Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces New Yorkers Can Now Receive New COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters Designed to Strengthen Defenses Against Omicron Subvariants

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced the availability of bivalent COVID-19 vaccine boosters, which are designed to add Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 variants and bolster previous vaccination protection. The announcement follows the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's recommendation to use updated COVID-19 boosters from Pfizer-BioNTechfor anyone age 12 or older and from Moderna for those 18 or older. Governor Hochul made the announcement shortly before getting her booster shot at the Boriken Neighborhood Health Center in East Harlem today. To schedule an appointment for the updated COVID-19 booster, New Yorkers should contact their regular health care provider, local pharmacy, or local county health department. New Yorkers can also visit vaccines.gov, text their ZIP code to 438829, or call 1-800-232-0233 to find nearby locations.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the event is available here.

PHOTOS of the event are available on the Governor's Flickr page.

PRESENTATION SLIDES from the event are available here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Someone said hi back. Wow. Friendly press is here. How about that? How about that? Great to see everyone here today. First of all, I'm honored to have join me, Dr. Mary Bassett, an exceptional public servant. Again, over a year ago, we were trying to recruit the all-star team to run our state and we were able to recruit her out of Harvard. So, they haven't forgiven me yet, but we are blessed to have Dr. Mary Bassett as our Commissioner. Arturo Perez is here, the CEO of Boriken Neighborhood Health Center. Thank you very much for hosting us here. And also, we'll be having the Director of Nursing here doing something. I'll be in that chair to have something administered. EsnydelleEtienne, and she'll be joining us shortly as well.

So, here we are. Big day. Really proud to be at this in fantastic medical facility. Every chance I get, I come out and think the people who showed up day after day, when many people are able to zoom into life, zoom into their jobs and they showed up and were providing lifesaving health care. And so, I will always be grateful. And that is why it was important to come to this particular site, to talk about some very, very good news related to boosters. And we're going to be making some changes to our guidance based on positive trends and with hospitalizations and cases. But before we get into that, it's always important to talk about where we are in the COVID story. It's been going on a very long time, about 28, 29 months. And basically we're seeing numbers that are similar to what we've seen before. Again, that dreaded peak there that was fairly early in my tenure. And we saw what happened when we had literally 90,000 cases back on January 7th.

Today, our seven day average is about 3,400. So again, cases per hundred thousand back then, an extraordinary 366 cases per hundred thousand. Today, that number is 17.8. So again, you can see a phenomenal trend in the progress we've made until now, but I track these numbers like a hawk. It's the first thing I look at in the morning, and I make sure nothing happened by the end of the day. Hospitalizations, again, this is a hundred thousand - let's look at the hospitalizations. Those have stabilized as well. That's about 10,000 at the peak. Now we're down to 2,200 and that's the 7-day average. So, we are seeing major declines in hospitalizations. Another good news story. That's our statewide average.

So now, the good news is we have a booster that has been approved by the FDA and the CDC, and that gives us a new tool to fight the virus. And thank God we've had vaccines and vaccinations and booster shots to prevent death and serious illness. And that is what the narrative over these many months has demonstrated, that people who are boosted, you still may contract COVID. Yes, you may. But you'll have a less severe case. You'll be less likely to end up in the hospital and certainly much less chance of death. So for the first time ever now, we have boosters that are approved that target specific variants. We haven't had that before. These boosters that we'll be talking about today and now be widely available today are to target the Omicron variants, BA.4 and BA.5, which have been the predominant variants for a number of months now. There's other ones on the horizon. We're always tracking, but as I confirmed with Dr. Bassett earlier today, that these are still the predominant variants circulating around this country.

So again, having a booster shot tailored to a specific variant is significant. It's the first time that we've been able to achieve that. And it makes me very hopeful that this will be an extraordinarily effective booster shot. And so, I look forward to getting my shot momentarily because I do shake a lot of hands. Just think about four thousand hands on Sunday alone, or Monday. So, I'm excited to be immunized, and I want others to share in that excitement and know that they can take control of their own health by getting something as simple as a booster shot that is now going to be available at your local pharmacy literally today. There are people in line filling out the paperwork to get a booster shot right here at this facility.

So, they are now out there. Individual doctors, individual pharmacists have been requesting their supply. Thank God there's no shortage. That was our crisis last year when there was such a severe shortage, we had to determine based on age and categories of work and people who are most vulnerable could get the booster shots. And now today they're widely available. So, you just call up, make an appointment, come online, make an appointment to your own doctor, or one of the countless pharmacies that we have in the neighborhood. So, anyone over 12 and up is eligible to receive a Pfizer booster. I believe it's still 18 for the Moderna.

