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New York City may go into 'high' COVID alert in the coming days.
The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is urging residents to wear KN95, KF94 or N95 masks when indoors, in an advisory they issued on Monday. They are strongly encouraging residents to wear masks when they are indoors in public places like grocery stores, lobbies, offices, stores and other places.
The health department wants people with high risk due to underlying conditions, older adults and those who are unvaccinated to avoid crowded settings, especially indoors.
However, despite the increase in COVID cases around New York, NYC Mayor Eric Adams says the city is not ready to put masks on for indoors.
"We're not at that point yet," he said. "We're not at the point of doing anything other than urging New Yorkers while you're indoors in large set-in social settings. We're not going to panic. We're going to continue to be prepared."
The past two months there has been an increase in COVID cases, this week NYC reported its highest average number of new infections since January 2022.
"We now have the antivirals, we didn't have that before," he said. "We have more tools, so we don't have to fight the war we had before. This is a new war. And we're going to use all those tools to do so."