What to Know
- Mayor-elect Eric Adams hopes New York City students can attend schools without face masks before the end of the academic year
- Adams said Sunday that he would like to see the mask mandate for the city's youngest residents dropped if scientific data supports it
- "If we can find a safe way to do it, I look forward to getting rid of the masks, but it must be done with the science," Adams said during a CNN appearance
Mayor-elect Eric Adams hopes New York City students can attend schools without face masks before the end of the academic year.
Fresh on the heels of his mayoral victory last week, Adams told CNN's Dana Bash that he would like to see the mask mandate for the city's youngest residents dropped if scientific data supports it.
"If we can find a safe way to do it, I look forward to getting rid of the masks, but it must be done with the science. We're not going back to turning out city and closing it down," he said Sunday on "State of the Union."
Bash questioned whether the mayor-elect would take measures to change the existing mandate in the wake of the recent federal emergency approval of a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11.
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Starting this week, every public school that serves kids in that age window will have a dedicated vaccination day for those students.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said that amounts to about 1,070 school vaccination sites over the course of the week and about 200 school sites daily.
Asked by News 4 last week about when he might recommend dropping masks in schools, the current mayor said he wants to keep the order in place for the near term.
"I would say my general view is, out of an abundance of caution, I would keep the masks in place at least in the short term, because they really worked and because the kids have adapted to them well, the adults have adapted to them well," de Blasio said Thursday. "But I’ll also say as an everyday person, you know, I look forward to the day when we don't need them."
De Blasio's health commissioner agreed, urging against throwing "caution to the wind too quickly."
"I would just underline the point that our precautions have worked. We've been able to keep schools safe with the layered approach to prevention that you've heard us talk about so many times now, not just masking but very importantly, vaccination and bringing to bear testing and distancing and ventilation as well," Dr. Dave Chokshi said.
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Adams, a 61-year-old Democrat and former police officer who will be New York City's second Black mayor, defeated Republican Curtis Sliwa on Tuesday. He takes office on Jan. 1.
Adams pledged Wednesday to be a practical and progressive mayor who will “get stuff done” for the nation's largest city.