So, if you've had your last shot, your last booster, two months ago, early July, you are now eligible to get this one as well. So, so get the new Omicron booster. And we're also going to be talking about, you know, continuing to use every tool available to us. And as New Yorkers, we have one shared goal — that is to get through this together. Put an end to this era. It's been long. It's been painful, and New Yorkers have done an extraordinary job and I can't thank them enough for what they've done to help us go from the depths of despair, the depth of darkness as the hardest hit community in America, almost the world at the time, but we also want to make sure we get through this together.

So, again, getting vaccine boosts is our best shot, but also, we have to restore some normalcy to our lives. And so, we'll be talking about a new normal starting today. Department of Health will be issuing new guidance regarding masks based on the CDC guidance, and starting today, masks will be optional. You'll be starting to see these signs. This is our subway sign. So, places like shelters, correctional facilities, detention centers, and yes, mass transit. You'll see this little character. And I'm told that's a ponytail off to the side. Do you all see the ponytail? Okay. I just want to make sure I'm not the only one. Masks are encouraged, but optional.

This is what you're going to see on our subways and our mass transit throughout the State of New York. This is buses Upstate. This is transportation everywhere. So, we're very, very excited about that as well. So big progress, but also the message at the bottom is very important. Let's respect each other's choices.

What that means is you choose not to have a mask that is your personal decision. You'll do your own personal risk assessment of who you're exposed to, your own vulnerabilities, where you work. You make your own determination, but do not judge your fellow passengers on what their choices are. Let's be respectful.

So, we want to make sure that we handle that in a mature way as New Yorkers can and should do. But also, reminder that mask requirements will remain in effect at adult care facilities, as well as other health care facilities regulated by the Department of Health while there's still the variant at large. And so, I know this is a big change. The MTA will be rolling out this signage, but basically we're going from mandatory to optional. So that is what we're talking about. And so, I want to thank everyone who's been complying on our transit systems for 28 months. A long time. I know for many, it became second nature, but it's always been a visible reminder that something is not normal here. And it was there for the right reason. It protected health. And now we're in a far different place than we had been, as we continue to watch the trends, this is not a one-day snapshot. This is watching the trends and we're seeing a stabilization of those numbers. So I want to thank everyone, the New Yorkers who sacrificed, stepped up and they've done a great job, they really have.

And I still expect that we'll see many people on the trains and subways and walking down the streets, I walk the streets of Manhattan almost every day, and I see people still wearing them. That is their choice. We encourage them to do that. So these are encouraged, but optional. So, that's how we're going to make sure that we get to a new place. So I'm very optimistic, I'm very optimistic that we'll be assuring each other's respect for this. But as we talk about this, I want to make sure we are getting kids back to school. That was my other number one priority. We talked about this in July. We talked about our Fall Surge Plan on August 22nd as we gave updates to make sure that parents know we welcome the public school kids back to school in the city tomorrow, all over the state. Many are going back today. And also, we'll continue everything we can to keep our children safe in schools. So I want to let everybody know we're going to continue watching the numbers. We're watching global trends. We're watching for variants, we're watching for any updates in vaccines, but we do believe that we're in a good place right now, especially if New Yorkers take advantage of this booster. That is how we get back to not just a new normal, but a normal normal, and that is what we're striving for. So, I'm excited that we've been able to achieve that.

We also said we'd get kids back to school. We wanted to make sure there's enough test kits. So, we kept our promise. We got out almost 3 million test kits out already, so when they go back to school, if they need to be tested, they're stockpiled. We've sent them to private schools, charter schools, public schools, they are all over the state. We have plenty stockpiled. This was important to me as I have conversations with Kathryn Garcia, Head of our State Operations, to make sure that we are not ever in a vulnerable position again with respect to supplies. So we have amassed over 15 million test kits are in inventory right now to be able to handle any potential surge coming up because, if a surge comes, as we saw last winter, Omicron wasn't even a variant, it wasn't defined until the end of November and immediately, there was a run on test kits and we worked tirelessly to make sure we had enough so when kids went back to school in January, that there would be no barriers, that we had plenty of tests kits, and that's what gave people the confidence to know they can go back. So, we will always be aggressive, make sure we leave no stone unturned, to make sure New York is positioned to protect our citizens. It's my number one job. So, we're always watching the data. Our Fall Action Plan is up and running. And again, the last thing I'm going to encourage you to do: Go get your shots. All the members of the media, you can get your shot before you leave here today. So, just sign up.

And so with that, let me turn it over to Dr. Bassett and thank her again for her extraordinary service to the people at the State of New York.