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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We begin with some breaking news on New York City COVID policy. Here it is from the New York Times just moments ago, New York City is expected to require proof of vaccination for indoor dining and fitness. It says Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to announce this morning that New York City will require proof of vaccination for people participating in indoor activities, including at restaurants, gyms, and performances. His latest attempt to spur more vaccinations according to a city official.

The policy, this says, is similar to mandates issued in France and Italy last month, and is believed to be the first of its kind in the United States. The Time says the program will start later this month and after a transition period enforcement will begin in mid-September when schools are expected to reopen and more workers could return to offices in Manhattan.

Gives a little background on the situation in France or the policy in France, where it says people will soon have to show a health pass, providing proof of vaccination or a recent negative test to visit indoor bars, restaurants, and gyms. It has already been implemented at amusement parks, theatres, and venues hosting more than 50 people over there. In New York City proof of vaccination will be required and there will be no testing option, so that from the New York Times moment ago.

In a minute, we're going to talk to our Health and Science editor Nsikan Akpan, about all this, but let me also take a step back on some of the new CDC guidelines and where they come from, like why were most of the people in the Cape Cod "COVID cluster Provincetown", people who had been vaccinated? Well, because Cape Cod and Massachusetts in general, has a very high vaccination rate, it was overwhelmingly vaccinated people who were exposed.

Why were there no deaths among those 900 who tested positive for COVID? Same reason, because the large majority had gotten their shots. It's so different from, say, Florida or Louisiana, where the Delta variant is also surging, but much more of the population has declined the vaccine and the hospitalization and death rates are approaching their winter highs.

The Cape Cod cluster was nevertheless among the reasons the Centers for Disease Control updated its guidelines to recommend that even vaccinated people return to wearing masks in indoor public spaces in areas of high or substantial transmission, and that kids in schools return to full masking this fall. Of course, we're also seeing more and more vaccine mandates coming from employers, you know about the city workers and the state workers. Now, we have the real estate giant The Related Companies now saying get vaccinated or get fired, medical and religious exemptions only.

Now instead of going for masking mandates, Mayor de Blasio, according to this report, is going to go for a vaccine mandate instead, for restaurants, gyms, performances, proof of vaccination for people participating in public indoor activities.

Where are we? With us now, WNYC and Gothamist Health and Science editor, Nsikan Akpan, his latest two articles on Gothamist are called How Parents Can Prepare for the Delta Variant, Given Most Kids are Unvaccinated, and one called The CDC Pivoted on the Delta Variant, Regular Life Can Continue. Hi, Nsikan. Thanks for coming on. Welcome back to the show.

Nsikan Akpan: Hi, Brian. Great summary. I think our work here is done actually.

Brian Lehrer: Okay. Nice to see you, talk to you next week, but you might have to update your headline from regular life can continue to regular life can continue if you're vaccinated, yes?

Nsikan Akpan: Yes. I think that was the subtext of the piece, which is that regular life is never going back to what it was before the pandemic. I think one way to think about this is, I played sports in college, I played soccer, every once in a while, you'd pick up an ankle injury, and you'd have to wear a brace to get your leg back to normal. I think that society at large especially in New York City, we're trying to heal, we're trying to get rid of COVID-19, and so we need these health measures that are like braces, we need masks. We need vaccinations in order to get through this.

Brian Lehrer: You note, in your article, which, of course, came out before, the news this morning about this vaccine mandate for indoor activities. You noted that Broadway is set to return with full capacity and now a vaccine mandate. They had already announced it for Broadway shows, but after the Provincetown cluster and the findings of high transmissibility between vaccinated people, do you know if Broadway moguls or their science advisors are reconsidering even that?

Nsikan Akpan: I haven't heard that and I don't know why you would. The takeaway with vaccination and just the spread of infections, just catching the virus is that the vaccines still will reduce your chances of catching the virus by quite a lot. We know that they'll protect against severe disease almost completely, but they will also reduce your odds of catching the virus by whether it's 60 to 70 to 80%.

You would still have very low transmission in a setting like a Broadway theater, most likely. I think the big takeaway from what the CDC put out last week, is that if case rates continue to rise to a very, very high level, that's when that indoor scenario among the vaccinated might become more risky because you might have more chances and opportunities for spread in that situation. I think-- sorry, go ahead.

