N.Y. unveils Winter Surge Plan 2.0

ALBANY | Gov. Kathy Hochul has announced Winter Surge Plan 2.0, a new targeted effort to bolster New York's fight against the winter surge. The comprehensive plan unveiled Jan. 1 focuses on five core areas: Doubling down on masks and testing; keeping students in school; preventing severe illness and death; increasing access to vaccines and boosters and working more closely with local partners. An outline of the plan is as follows: Keep Masking, Keep Testing -Extend the mask-or-vax requirement an additional two weeks, protecting workers and allowing businesses to remain open. -Make masks more widely available: New York State has already distributed 5 million KN-95 masks, and more will be distributed through state legislators. -Launch new testing sites: Governor Hochul will open six new testing sites Jan. 4, totaling 19 state-run sites statewide. Keep Schools Open -Providing tests to students and school districts: 5.56 million tests arrived for schools this week and between six and seven million more are expected to arrive in the coming days. -Working with counties to implement Test-to-Stay: Test-to-Stay policies have proven successful at keeping our kids safe and schools open. If a student tests positive, classmates can take a test kit back home with them and return to the classroom upon receiving a negative result instead of mandatory quarantining. -Keeping college students and faculty safe: SUNY and CUNY will be introducing a new requirement for all students to get boosters, campuses will require mandatory mask-wearing in public indoor spaces, and will require all faculty to be vaccinated. Students will also be required to submit negative tests upon returning to campus. Preventing Severe Illness and Death -Distribute antiviral treatments: New York is working with the Biden Administration to secure doses of the antiviral drug Pavloxid and make this treatment more widely available. -Boost hospital capacity: Gov. Hochul will continue enforcing the Nov. 26 Executive Order to boost hospital capacity. -Launch National Guard EMT training: to ramp up long-term health care workforce capacity needs. -Secure additional help from Federal partners: in the coming days, N.Y. will receive federal Department of Defense (DoD) Medical Response and Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMATs). -Protect nursing home residents and workers: the Hochul Administration is in constant contact with all 606 nursing homes in New York and will be providing them with additional PPE to ensure the safety of all patients and staff. Expand Access to Vaccines and Boosters -Provide boosters to nursing homes: New York will begin requiring each nursing home to demonstrate their plan to increase vaccination and booster rates among their residents. -Increase pediatric vaccination: the most unvaccinated eligible cohort is New Yorkers aged 5-11. New York will increase focus on pediatric vaccination. -Get booster shots to teenagers: officials anticipate approval of Pfizer's booster shot for children aged 12-15 and will immediately begin outreach to that population once ready. Work With Local Partners -Provide resources to local partners with a whole-of-government approach to fight COVID, making sure county emergency managers and local school boards have the tests and masks they need.

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N.Y. unveils Winter Surge Plan 2.0

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