NYC Jail Officers At 67% COVID Vaccination Rate As Mandate Looms

NEW YORK CITY — New York's Boldest have a lot of ground to make up as a strict COVID-19 vaccine mandate looms.

The city's Department of Correction is 72 percent vaccinated, the lowest rate among municipal workers, according to mayor's office data.

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday said uniformed DOC workers — who serve as jail guards in the troubled Rikers Island facility — are actually below that number. But he said more guards are getting vaccinated ahead of a Dec. 1 deadline.

“We’ve seen a surge in vaccinations amongst the uniform members of the Department of Correction,” he said. “And just in the last few days, we’ve seen a 9 percent jump. That number is now 67 percent — we expect that number to go up a lot.”

A vaccination-or-no-pay mandate took effect as November dawned for all municipal workers except DOC staff.

De Blasio delayed the mandate for jail workers until Dec. 1, citing concerns with staffing shortfalls and an ongoing crisis at Rikers.

Early concerns about staffing shortfalls in other agencies, such as the NYPD and FDNY, have largely failed to materialize. The city's workforce is now 94 percent vaccinated against the coronavirus.

City officials are preparing for a potential staffing crunch with the DOC, de Blasio told WNYC's Errol Louis on Monday. But he predicted most guards will get vaccinated "right up at the end."

"We saw that a lot with the schools, we saw it with the uniformed services folks," he said. :It was not the deadline day. It was two days later or four days later, five days later. But we still saw an essential truth, that people ultimately got vaccinated and did not want to go without pay or lose their job, ultimately, obviously."