Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Expands Vaccine Mandate to Include Staff in OMH and OPWDD Hospital Settings

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced the plan to expand the healthcare worker vaccine mandate to include employees who work in certain facilities offering health care to individuals served by the Office of Mental Health and the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities. Under the new directive, staff who work in settings that treat some of the most vulnerable New Yorkers will be required to show proof of at least the first shot of a COVID-19 vaccine series by November 1, without a test-out option. Ahead of that requirement, staff in these settings will be required to submit to weekly testing, if unvaccinated, beginning October 12.

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

AUDIO of today's remarks is available here.

PHOTOS are available on the Governor's Flickr page.

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

Thank you all for coming out to this afternoon. I wanted to give you an update on where we are with respect to COVID, and I so look forward to the day when I don't have to open with those lines, but for now, we're seeing a continuation of the Delta variant not abating, and we're going to continue to stay ahead of this. You've heard me say for nearly 45 days now, the focus is keeping young people in schools, returning people to work, and reopening New York State safely. So, we all know the answer. It's getting people vaccinated. And that's exactly what we're going to continue focusing on.

Where are we today? Let's take a look at that map. Trending downward, I'm liking that, but we still have some areas, North Country, come on North Country. You can do better. I was up there last weekend and talked this up quite a bit. Our daily statewide is 2.34, which is good, but we have to focus on Mohawk Valley as well and some of our other areas, which I know we can do better. Extraordinary to me to see New York City, 1.29, congratulations to New York City. I spend a lot of time walking the streets, incognito, at least for now, and I see a lot of people wearing masks. Very good compliance, at least in the diners I pop into, or I have to show that I'm vaccinated. So those strategies are working in a densely populated area, which we know could actually be far worse, but they're actually working very hard to keep this down.

Our hospitalizations, we track this, and I just wanted to point out, on this graph here, we're paralleling where we were last year. The low point that you see was really these late summer, fall, and all of a sudden, you know, that bump reflects the fall surge, the winter surge. And that is what keeps me up at night, seeing that trend, and how we thought we were out of the woods, we were ready to declare victory and all of a sudden it changed. And I'd like to think that that will not happen, but we're heading into the time of year where people are going indoors, and lots of fun festivals and gatherings and holidays that are important to us. We did lose 38 people in one day and that is just absolutely heartbreaking. The reality is, you know, we have to keep fighting back and get more people vaccinated. And that that's the same number as we had last week at my last briefing as well. So that's very much on our minds.

Regional hospitalizations, we're watching the ICU beds, but also, this does not reflect the opportunity that these hospitals have to adapt quickly if necessary. I mean, these are still continuing in most cases, they're elective surgeries. That is something we know very quickly can transition to non-elective surgery or, you know, only in-patient and not have elective surgeries if they need to add up. But we're in constant communication with the leaders of the hospitals in these regions to be able to adapt quickly if necessary.

Vaccination rate, still going up. Last time we had a conversation, we were quite a bit lower than this we're still making progress, especially among our 17- to 12-year-olds. I want to do better and let's get that done before their younger siblings will soon be eligible, which I hope would be before too long, the five- to 11-year-olds, but 84 percent with at least one dose, almost 85 percent. That's good. That's good. But we were always told last year when. We hit 70 percent. We're going to be in great shape. And now they keep moving the goal line. And now we're being told about 90 percent is what we have to achieve. So we're within striking distance, but we have to keep pushing.

We really do. And we're going to keep pushing younger New Yorkers to get vaccinated through our continuation of the pop-ups. They're fun, kids like seeing these come to their schools, we're going to keep doing that. We've announced 120 sites over the 12-week period. Lot of people are partnering with us.

I've been at some of the sites and community centers and schools, and I really do appreciate all they're doing for us. I want to just reflect on some of our mandates. We had a lot of coverage last week in terms of our hospital and nursing home mandate to be vaccinated. We have another one coming October 7th that adult care facilities have to be vaccinated by October 7th.

And this is a good place to be in right now. And we saw last time, I had a dramatic increase as the days wound down. And we're already starting from a good place right now. This is up from 77 percent when I took office August 24th and we're approaching the numbers we need to hit. So we're seeing that those deadlines have a way of focusing the mind on doing the right thing. We appreciate everyone who's doing that.

We want to talk about our OMH, Office of Mental Health, and OPWDD, the people at disability facilities. We want to make sure that we have safety in those as well. The ones that are hospital settings, we want them to have their first dose by the 11th. I'm sorry, November 1st.

And we'll start weekly testing for those who are unvaccinated. Again, this is a category where more people are apt to be coming in and out. Not with the same care provider in other settings, but we're going to start focusing on this right now and reaching out to them to let them know these are our expectations.

I don't think there'd be any surprise, but we will have the full vaccine mandate for these hospital settings, which are analogous to the hospital settings that are already doing it. So this makes sense. This is what we're doing. We're very excited. I'm going to be having a call with the White House later this afternoon, to talk about how we're progressing on a number of fronts.

But one is when we're going to be able to get younger children involved, pediatricians, get ready. We want you to start signing up to make sure you have full access to the vaccine. So we don't waste a single moment. Once the approval comes and pediatrician offices are the most logical place, you know, a lot of adults are used to going into a pharmacy for their flu shot. I've done that myself, but I think when it comes to your child, you're going to feel more secure in your doctor's office. And so we don't want to have any problems with them, not being able to do this for families and making sure they have enough supplies. So pediatricians, please enroll so we can track you and make sure you have what you need.

