Just days after saying the New York Police Department officers would not be forced to take the COVID-19 vaccine, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea is now suggesting that police might change.
"It's not gonna be mandatory; that's the plan right now," Shea told the New York Post. "Could that change? It could. But I don't think that's gonna change."
Mayor Bill de Blasio is potentially behind a push to mandate the vaccine for New York's Finest, according to the report, but Shea has been against it.
"The more this is voluntary, the better off we are," Shea added to the Post.
The vaccines are going to be ready for the NYPD in the coming weeks.
"We're planning right now that by the end of December or January we're going to get the first group," he said. "I think it's a small group, maybe up to like 4,000 doses."
There are 55,000 officers and employees in the NYPD.
"We're navigating all these logistics," Shea continued to the Post. "When we have the conversation about who should get it and how we should distribute it in this first group — and we do expect bigger groups coming quickly after — we have discussions about, for example, the flu vaccine."
The flu vaccine has not been that popular, as just about 3,000 have participated, but the COVID-19 outbreak has caused far more concern among officers.
"I don't know how many people are going to sign up for this COVID vaccine," Shea told the Post. "I don't know what to anticipate in terms of how many are going to volunteer.
"We have the flu vaccine, which is a great program that not a lot of people participate in, but COVID is a different animal, and it's certainly scared people in New York City."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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