Brian Lehrer: No, I was just going to follow up and ask, it's interesting that you say that the chance of a lot of transmission within a Broadway theater among an all vaccinated audience would be low after what everybody's been hearing in the news about the Provincetown cluster, where, apparently, on that rainy 4th of July weekend on Cape Cod, a lot of people were going into indoor spaces instead of outdoor spaces, and that's how it got transmitted so much.

Nsikan Akpan: That's the moment that we're in right now and it's a moment that we've had a lot during this pandemic, where people need to keep two ideas in their mind at the same time, which can be a bit of a struggle. I think, in an ideal scenario, transmission rates are really low because everyone's vaccinated but if you have a situation where 40% of people are unvaccinated, 50% of people are unvaccinated, and then everything's open and everything's mingling. As I've described before, our vaccinations work a little bit like the shields on the Millennium Falcon, if you hit them enough times, something is going to break through, they're going to wear down.

Really, what we're trying to avoid is a scenario where there's just so much transmission that infection starts spreading through vaccinated people and then reaching unvaccinated populations like kids, most kids are unvaccinated right now or people who are immunocompromised. That was my take of the CDC guidance last week is that the spread is so high among unvaccinated people that it's now putting vaccinated people at risk and in danger of threatening their loved ones who are unvaccinated.

Brian Lehrer: As P-town-- and listeners, we'll open up the phones on Mayor de Blasio's reported new mandate this morning for vaccination, if you're going to do indoor public activities, and anything else you want to ask Nsikan Akpan, our Health and Science editor, well, I'll give you the phone number now. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Just to close the loop on the relationship between the Provincetown cluster among so many vaccinated people, and things like Broadway theaters with fully vaccinated audiences, we had Dr. Leana Wen on yesterday and one of the things that she brought up that I haven't seen addressed in much of the media at all, is the missing denominator as she called it. In other words, 600 vaccinated people might have gotten COVID over 4th of July weekend and the next few days on Cape Cod or in that one town, Provincetown. 600 vaccinated people, that sounds like a lot, but 600 out of how many? I know the number for the total tourists in Provincetown that weekend was about 60,000. I don't know how many of those were exposed, but when you look at 600 out of 60,000, it sounds like a lot less than 600 just stated as a number.

Nsikan Akpan: Another way to look at it is NBC over the weekend had this story that they essentially went state by state and tried to count up the number of breakthrough infections that were being recorded. They counted, I think it was like 125,000 out of like several million vaccinated. When you do the math, that story is reporting a breakthrough rate of about 0.07%.

I did a story this past spring that looked at the math of how we can calculate or predict the breakthrough rate based off of what we saw in clinical trials. When you do that math, you would expect a breakthrough rate of 0.05%, so you've 0.05% versus 0.07%. We're essentially seeing what we would expect based off of what we knew seven or eight months ago coming out of the clinical trials. We're seeing a very, very small number of breakthrough infections relative to the number of people who are vaccinated.

Brian Lehrer: All right, good. Listeners, again, the breaking news, if you're just joining us, per the New York Times. New York City is expected to require proof of vaccination for indoor dining and fitness. It says Mayor de Blasio plans to announce this morning that New York City will require proof of vaccination for people participating in indoor activities, including at restaurants, gyms, and performances, his latest attempt to spur more vaccinations, according to a city official.

The policy is similar to mandates issued in France and Italy last month and it's believed to be the first of its kind in the United States. 646-435-7280 or tweet @BrianLehrer if you want to react or ask a question of our health and science editor for WNYC and Gothamist, Nsikan Akpan. Our colleague, Liz Kim, just tweeted, remembering a question that I asked the mayor last month. She writes, "Last month Brian asked mayor DeBlasio if he would go full Macron, that is require vaccinations for restaurants and bars looks like New York City is going there."

Full Macron is now full DeBlasio. A listener on Twitter asks "Wondering why there's a VAX mandate if there have only been a handful of deaths recorded in New York City recently, yesterday was four. This seems like fear-mongering."

Nsikan Akpan: I think everyone we have this tendency right now to think in the moment. I think we have a hard time looking out to the future. One way that we approach COVID is say, worry about what's happening today, but really worry about what's going to happen tomorrow. We know that 30% of infections are going to be asymptomatic, we know we're going to have a hard time tracking some of these infections. They're going to be getting into places that we can't see in real-time.

