New York on Tuesday became the first major U.S. city to announce it will require proof of anti-COVID vaccination to enter restaurants, theaters and gyms, joining a growing list of governments and businesses that are beginning to crack down on those who refuse to get vaccinated.
Meat company Tyson Foods announced that it will require all 120,000 of its U.S. employees to be inoculated within the next three months. And some 150,000 unionized workers at the big three U.S. automakers will have to wear their masks again starting Wednesday.
The goal is to convince everyone that the time has come. If we’re going to stop the delta variant, now is the time, and that means you have to go get vaccinated right now,” said New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, announcing the measure.
A vaccination card, which can be shown on paper or via state or city government apps, will be required to enter facilities.
Cases of COVID-19 in the United States have increased sixfold in the past month to average more than 85,000 per day, a number not seen since mid-February. The average number of deaths has increased the past two weeks from 254 per day to 386.
Florida now has more people hospitalized for COVID-19 than at any time during the pandemic: more than 11,500. Louisiana has more than 2,100 hospitalized, mostly people who were not vaccinated and also an unprecedented number. In both states the percentage of vaccinated is lower than the national average.
More people are coming into hospitals than are leaving, mostly people over the age of 40 or 50, said Justin Senior, CEO of the Florida Safety Net Hospital Alliance, an umbrella group representing several Florida hospitals.
The crisis has become a duel between the vaccine and the delta variant. Experts agree that the vaccine is still effective in preventing severe symptoms and deaths caused by the mutation.
Amid growing alarm nationwide, the rate of vaccinations is slowly increasing to an average of half a million per day, but that is still far less than the 3.4 million seen in April.
Seventy percent of all adults in the United States have received at least one of the doses, and nearly 61 percent are fully vaccinated, but that is far less than the goal set for this time by President Joe Biden.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who is up for re-election next year and has presidential ambitions for 2024, maintained his stance Tuesday despite the high rate of hospitalizations in his state, insisting the trend will dissipate soon and refusing to make facemasks mandatory and enforce any restrictions on commercial activity. But he urged the population to get vaccinated.
We are not going to close,” DeSantis declared.
We are going to keep schools open, we are going to protect the jobs of everyone in the state, we are going to protect small businesses, he added.
