On July 27, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that people who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 wear masks again in closed public places, if living in areas with more than 50 cases recorded.
Every neighborhood in New York City matches these criteria.
The average number of new nCoV infections in the past 7 days in New York is nearly 1,000, a sharp increase from 200 cases last month, of which about 75% are infected with the Delta variant.
`The Delta strain has really put us in an unexpected challenge,` de Blasio said at a press conference last week, when he announced that all state health workers must get vaccinated against Covid-19 if they do not want to.
Julissa Matos (right) and her son got vaccinated against Covid-19 at Lincoln Medical Center in New York, USA, on July 26.
For some people like Julissa Matos, these requests made her change her mind about vaccination.
However, on July 26, Matos took her 12-year-old son to Lincoln Medical Center in the Mott Haven area, where they both received the Covid-19 vaccine.
`For the past two weeks, every time I was getting ready to sleep, something in my heart told me to vaccinate my child. I started to feel scared again,` Matos explained.
However, there are still people who are determined not to change their views like Daniel Presti, a resident of Staten Island.
Now, the South Shore area on Staten Island has become one of the places recording the highest number of nCoV infections in New York, but Presti still does not believe the data.
Contrary to Presti, an atmosphere of fear is covering communities that have experienced tragedy due to Covid-19.
`You don’t know when the pandemic will end, or how it will end. Will things get worse or will they go away?`, Schiff, a woman in her 80s who survived being infected with the virus, asked.
New Yorkers are probably feeling uncertain after the Delta strain spread throughout the city.
`Covid-19 is like the flu, and the flu never goes away. The fear will last forever,` Nelson Lopez, a resident of the East Harlem area, opined.
Hua Cheng and her husband Keith Hu, both electrical engineers, drove to New York on the weekend to visit the city’s art museum.
Outside the Queens Public Library in the Flushing neighborhood, a group of young people handed out vaccination information leaflets in English and Chinese to passersby.
In a nearby food court, Cyrus Lee sat with his one-year-old daughter.
Lee’s parents live in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and have rarely left the area for the past year, fearing anti-Asian hate.
In Central Park, Navdeep Shergill and his wife Ajinder, along with their three children, all wore masks while playing.
`Covid-19 will still exist. You cannot stop the Delta mutation and return to normal life,` Navdeep assessed.