These breakthrough infections are trending upward. We've seen more cases. 0.8 percent of all cases are breakthrough. People have already been vaccinated and hospitalizations creeping up a little bit. Again, unvaccinated people still have ten times more risk of developing COVID and that should be the headline. Ten times the risk of developing COVID and also more severity when it does happen as opposed to someone who's vaccinated, but I am on a daily basis now encountering people, talking to people, hearing about people who are in that breakthrough category. So there is a strong anxiety.

Again, this is another conversation I'm going to have with the White House. When will we expect approvals for the other forms of vaccination? I'm a J & J person myself, waiting on that Moderna as well. We're doing well with Pfizer, but we also want to make sure that those other vaccine brands are approved soon so we can get people the afforded medication that they need to have. So, that's what we're concerned about.

How many people have already had boosters? We're at about 303,000 and that's just up from about a week ago we had a 147,000. So, there is interest in these booster shots, which is great. And we have categories of people that know they're eligible right now, but I just want to see that expand that I want to get to the point where they recommend that everybody get the booster shot and I'll be having that conversation today as well.

These are the categories where they're available now, as I mentioned before, it's 65 and older, underlying health conditions, work and live in high risk settings. That means right now we have about 3 million New Yorkers eligible. We have enough supply. We're ready to go. Let's get those in people's arms to protect you from the unknown for this fall.

Here's the high risk occupations that I've covered before, but just want to remind everybody that if you're in these groups, classifications, we encourage you right now, if you've already been fully vaccinated and you've had at least a six months lapse, please get your boosters.

Also, this was a little unclear early on in the pandemic. You know, what pregnant women should do, and we want to make sure the word gets out that the CDC, FDA and our own experts are saying that pregnant people who get COVID, let them know that they have a higher risk of severe illness and preterm birth and people who are pregnant and want to get pregnant really should make sure they have that vaccine as well. There were questions early on, but this seems to be settled that it builds up antibodies that might protect their babies as well. So let's get the message out to pregnant people. We just have to find more creative ways to get people vaccinated. And you know, part of it is just getting the information about where to find a close one near you, it's hard to just, when you just take a second and realize - last December, January, February, everybody wanted a vaccine and you couldn't wait for your age group and you couldn't wait to find out, is there a mass vax site near you and where are you going to get it, and everyone just thought if we could only have access to that - the limited supply, everybody was so anxious about this.

Now for many, many months, it has been so available and we're just in a different situation, an unexpected one, an unnecessary one, where we literally have to find more creative ways to convince people that getting a vaccine is smart for them. One way, we want to support people from other states, is to say that when you come to New York, if you've been vaccinated and you have an app on your phone, that we're going to be the first in the nation that has an app created to validate passes from other states.

That's a good news story. The bad news is I think there's only five other states that have this. So it's a limited use, but I'm going to be working with our neighbors, especially in the metropolitan area, you know, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Jersey in particular, and making sure that we can have, you know, individuals from their states come into our facilities, come into our theaters, go into our restaurants and be able to have the businesses be able to download this app and be able to check the validation of a vaccine from another state. So we hope that this becomes more universal. You know, we have a lot of people who are snowbirds, they go to Florida, and my dream was just to say, well, okay, if you've been vaccinated in Florida, you come up here, you can show it on your app. Except Florida isn't really big into vaccinations and that's another whole topic, so that's not working out for us, but we're doing the best we can. Right. So, this is really important for our comeback, for tourism, for businesses, business travelers - you want business travelers to start coming back. It's really important to start filling our hotels and our restaurants.

And you heard me yesterday announcing 25 more million dollars to help restaurants indirectly by getting money to food banks and food distribution centers so they can purchase food from restaurants, get them into the homes of the people that they serve and support. You know, the restaurants will do better with that. So they are very excited about this, but we're just trying to hit this from so many different angles and it's, it's been a long haul and we're getting as creative - if you have any ideas, let me know. One was let's lean into our sports teams and - I'm not taking credit for this, but I don't know if this ever happened in the history of New York, where all of our sports teams and you throw the Yankees on top of that, that was a heck of a weekend. So we did have a lottery I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, so we've had 13 winners and more drawings to go to just, you know, you get vaccinated, you enter our drawing and you get a chance to see one of your favorite sports teams, or get some of the paraphernalia, even have a chat with one of our athletes. So, that's what we're dealing with, we're trying to make it a little bit fun. I love sports, it's all good. Go New York teams again, as we approach some more challenges this week. We'll stay tuned on that. But here's where we are and let's wrap it up and just say, we know the vaccine works. Uh, we know vaccine mandates work. We're going to be having to talk about some more going forward. Not my favorite thing to do, but sometimes it's necessary.

And that comes down to just a gathering I had this morning. I invited county executives to have a conversation with me about their challenges. And I was thanked profusely for having a mask mandate day one, because that took the pressure off of them and their school boards and their school districts, that the state stepped in and said to do this. Same with the vaccination mandates for hospitals and nursing homes.

It was not an easy decision because a lot of people's lives are affected, but I have to speak clear-eyed and laser focused on the priorities that I must have as the governor of this state. And that is to protect people's health. And we feel confident that this is the approach that has worked. Give people enough notice, they can be fully compliant, at the end of the day they will not go into a hospital or a nursing home in their most vulnerable state. They're not healthy, they're not well, and they will not be exposed to someone who's supposed to take care of them, who then gives them the virus. That is what we've been working very hard to accomplish, and I hope that other states will follow our lead on that as well. It's all about just getting vaccination.