Even though the deaths and the hospitalizations might be low now, I think you have to consider what it's going to look like in September and October now that everything's fully reopened, once people start really hanging out inside, once schools reopen to classrooms.

We have this rule right now that a certain number of positive tests can lead to school shutting down, which I know a lot of parents aren't very happy about. Imagine a situation where we see the types of rates of transmission that we've seen in kids like in the UK after everything's really opened up. Imagine you get that situation in New York City where schools are going to shut down after a handful of cases. Do you really want to go through a situation where you have to rejigger your schedule every few days because your school had to shut down again?

I think what we're really looking for and speaking of regular life is consistency. Our ability to get back into the routines that we love, the routines that really define our human experience. I would say just because the hospitalizations and deaths are low now based on the transmission that we're seeing, I don't think it's going to stay that way.

Brian Lehrer: Another question from Twitter, "What does this mean for employees in these venues? Is there a vaccination requirement for them?" I would just answer that by saying, I presume the answer to that is yes. If there's going to be a requirement for customers, there's going to be a requirement for employees. No reason to think any different as far as you know, Nsikan, right?

Nsikan Akpan: Yes, based on our reporting, which was actually done by Liz Kim, she should have a story that's up now, or if not, coming soon. It's going to apply to workers and customers at indoor dining, indoor fitness, and indoor entertainment and performances.

Brian Lehrer: Another listener via Twitter asks, "The guidelines should mean no one under 12 can participate in indoor activities. Won't that cause issues?" That's a good question. If we take this literally, and I realize this is a breaking story and not all the details have even been released yet, but if it's really proof of vaccination for anyone to participate in indoor activities, like going to restaurants or gyms or performances in New York City, then that would exclude anybody who is under 12 who can't get a vaccine right now. I assume there's going to be some kind of other set of rules for kids.

Nsikan Akpan: Yes. You could have a situation where kids mask, they come in with their vaccinated parents and they mask while they're sitting at the table. Maybe you're doing some extra social distancing for kids. Maybe you're checking on whether or not they have any symptoms before they go into one of these venues. You're doing a questionnaire.

It will be interesting to see how the mayor is going to roll this out. I think he's literally giving the details live right now. That was a big question that I had when this story broke, is resources. Are we going to train bouncers for bars on how to validate vaccination cards? Are we going to train restaurant staff on the proper protocols for these different scenarios? What do you do with kids? It'll be interesting to see how the restaurant industry responds to this new requirement.

Brian Lehrer: I see, by the way, listeners, now that I've been citing the New York Times version of this, that our version is now up on Gothamist by our colleague, Liz Kim, headline, New York City to require vaccinations for indoor dining, gyms, and other venues. You can go to gothamist.com if you want to get Liz's indoor take. Here's a good science question for you, Nsikan, I think from Karen in Norwood, New Jersey around WNYC as opposed to Norwood the Bronx. Hi, Karen?

Karen: Hi. Didn't know there was Norwood the Bronx.

Brian Lehrer: There is.

Karen: I am wondering a little bit about how we're tracking COVID that's coming across the Southern border. Now, the one thing that comes to my mind is how new variants spread. If a new variant develops in another country and we have a population coming across the border, it doesn't seem like they're tracking the rates of COVID or quarantining.

Is there any way that we would know how many people are coming to New York City, for example, or the New York Metro region that aren't being tracked that may have had COVID? It doesn't seem like there's any data with regard to that. My big concern around that, of course, is, we'll not know there's a new variant here until it's too late. Hopefully not, but.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Interesting question. Nsikan.

Nsikan Akpan: That is an interesting question. I thought when she said Southern border at first that she meant Delaware. I make that joke because variants can arise anywhere. I think the more uncontrolled spread that we have, the more opportunities there are for mutation and the more likely you're going to get a variant. People will remember that New York, that there was a variant that originated here that we were worried about earlier this year.

Brian Lehrer: In fact, that was my neighborhood at Columbia at New York Presbyterian Hospital on 168th street. Upper Manhattan and people started calling it the Washington Heights variant and people in Washington Heights were like, "No, don't blame us for starting some kind of epidemic, they just discovered this in patients for the first time in a hospital that happens to be located in this neighborhood." When we say south of the border or identify any geographic area, that's why we went to Delta variant instead of India variant, alpha variant, instead of UK variant, that whole thing, right?

