NYC set to fire unvaccinated workers

New York City is set to fire up to 3,000 unvaccinated municipal workers Friday, according to the mayor's office. The number represents less than 1 percent of the city workforce.

About 12,000 New York City workers are unvaccinated, about 3,000 of them were on unpaid leave as of late January and could be the first to be terminated. In addition, roughly 1,000 other new city employees must show proof of two doses by Friday.

About 95 percent of the city's 370,000 workers have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, an increase from 84 percent, when the city's vaccine mandate was announced in October.

"We need people to be vaccinated," New York City Mayor Eric Adams said in an interview last week. "We don't want to terminate anyone. It's up to them," he added. "They're quitting."

In San Francisco, Washington state and Massachusetts, hundreds of workers have lost their jobs for refusing to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, though most have complied with mandates. Other cities like Boston and Chicago have moved to require vaccination for city employees.

Dr Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser, said the US is heading out of the "full-blown-pandemic phase" of COVID-19 and moving toward a point where more decisions will be made at the local level and not by the federal government, allowing restrictions such as wearing face masks to be lifted over time.

Fauci told the Financial Times in an interview on Tuesday: "There is no way we are going to eradicate this virus," he said. "But I hope we are looking at a time when we have enough people vaccinated and enough people with protection from previous infection that the COVID restrictions will soon be a thing of the past."

The Food and Drug Administration's vaccine advisory committee is expected to discuss clinical trial data from Pfizer and BioNTech on Tuesday for a COVID-19 vaccine for children 6 months to 5 years old, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The vaccine can be administered only after the CDC gives its approval.

If the vaccine receives the green light, the first half of 10 million doses will be available on Feb 21 and the second on Feb 25, according to a planning document released by the CDC.

Novavax announced Thursday that its COVID-19 vaccine proved safe and effective in a study of children ages 12 to 17.