The NYPD is planning for “multiple contingencies” and is ready to scale back on the iconic Times Square New Year’s Eve ball drop amid a surge in COVID-19 cases, top cop Dermot Shea said Tuesday morning.
“I think we’re all on a wait-and-see,” the outgoing commissioner said in an NY1 interview. “You know, this is obviously the pandemic that won’t go away. I mean, we’re feeling it within the NYPD, as all of New York City is.”
He said the department is “in constant contact with City Hall.”
“We’re planning right now for multiple contingencies,” Shea said.
“If we have to scale back, we’re not starting from scratch scaling back,” he added. “We’re already planning for that at the same time. So we’ll be ready to go.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday that the protocol for the Times Square celebration — which he announced in November would be back at “full strength” for vaccinated revelers — will be revealed by the end of the week.
“We’re going to make a decision before Christmas. We’re certainly looking at the new challenges we’re facing, but this is an all-vaccinated event and it is outdoors, and those are two very, very important, favorable factors,” he said Sunday afternoon.
“We’re also considering there’s other ways we can approach it even with current rules that could help to make it even stronger, so there’s a discussion going on. We will have a final decision on what we can do ahead of Christmas, for sure.”
The reassessment of the yearly festivities comes amid an Omicron-driven surge in COVID-19 infections.
Omicron is now the dominant version of the coronavirus in the US, accounting for 73 percent of new infections last week — and a stunning 92 percent of cases in New York and New Jersey, the feds said Monday.