Nsikan Akpan: Exactly. Exactly. To directly answer the question, there's this field of study essentially called geographic phylogenetics, which is a fancy way of saying you can build family trees of viruses based on their pattern of mutations, or you can tell where the virus came from. I would say there's an international effort to do that and there's this giant database where all the variants go into so that way scientists can literally track like, "Oh, hey, this new Lambda variant. Oh, we're pretty sure it started to really take hold here and now, oh yes, you can look at it moving into this country or that country."

I would say, unofficially, there is a way to track variants that come from overseas, but truthfully a really dangerous variant can arise anywhere there is a lot of transmission and there's a lot of mutation. It's really not us versus them to some degree, it's really like we're all in this together to get COVID rates down as low as possible.

Brian Lehrer: A listener on Twitter asks, "My digital New York State empire pass," the vaccination pass, "says that it expires on September 26th at midnight. Does that mean that on September 27th they can't go indoors at restaurants?" I'm pretty sure that I know the answer to that, which is that they have a new version up, you can go and reregister for that empire pass in the same way that you did before and it will now extend to September of next year. Do you know anything about that, but I'm pretty sure that's true, Nsikan, unless you have any other information.

Nsikan Akpan: Yes. That's what we've heard too, that essentially you can download a new version of the app and it extends the expiration date out to a year. I think there is a sense that, potentially, at some point, if we do see some waning with the vaccines that you might need to put an expiration date on that, but I don't think we've really reached the stage where we're planning that out. I think if boosters ever get approved, then you might want to start thinking about adding expiration dates to the vaccine passports, but we're very early days.

Brian Lehrer: We've been talking about the Provincetown Cape Cod cluster as such a motivation for the CDC to tighten the guidelines and now for Mayor de Blasio to do this, and we're getting a call from Provincetown. Let's talk to Eric there on the Cape. Eric, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in.

Eric: Hey, thank you. I think the P-town examination or experience saw that the vaccinated people can transmit the virus. However, one has to remember where that virus is transmitted inside and under which circumstances.

There are about four or five bar dance clubs that are open in P-town, many of those have very low ceilings. They were packed to an unbelievable amount over the July 4th week, which is a gay circuit party. People are ready to go have fun, the governor had opened up inside dining and clubs and it was packed. People were chest to chest tightly packed on the dance floor. You really couldn't move that much, having fun, no social distancing. It would take very little for one person who is asymptomatic or symptomatic for it to spread and spread in that group.

My question then is, look at the various circuit parties that happened afterwards, such as the Fire Island Pines party. That's an outdoor event, how much transmission happened there. I think when we're talking about this, we also have to remember that there is some indoor-- it is highly contagious, the Delta variant, of course, but it was a very specific experience. We have to put it into perspective. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. I'm glad you raised the indoors/outdoors question. Nsikan, you do ask, in your latest article, if the CDC says the Delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox, does that mean we should mask up again outdoors? Does it, and what do you say to the caller from P-town?

Nsikan Akpan: Yes, I think he's on the right track and it goes back to what I said at the top about trying to keep multiple rules that are overlapping in one's mind at once. Like I think everyone has set up, in their brains, the idea that, "Okay, outdoors is completely safe and indoors is really what you need to worry about." If you're in a situation where it's so crowded outdoors-- One way to think about it is, you remember Pig-Pen from Charlie Brown? He had like a little cloud of germs and dust around them.

If you're just really packed into a group-- If you look at the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago this weekend, there were photos of people just packed shoulder to shoulder. Then you plug in the Delta variant, which we're saying, "Okay, we're finding a thousand times more virus in people's noses relative to past variants." If somebody sneezes, somebody breathes too hard out of their nose, you have to think, okay, that's a thousand times more virus that's entering that immediate space, your little pig pen area.

If you're so close together, you're going to have more opportunities for transmission with the Delta variant relative to the Alpha variant. I attended Lollapalooza. This is like 2007. I remember seeing radio ad and they did this thing where they dropped the barriers right before the show started and everybody just rushed forward and you're packed in, and I could barely breathe. I was just so packed in next to people.

In that situation, Delta is going to find a way to get from nose to nose. It's not that-- I would say 80, 90% of outdoor scenarios are probably completely safe because you're going to be far enough away from people to be fine. If you're really, really packed into a tight space, then yes you're giving the virus a better chance of spreading outdoors.

