By h. nazan ışık—

29 November 2021—

New York Governor Kathy Hochul held a Coved-19 briefing on 29 November.  And it was on new variant OMICRON.

Governor Hochul reminded that the holiday season officially begun and people would be gathering more indoors, people are traveling to see family members they haven’t seen in a long time, who may or may not be vaccinated.  And she talked about the new variant.

“We have to deal with the realities of a highly transmissible Omicron variant. And so I wanted to start with that and to let people know, first of all, we are fully monitoring this. We have ways to defend against this. We are not defenseless like we were one year ago and we all know exactly what has to happen. We know that it’s an issue that we’re grappling with right now.

“The world is paying attention to this, so we’re monitoring it globally. We’re monitoring it here in New York State. I went and visited Wadsworth Lab during the heat of the pandemic. These are the individuals who worked literally day and night round the clock, trying to be able to monitor the situation, but also more importantly, conduct the tests, travel, make sure that everyone had what they needed to get through the early days of the pandemic.”

She invited Dr. Kirsten St. George who’s the Director of Virology at the Wadsworth Lab by zoom.

Nothing found yet in New York!

Governor Hochul: Nothing found yet in New York, correct? 

Dr. St. George: That is correct. We just checked the international sequence databases, the public sequence databases, just a few minutes ago and still nothing in New York, nothing reported for New York and nothing reported anywhere else in the United States.

Governor Hochul thanked Dr. St. George and continued: “So we talked about this variant. We know it’s coming. But here’s the good news: we’re not defenseless.

Compared to a year ago we have so much at our disposal. Anyone over age five can get vaccinated. 

And if you’re vaccinated, you can get the booster shot if you’re over the age of 18. 

We are recommending highly that people wear masks indoors that they already have to.

 If they go out on public transit, you cannot go on the subway without making sure you have your mask on. 

You cannot go into a healthcare facility in the state of New York without wearing a mask. We’ve always encouraged mask use. And I’m asking businesses to encourage the same among their patrons as well as their employees as well.”

She emphasized the importance of the vaccine. 

“Some of the simple measures, you know, mask wearing, the hand sanitation, trying to limit your activity around other crowds. I mean, these are all the things we’ve been asked to do, but again, the difference between this year and last year is the vaccine. And of course, if you’re not feeling well, stay home and hopefully everybody gets the flu shot because this is a season when people get sick anyhow. “

Photographs: © h. nazan ışık /NKENdiKEN