Mayor Eric Adams is standing firm on his mask mandate for New York’s youngest as summer fast approaches.
Now, more than two months after insisting he wants to dump the requirement that 2-to 4-year-olds mask up indoors at day care centers, public schools and other city-run programs “within a week or so” — and with the last scheduled day of classes about three weeks away — many Big Apple parents are fed up.
Pressed on the matter this week, Adams told The Post that he couldn’t disclose a specific timetable for freeing the tikes from their mask burden.
“I want to remove masks and see our babies’ faces as quickly as possible. We are prepared, not panicked, as we move into the next phase of the pandemic,” Adams said Wednesday.
“My team of health experts and I continue to evaluate the data, day after day, and we will continue to communicate with New Yorkers with additional updates.”
Danielle Pollack, a mother of a 3-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son, expressed disappointment in the mayor, who she supported in last year’s election, for not lifting the requirement as the June 27 last day of classes approaches.
“As a New York resident, I voted for Adams because his whole platform was that he would get things back to normal,” she said. “It’s just been really frustrating, because it seems like Mayor Adams is doing nothing about it, [and] won’t even give a timeline.”
In early March, Adams announced the end of the public school mask mandates for students in kindergarten through 12th grade, who are old enough to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, but maintained the controversial requirement for the city’s youngest pupils, who are not yet eligible for the shots.
Kids are not required to show proof of vaccination to enter the schools at any age.
After weeks of pressure to nix the policy, Adams announced later in the month that the face-covering rule for the youngest students and day care attendees would be removed starting April 4, barring an increase in cases.
But the five boroughs saw a spike in infections driven by the BA.2 Omicron subvariant, so the regulation stayed in effect even though hospitalizations are way down from the height of the pandemic and most cases have been milder.
On April 1, a Staten Island judge lifted mask mandates for toddlers citywide — but that prompted Adams to on the same day announced City Hall would seek an appeal and requested a stay to keep the controversial rule in place.
A week later, Adams said he hoped to lift the mask mandate for kids “within a week or so” as parents staged protests outside City Hall and in Times Square, accusing the mayor of backtracking on his promise. Days later, Adams released a statement in which he said he wasn’t yet ready to pull the trigger because coronavirus cases in the city had “continued to rise.”
Then, a month later, the Adams administration nixed the mask requirement that applied to outdoor activities for toddlers, while noting young pupils still had to wear masks indoors.
“It feels like there’s no movement at all from Mayor Adams or [Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin] Vasan,” Pollack, a Bronx mother, said. “There’s been no update about what there will be in the summer, and as a parent it’s very frustrating, and it makes me question whether New York City is the right place to raise my family.”
“My daughter’s been in a mask the entire time she’s been in school,” she fumed. “My son is going to be starting in the same school in the fall, and I never would’ve thought it would be a question of if he has to wear a mask.”
The exasperated New York City parents are not alone.
According to a POLITICO-Harvard survey, more than 40% of parents of school-aged children think mask-wearing harms their kids’ educational experience, 46% of believe mask-wearing hurt their child’s social learning and interactions, and 39% said it harmed their child’s mental and emotional health.
Meanwhile, evidence suggests the overwhelming majority of coronavirus cases in young children are mild. Data collected by the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that just 0.1% to 1.5% of child COVID cases resulted in hospitalization and 0.00% to 0.01% resulted in deaths.
City health department data shows a seven-day overall positivity rate average of 8.83% — down from the more than 9% peak in the middle of last month but up significantly from the below 3% positivity rates recorded in April. According to the most recent stats, the Big Apple is seeing a weekly average of 42 new hospitalizations — down from nearly 100 in mid-May.
Figures show confirmed and probable COVID-19 deaths are down from May as well — from an average of eight or nine a day to six as of Tuesday.
City data shows that 78.6% of New Yorkers of all ages are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and that 88.2% of adults have received at least two shots — inoculation rates that have barely budged in recent weeks. Just under 98% of adult residents have gotten at least one jab, according to the latest figures.
About 87.5% of city residents of all ages have received at least one shot, while just 38.4% have received a booster shot, according to city health department statistics.
According to statistics reported through May 21, the deaths per 100,000 people is 0.43% for vaccinated New Yorkers but a much higher 7.68% for those who haven’t received their shots.
As the end of the school year approaches, Ana Jelenkovic — a mother of two including a 4-year-old who she says has needed private speech therapy because of masks — told The Post she’s intentionally sending her child to a Tribeca summer program that’s not considered a school setting so the city’s regulations don’t apply.
“His preschool summer camp has a mask requirement, so he’s not going there,” she said. “I’m putting him in camps where they’re not mandated by the DOH, they’re not run by preschools.”
Jelenkovic added, “I find it all very dystopian and depressing that as a society and as a city we have come to just accept this policy.”
The Manhattan mom pointed to unvaccinated older kids and adults who can still go mask-free and other countries that have never masked toddlers throughout the pandemic
“We’ve accepted this policy without any accountability for the ‘why’ or the ‘when,’” Jelenkovic said. “It’s just very concerning that they’re going to be doing this continuing in the summer, because we don’t know the ‘when.’”
“The mayor has just failed to give us that ‘when’ and that ‘why.’”
Sumayya Ahmad — an Upper East Side doctor and mother of two, ages 3 and 2 — told The Post she has recently been searching for activities this summer where masks are not required.
She said about 200 parents and pre-school directors have created a spreadsheet for such activities in the Big Apple.
While the indoor business mask mandate in New York was lifted in February, some Big Apple museums and all Broadway theaters require face coverings. Ahmad hopes to take vacations this summer to places where private venues don’t have stringent masking rules like on Long Island and the Hudson Valley.
“We live near the Met and have been avoiding [it],” she said. “I’m just going to try to leave New York as much as possible.”
Brian Robinson — a Tribeca father of a 4-year-old girl who is running to represent the newly drawn 10th Congressional District — posited that if Adams were to end the toddler mask mandate, private venues would follow his lead.
“If Adams would back off of that, then obviously business wouldn’t feel the pressure to hold that line,” he said.
Robinson, 38, called the toddler mask mandate “absurdity in its most pure form,” lamenting that his daughter is forced to perform dance recitals while wearing masks as parents watch without them.
“At this point, the science doesn’t support it,” said the Democratic congressional hopeful. “It’s excessive.”
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