New York City will give $100 to anyone who gets a COVID-19 booster shot at a city-run site between now and the end of the year.
Mayor Bill de Blasio made the announcement on Tuesday. The omicron variant – which accounts for 90% of new infections in the city – has pushed New York’s case numbers to record levels. NBC New York reports that “the city’s rolling case weekly average is up nearly 123% over the averages for the prior four weeks.” Deaths and hospitalizations are also on the rise.
“Everyone who has not been vaccinated, it’s time. Everyone who has not gotten that booster, it’s time. This city is ready to make sure everyone gets that booster and that’s the way we move through these challenging few weeks,” de Blasio said. “No more shutdowns. We’ve been through them, they were devastating, we can’t go through it again. We need to all work together these next few weeks.”
“It’s not March of 2020. It’s not even December of 2020. Just to keep things in perspective, it is milder than delta,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said of omicron on Monday. “We are avoiding a government shutdown because we now have the tools available to all of us — vaccinations, booster shots, masks — particularly for the variant we’re dealing with.”
President Joe Biden will announce later today that the federal government is opening up a new COVID-19 testing site in New York City. Similar sites will be opened up across the country in the days ahead.
According to CDC data, unvaccinated Americans are 14 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than vaccinated people. In laboratory studies, booster shots have been shown to provide strong protection against the omicron variant.