New York City will distribute millions of masks and at-home COVID-19 tests as its case count continues to rise, but officials will not reimpose any mandates yet, Mayor Eric Adams said Monday. 

The five boroughs could move from a “medium” COVID-19 alert level to a “high” one “in the coming days,” Adams said in a press release. 

Schools, libraries and other city sites will hand out 16.5 million additional COVID-19 testing kits and 1 million “high-quality” masks this month in an effort to “blunt the worst impacts of the current wave,” the release said. 

What You Need To Know

  • New York City will distribute millions of masks and at-home COVID-19 tests as its case count continues to rise, Mayor Eric Adams said Monday

  • The city is not, however, "at the point of mandating masks," or reimposing other restrictions, Adams said

  • As of Monday, the five boroughs were seeing an increase in reported COVID-19 cases — with a seven-day average positivity rate of 9.11% — but virus-related hospitalizations and deaths were on the decline, data shows

The city will not, however, return to early-pandemic restrictions, Adams said at a news briefing Monday afternoon. Rather, officials will continue to urge New Yorkers to wear masks in public indoor settings and get vaccinated and boosted, he said. 

“When we get off our morning calls, we make a decision on how we’re going to move forward. We’re not at the point of mandating masks,” he said. “We’re not at that point yet.”

“I said this over and over with COVID: COVID pivots and shifts. If we’re rigid, we won’t defeat it,” he added. “And so we’re saying to New Yorkers, we are urging people indoors, wear masks indoors. If you are in settings on the subway system like it’s already in place, just make the smart decisions.”

As of Monday, the five boroughs were seeing an increase in reported COVID-19 cases — with a seven-day average positivity rate of 9.11% — but virus-related hospitalizations and deaths were on the decline, data shows. 

Adams said city officials would continue to monitor the situation closely. 

“If there comes a time that our hospitals are now in a state of emergency, or we’re trending that way, and my doctors that run the hospitals tell me, ‘Eric, this is what we need to do,' I’m going to listen to them,” he said. “Right now, they’re telling me, ‘No, we don’t need to do that. We have this under control. We don’t have this crisis in our hospitals that we had previously.’”

“So I’m listening to the team as I win this battle of COVID for all of us,” he added.