New York city keeps mask mandate for kids under 5 as cases rise

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Mayor Eric Adams announced Friday that New York City will keep its school mask mandate in place for children younger than 5 in response to rising coronavirus cases in the city.

Adams had planned to lift the mask mandate starting Monday if coronavirus cases remained low. But he decided Friday that preschoolers should continue to wear masks because they are too young to be vaccinated and cases are increasing again in the city, a rise fueled by an omicron subvariant, BA.2, that is dominant in the United States.

“New Yorkers, we want you to be prepared, not panicked,” Adams said at a news conference at City Hall.

A judge on Staten Island had issued an order earlier in the day to strike down the mask mandate, but the city appealed that decision and announced Friday night that an appellate judge had ruled in the city’s favor. Adams said on Twitter that children under 5 should wear masks to school Monday.

The city’s health commissioner, Dr. Ashwin Vasan, asked parents for “patience and grace” as the city tried to keep New Yorkers safe.

“We’re recommending to wait a little bit longer before making masks optional for this age group,” Vasan said at the news conference.

Adams had announced last week that he planned to stop requiring masks for children under 5 at child care centers and preschools starting this Monday. But cases have started to rise over the past month, from about 500 daily cases in early March to about 1,250 daily cases now. The city could soon move from a low risk level to a medium risk level, according to a new color-coded alert system based on guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Manhattan in particular is on the cusp.

“We expect to move to a higher risk category in a matter of weeks,” Vasan said.

Adams, a Democrat who took office in January, has focused on the city’s recovery from the pandemic and has rolled back some restrictions, including ending a proof-of-vaccination mandate for restaurants, gyms and entertainment venues, known as the Key to NYC program, and removing a mask mandate for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. He had faced pressure from some parents to end the mask mandate for preschool-aged children.

He introduced the color-coded alert system last month, and the city issued “recommended actions” for each risk level. According to the system, the city should consider reinstating the Key to NYC program at the medium risk level. If the risk level becomes high or extremely high, the city could once again require masks indoors or urge residents to shelter in place.

Health experts worry that BA.2, which has fueled case surges in Europe and Asia, could lead to another wave of the pandemic in the city, and possibly the country. They believe that the true number of cases in New York might be higher than the data suggests, because many people are testing at home, with no official reporting of results.

Hospitalizations, which have remained low in New York City over the past month, total about 13 per day, although hospitalizations are often a lagging indicator. There were about 1,000 hospitalizations a day in January, when cases last soared.

Adams also said Friday that the city planned to distribute about 6 million home tests this month. Asked if he would consider reinstating a mask mandate for older students, Adams said he would “pivot and shift” depending on the data and advice from his health team.

Vasan encouraged New Yorkers to get booster shots and to wear masks in public indoor settings, pointing out that he was wearing a mask at the news conference. He said that he wanted to use an “abundance of caution” for young children, who had higher hospitalization rates during the omicron surge.

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams announced Friday that she had tested positive for the virus. On Thursday, Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey announced that he had tested positive.

BA.2 — the most transmissible version of the coronavirus yet identified — accounts for more than half of new virus cases in the United States, the CDC said this week. It accounts for about 70% of cases in the region that includes New York, New Jersey and Puerto Rico.

The mask mandate for children under 5 applies to the city’s 4-K and 3-K preschool classrooms, which serve about 95,000 students, and to all other preschool and child care centers. New York never required children under 2 to wear masks in day care centers.

The judge who ruled on the preschool mask mandate Friday, Ralph Porzio of the state Supreme Court on Staten Island, wrote in his order that the mandate was “arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.”

Michael Chessa, a lawyer for the parents who challenged the mandate, said they wanted parents to have a choice and did not believe the city had provided clear bench marks for removing the requirement.

“Merely saying that cases are on the rise and 2- to 4-year-olds can’t be vaccinated, that’s just unacceptable,” he said. “It was fine in the spring of 2020, but we’re well beyond that now.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Emma G. Fitzsimmons