City Workers Can Be Ordered To Undergo Coronavirus Testing: Mayor

NEW YORK CITY —Teachers, medics and other city workers must submit to novel coronavirus testing if the Health Commissioner considers them at risk of infecting others, the Mayor's Office announced Thursday.

"We’re going to get more and more mandatory as needed," Mayor Bill de Blasio said. "This is the first commissioner's order, I doubt it will be the last."

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Employees of the city, the Department of Education and the Health + Hospitals Corporation will be ordered to get tested if they have traveled to a high-risk nation (China, South Korea, Japan, Italy or Iran), have close contact with a confirmed case or show relevant symptoms, officials said.

City workers required to undergo testing would be prohibited from returning to work until the Health Department receives a negative test or determines the person is not at risk of infecting others.

Those who refuse testing must self-quarantine at home until the Health Department determines such person no longer presents a risk.

There have been four cases confirmed in New York City, two of which — a woman in her 80s and man in his 40s — were announced Thursday morning.

The woman has illnesses connected to her age and the man had respiratory issues from smoking and vaping, according to the mayor.

Both patients are hospitalized in intensive care units and the city's disease detectives are tracking down their closest contacts for testing, said the Mayor.

The city currently has enough kits to test 1,000 New Yorkers, and de Blasio is calling on the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control to send more.

"Our single greatest challenge is the lack of fast federal action to increase testing capacity — without that, we cannot beat this epidemic back," he wrote on Twitter.

The other two cases are the 50-year-old Midtown lawyer hospitalized at New York Presbyterian-Columbia Medical Center and a 39-year-old health care worker who is recovering in isolation in her Manhattan apartment.

The lawyer is showing signs of improvement and the health care worker and her husband are both doing "fabulously well," said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, Deputy Commissioner for the Division of Disease Control of the New York City Department of Health.

The New York state total of COVID-19 cases was 13 as of Thursday morning, and included the New Rochelle lawyer's wife, son and daughter, all of whom worked and studied in New York City.