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New York City Imposes Fines Of Up To $1,000 For Those Who Refuse To Wear Face Masks

A woman runs with her face mask on Monday in New York City, where the mayor has announced that city personnel will hand out free masks to anyone who is not wearing a face covering.
Tayfun Coskun
/
Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
A woman runs with her face mask on Monday in New York City, where the mayor has announced that city personnel will hand out free masks to anyone who is not wearing a face covering.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday that the city will impose fines on people who refuse to wear face coverings, after it saw a positivity rate for coronavirus tests of over 3% for the first time since June.

The fine is up to $1,000, the mayor's office told NPR.

City personnel will hand out free masks to anyone who is not wearing a face covering, the mayor said.

"Anyone who refuses to wear a face covering will be told that if they don't put one on, they will be fined," de Blasio said. He said it would start immediately and on a large scale. "That will happen aggressively, clearly."

"Our goal, of course, is to give everyone a free face mask and get them to wear it. We don't want to fine people," said de Blasio.

Out of 146 zip codes citywide, de Blasio said, the uptick is happening primarily in nine zip codes in Brooklyn and Queens, including areas with tight-knit Orthodox Jewish communities. Health officials are emphasizing outreach to these communities to distribute masks and literature.

The mayor said he's been meeting with neighborhood representatives, including those from Midwood, Borough Park, and Williamsburg.

The cases in these nine zip codes account for 25% of the city's overall cases, even though they hold just seven percent of the overall citywide population, according to New York City's health commissioner Dave Chokshi.

This new city rule comes in the heels of an emergency rule issued earlier this month by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. It requires commuters on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority system to wear face masks or else face a $50 fine.

De Blasio stressed that the city's seven-day rolling positivity rate average, 1.38%, is less worrying than the single-day positivity rate of 3.25% that he announced Tuesday.

Still, he said it's cause for significant concern: "We have not seen a day like that in quite a while, and we don't want to see days like this."

Enforcing this new mandate will involve "every agency," said the mayor, including the Sheriff's Office and the New York Police Department.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Marisa Peñaloza is a senior producer on NPR's National Desk. Peñaloza's productions are among the signature pieces heard on NPR's award-winning newsmagazines Morning Edition and All Things Considered, as well as weekend shows. Her work has covered a wide array of topics — from breaking news to feature stories, as well as investigative reports.

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SOMOS CONNECTICUT es una iniciativa de Connecticut Public, la emisora local de NPR y PBS del estado, que busca elevar nuestras historias latinas y expandir programación que alza y informa nuestras comunidades latinas locales. Visita CTPublic.org/latino para más reportajes y recursos. Para noticias, suscríbase a nuestro boletín informativo en ctpublic.org/newsletters.

The independent journalism and non-commercial programming you rely on every day is in danger.

If you’re reading this, you believe in trusted journalism and in learning without paywalls. You value access to educational content kids love and enriching cultural programming.

Now all of that is at risk.

Federal funding for public media is under threat and if it goes, the impact to our communities will be devastating.

Together, we can defend it. It’s time to protect what matters.

Your voice has protected public media before. Now, it’s needed again. Learn how you can protect the news and programming you depend on.

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