Brian Lehrer: So where's the line? What would this mean for things like Mayor de Blasio's 60,000 vaccinated fan Central Park concert this month that's supposed to be a reopening party or for the full capacity no vaccine roll ballparks now?

Nsikan Akpan: It's tough. We have the social distancing rules for a reason, those distances are based off of research. If you can keep at arms length from another person then that's the ideal scenario. If you can't do that, then you might want to consider masking outdoors. That's how I come at that question. If you're vaccinated, you can roll the dice and say, "Well, if I catch the virus, it's unlikely to kill me so maybe that's okay." There are a lot of open questions around catching the virus and being vaccinated. We don't know the degree to which long COVID might be an issue for vaccinated people.

I would imagine that it's going to be lower relative to the rates that we're seeing in unvaccinated people but it's an open question. Then I think it goes back to another point that I made earlier in that vaccinated people live with children, vaccinated people live with immunocompromised people and it's going to be a danger to them.

I think even another thing to consider is that another group where we're seeing, "Oh, maybe they'll need boosters," is senior citizens, especially much older senior citizens. Are you increasing the risk for grandma and grandpa by going to that party and packing into a really tight space? Again, indoors completely packed no masks way more dangerous than most situations outdoors, but if you are in an outdoor situation where everyone is packed tight together, like yes, you might have an issue, for sure. That's what we learned from the Cape Cod outbreak that it's really about exposure more than anything.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute on issues related to the breaking news this morning, New York City expected to require proof of vaccination for indoors gyms, restaurants performances with our health and science editor, Nsikan Akpan. Who else would bring you science packaged in the peanuts cartoon and stories about Radiohead stay with us. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC with the breaking news that New York City is going to require proof of vaccination for indoor dining and fitness. Mayor de Blasio announcing this morning that proof of vaccination will be required for people participating in indoor activities, including at restaurants, gyms, and performances, his latest attempt to spur more vaccinations.

According to a city official quoted in the New York Times, the policy is similar to mandates issued in France and Italy last month, and it's believed to be the first of its kind in the United States. Emily in White Plains you're on WNYC. Hi, Emily.

Emily: Hi. I had a quick question. Your guest touched upon it earlier regarding bouncers and restaurant staff being able to validate the vaccination documentation. How concerned would we have to be about people trying to present false vaccination documentation?

Nsikan Akpan: I think that was a huge question rolling around in my mind once I saw how the NYC COVID pass works or say COVID safe app works. You're essentially just uploading a photo of your vaccination card to the app. One of our reporters, Matt Katz, looked at this over the weekend. I'm really interested to see how they plan to validate those records without tying it into some type of database of records.

I think one of the pros around the Excelsior Pass is that it's directly tied into the state database, uses QR codes, which are a little trickier to defraud. I think going based off of the photos system, I am wondering what safeguards are going to be in place to prevent people from either sharing-- Maybe I shouldn't be giving people ideas, but sharing their vaccination cards among each other and taking photos and uploading them into the apps?

What training are they going to provide to bouncers to really look at those scans and say, "Oh yes, this is the person I've matched up their name to this vaccination card?" I think, ideally, what we need is a federal system for a vaccine passport because the federal government knows everyone in the country that has been vaccinated but there was so much political upheaval over vaccine passports earlier this year that I haven't heard any indication that the feds are moving towards a vaccine passport or a system that could at least underlay local systems.

Brian Lehrer: We have a tweet from a listener who says, "The street value for vaccination cards is $50 to $100," and they cite some evidence for that, who knows? There's one tweet of the estimate of the street value of vaccination card. Would I be wrong, Nsikan, to think that the New York City vaccine passport that they're unveiling is subject to easy forgery but the New York State Excelsior Pass is not? That comes with a QR code. You have to register for it online. It's not an honor system putting in your information.

What you enter has to match up with what whoever delivered you the vaccine has entered in the state database, your pharmacy or health and hospital's location, whatever, so that the state Excelsior Pass would be a lot harder to fake than the city pass. Do you think that's right?

Nsikan Akpan: I think that's right because you essentially have two systems of verification. You have the vaccine card itself or the vaccine record itself and then that's backed up by this state log of vaccination records. If you just have the vaccine card as your proof, that does seem a little more open to fraud or just more open to mistakes. I think you would want the system to be as automated as possible so that way you can account for human error. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: I wonder why the City-- Unless it's just Bill de Blasio versus Cuomo one-upmanship, why did the city need to institute its own vaccine passport at all since the state one would cover everybody in New York City who applies?

