1,900-student district would be breaking state law, if it did not require students to wear masks inside school buildings. Consequently, trustees issued a statement that they would discuss the issue further Tuesday “and make an additional determination concerning this requirement.”
With John Hildebrand
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