At least 10,300 city workers thumbed their noses at Mayor Bill de Blasio’s COVID-19 vaccine-mandate deadline Monday — refusing to get a jab or participating in a suspected sick-out even as Hizzoner says the requirement is crucial to keeping New Yorkers safe.
Officials said roughly 2,300 firefighters called out “sick,” more than double the usual 1,000, leaving 18 fire and ladder companies “temporarily out of service” and dozens more undermanned — although Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro insisted the department was still functioning “quite well.”
The troubling figures come after a weekend where 3,500 more city workers rushed to get vaccinated ahead of Monday’s deadline, according to de Blasio.
After 5 p.m. Friday, 3,564 city workers received at least one dose of the vaccine — making them part of the surge of 22,472 municipal employees who’ve received a shot since the requirement was announced Oct. 20, the mayor said Monday.
The most recently released city data shows that 91 percent of city workers have gotten at least one jab.
That leaves more than 21,000 unvaccinated city workers. About 9,000, or roughly 45 percent, of that group are on leave without pay, while an estimated 12,000, or more than half of the group, have applied for an exemption based on medical or religious reasons and are still allowed to work while waiting for a decision on their cases.
City Hall was not immediately able to provide the vaccination status of the 1,300 firefighters engaged in the suspected sick-out.
The 10,300 city workers account for nearly 3 percent of the Big Apple’s 378,000-member workforce.
“We said we would climb the ladder of vaccination mandates,” de Blasio said from City Hall during a virtual press briefing. “Time and time again, we’ve put the mandates in place, and they’ve worked.”
“This mandate was the right thing to do, and the proof is in the pudding.”
Eighty-four percent of the NYPD, 77 percent of city firefighters, 88 percent of medics and 83 percent of sanitation workers have gotten at least one dose, the mayor noted.
“City workers are doing the right thing,” he said. “I want to thank everyone who got vaccinated.”
Despite a firefighter union leader warning early Monday of potentially dozens of shuttered fire companies and slower response times, de Blasio claimed hours later, “Firehouses are open, no firehouses closed, [and] response times [are] normal.”
Out of 350 FDNY units, 18 are “out of service” at the moment, although zero firehouses are “closed,” according to the department head.
“The department is functioning quite well,” Nigro said during the press conference.
Still, he conceded that there are “understaffed” teams, ascribing blame to “hundreds” of smoke eaters staying home, falsely claiming they are sick.
“There are understaffed units,” said Nigro. “That understaffing could end immediately if members stopped going sick when they weren’t sick.”
He declared that short staffing would end “once the members come to their senses and stop using medical leave improperly.”
Meanwhile, the city’s Police Department reported relatively few mandate-induced absences.
Just a few dozen department employees were placed on unpaid leave Monday after refusing to get inoculated against the virus. Thousands more unvaccinated NYPD workers remain on the job with pending religious and medical exemption requests, according to the head of the department.
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea announced that 34 cops and 40 civilian members of the force refused to get vaccinated and are currently off the job without pay.
Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa called into question de Blasio’s mandate, saying it was prompting city firefighters, cops and other emergency-services workers to stay off the job — and all for nothing, because the local COVID-19 positivity rate remains low.
“What is the emergency situation in our city that has triggered off this demand of de Blasio that all of these civil servants must have at least one vaccine by today?” Sliwa said during a press conference at a Manhattan firehouse. “Has there been an uprise in the percentage of those infected by the Delta variant?
“The answer is no,” Sliwa said. “It’s at an all-time low. And yet, the mayor is insistent.
“This [mandate] jeopardizes public safety, when you call 911 because there are thugs out in the streets, as we’ve seen, who are firing shots, or like we saw on Nostrand Avenue, throwing Molotov cocktails into a deli,” he said, referring to a Saturday night incident in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.
Additional reporting by Reuven Fenton and Craig McCarthy