Professional athletes and performers working in and based in New York City will no longer be required to show proof of vaccination against the coronavirus, Mayor Eric Adams of New York City said Thursday, linking the decision to the city’s high rate of unemployment and the need to keep employees working.
“We’re going to make sure we’re healthy,” he said at a news conference at Citi Field, home of the Mets, where he was joined by executives of the Mets and the Yankees. “And being healthy is not only physically healthy, it’s economically healthy.”
The policy change means that Kyrie Irving, the Nets’ star point guard who has refused to get vaccinated, will be able to take the floor at Barclays Center in Brooklyn for the first time this season. It also applies to performers based in New York City.
Mr. Adams, a Democrat who has been singularly focused on the city’s recovery from the pandemic, had openly quarreled with Mr. Irving’s supporters over the city’s broad vaccine mandate for employees of private companies.
The new policy, which Mr. Adams said applied to a small number of people, takes effect on Thursday, according to a news release from the mayor’s office, and expands the general exemption to the private employer mandate that was made for out-of-town performers and athletes on visiting teams. Dr. Mitchell Katz, the president and chief executive of the city’s public hospital system, who attended the news conference, said that limiting the exemption to out-of-town workers had not made sense to him and did not “follow any science.”
“We were treating our performers differently because they lived and played for home teams. It’s not acceptable,” Mr. Adams said, adding the mandate had put teams at a “competitive disadvantage.”
Still, the mayor urged everyone to get their shots, regardless.
“I have said this and I will continue to say it: All of us should be vaccinated, even the players,” he said.
Mr. Adams will keep in place vaccine mandates for municipal workers and other employees of private companies. Those policies were implemented by his predecessor, Bill de Blasio, and were among some of the most strict local health measures in the United States.
The mayor, who took office in January, has ended other restrictions as cases dropped over the last month. He recently ended a mask mandate for schools and a proof-of-vaccination policy for restaurants and gyms.
Asked about more prospective changes at the news conference, Mr. Adams said “There’s going to become a moment when we’re going to continue to look at what we can peel back to bring back a level of normality to our city.”
In a statement, Adrienne Adams, the speaker of the City Council, said she was “worried about the increasingly ambiguous messages” New Yorkers were being sent about public health. She highlighted the contrast with city workers let go over the municipal employee vaccine mandate — a tiny fraction of the city’s work force — and the need to closely monitor indicators of rising cases.
In recent weeks, several notable basketball figures had criticized the mandate as far as it applied to Mr. Irving, who said his refusal was a matter of personal freedom.
As a U.S. trend toward lifting Covid precautions gained steam, pressure on Mr. Adams mounted to let Mr. Irving play. When a heckler at a public event shouted at Mr. Adams about Mr. Irving, the mayor suggested a simple solution: “Kyrie can play tomorrow. Get vaccinated.”
On Thursday, Mr. Adams reiterated the point.
“Kyrie, you should get vaccinated,” the mayor said. “Nothing has changed. Get vaccinated.”
Mr. Irving is one of the best N.B.A. players, and his team’s struggles in his absences have left the Nets in danger of missing the playoffs.
Dr. Jay Varma, an epidemiologist and health adviser to Mr. de Blasio, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday that the “Kyrie Carve Out,” as he called it, could allow the city’s vaccine mandates to be challenged in court as “arbitrary and capricious.”
Mr. Adams rebutted that criticism on Thursday: “I would not be standing here today if I did not speak to the attorneys, and they said that this passes legal muster.”
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