Nsikan Akpan: I find it really surprising too. I guess you could say that the state one has the flaw of it only can verify if you're vaccinated in the state. If you got your vaccination outside of New York, then you can't sign up for the Excelsior Pass. The city pass, obviously, if you have a vaccination card from anywhere, you can upload it.

The city's trying to recruit tourists back to the area as much as it can to help prop up the economy. Then if you're saying, "Okay, we're going to have all these tourists, we want restaurants open, we want restaurants to only serve vaccinated people," well, we need an easy way for those people who are from outside of the city to get into those restaurants.

I think you're creating a situation for-- maybe we call it like vaccine passport theater to echo the hygiene theater concept that became popular during the pandemic, like this idea that people were cleaning way more than they need to. I think with the vaccine passport theater, are you setting up a situation where people are just flashing their phones but not actually proving that they're vaccinated? You're creating a lot of blind spots, I think that could be a little risky.

Brian Lehrer: One of my producers just wrote, "My pharmacy was out of actual cards, so I have a photocopied one that's hard to read." My pharmacy gave me a vaccination card that I didn't notice at first had my birthday wrong, so it wouldn't actually identify me but I signed up for an Excelsior Pass. I guess I'm good.

Two things before we run out of time. Thanks for staying over our extended time, Nsikan. Listener on Twitter asks, "Will the new mandate apply to travelers from other countries coming to New York and New Jersey, and is there any solution to allow people from England and Europe and elsewhere to come to the US?" That's interesting. The mayor wants tourists to come back but if-- well, of course, they can't sign up for a New York City vaccine passport.

Nsikan Akpan: Exactly. I'll need to look at Liz Kim's reporting. I would advise people to go Gothamist today because we'll probably be updating the story with as many details as we can throughout the day because this is very big news, but, yes, there's going to have to be a system for looking at overseas vaccination. I'm interested and excited to look over the details of how they're going to handle that logistically.

Also, again, it comes down to, "Hey, federal government, you have the resources and the tools to do this. You already do similar types of activities around flying on a plane. TSA has our records. They validate our IDs before we get on planes. They validate the IDs of people who come here internationally." They could do this, they have the infrastructure.

I think it really is about the willpower and not allowing politics to get in the way of public health. I think there are a lot of simple systems that we could set up like this if people just take the politics out of it and just focus on the public health and getting the economy back on its feet.

Brian Lehrer: I'll mention one more thing relevant to the mayor's announcement this morning. It includes restaurants, performance spaces, and gyms where you'll need proof of the vaccine to get in. It does not include offices. Yesterday, Governor Cuomo was asked in his news conference, "What do you say if you're not going to impose a mask mandate for all indoor public spaces in the state?" Which he's not, "What do you say to employers who have people coming back to work in the office?" Here's the governor.

Governor Cuomo: New Yorkers saw the movie. You saw the movie. You know how this turns out. You know what happens with Delta variant. You know what those facts mean. You know what's going to happen in the movie. Don't wait for what you know is going to happen. We beat the damn thing by being smart the first time. Be smart again.

Brian Lehrer: That's the governor's way of saying I'm not going to mandate masks in indoor or public places right now, but I sure am encouraging you to set a policy in your individual place of business. The last thing, Nsikan, I'm realizing for all that we're talking about this vaccine mandate to go to these indoor or public spaces, I don't see that a negative COVID test is going to be an option, let's say--

Nsikan Akpan: I believe it is for the--

Brian Lehrer: You believe it is?

Nsikan Akpan: Yes, it's going to be an option for the NYC COVID safe app and also it's obviously an option for the Excelsior Pass.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Here it is a little further down in Liz Kim's story on Gothamist. "The mayor is expected to deliver more details, but the proposal was similar to one in Europe in which people must show a green pass," that's to quote here, "proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test to enter bars, restaurants, museums, indoor sports venues, and other cultural or entertainment sites."

I guess we have yet to see for sure how that comes down. Listeners, you can go to Gothamist and read all the details in Elizabeth Kim's story, New York City To Require Vaccinations For Indoor Dining, Gyms and Other Venues breaking this morning. We thank our health and science editor Nsikan Akpan. Nsikan, thanks so much.

Nsikan Akpan: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

 

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