New York to require state-worker vaccines

New York state on Wednesday told approximately 130,000 state employees they must show proof of COVID-19 vaccination or face coronavirus testing.

"New York State will mandate all state employees either be vaccinated or get tested regularly," New York Governor Andrew Cuomo tweeted Wednesday. The new state policy will go into effect by Labor Day (Sept 6), he said. 

The governor also announced a much stricter mandate for state-run hospitals, saying that all "patient-facing" healthcare workers at those facilities will be required to be vaccinated, without the option of regular testing. 

"Our health-care workers carried us through this pandemic—and we owe it to them to do what we can to keep Delta under control," Cuomo tweeted.

Cuomo's announcement comes two days after New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a similar requirement for the city government's 300,000 employees. Earlier this week, California Governor Gavin Newsom also adopted a vaccination-or-testing requirement that would cover 246,000 state government employees, as well as 2 million healthcare workers in the public and private sectors. 

Starting this Friday, New York City will pay $100 to anyone who goes to a city-run vaccination site for their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, de Blasio announced Wednesday.

"When you get your first dose, you will get a $100 incentive," the mayor said in his daily briefing. "It does not get better than that."

The currency-inducing coronavirus shots will be at all city-run vaccination sites for those who can show proof of New York residency or employment, de Blasio said. The money will be issued in pre-paid debit cards that can either be emailed to recipients in digital form or mailed in physical form to their homes. 

More than 40 percent of the city's total population is unvaccinated. The city's seven-day average test positivity rate reached 2.55 percent on Wednesday, the highest in months, while 108 people were admitted to hospitals for COVID-19, according to Health Department data.

President Joe Biden plans to formally announce on Thursday that all civilian federal employees must be vaccinated against the coronavirus or be required to submit to regular testing, social distancing, mask requirements and restrictions on most travel, two people familiar with the president's plans said Wednesday, according to The New York Times. 

On Capitol Hill, more than a dozen Republican lawmakers refused to comply with the newly reinstated mask requirement in the House on Wednesday, facing potential $500 fines.

Most of the 211 House Republicans complied with wearing masks on the House floor after the Capitol physician announced late Tuesday night that they would once again be mandatory amid the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant.

Most of the Republicans refusing to wear masks have declined to say if they are vaccinated or have openly confirmed that they aren't. All Democrats in the House and Senate, meanwhile, have confirmed publicly that they are vaccinated.

The mask order in the House of Representatives came after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new recommendations for mask use Tuesday, urging all vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals to wear a mask indoors if they live in areas with a high spread of the delta variant.

Some states and cities, including Nevada and Kansas City, Missouri, quickly reinstated mask mandates after federal officials released their new guidance. Others, including California, Oregon and Washington, issued "recommendations" that vaccinated people wear masks.

Meanwhile, Pfizer reported Wednesday that the protection of its two-dose COVID-19 vaccine holds up for at least six months, although it may start to wane slightly toward the end of that time. 

A preprint study funded by the company determined that the vaccine's effectiveness reached a high point of 96.2 percent within two months after the second dose. 

But the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine "declined gradually" to 83.7 percent within six months, with an average decrease of about 6 percent every two months. Even with the slip in efficacy, the data indicates the vaccine offers protection six months later. 

The efficacy of the vaccine against severe disease including hospitalizations remained at 97 percent.