As a highly contagious coronavirus variant has cases suddenly on the rise in New York City, the Mets organization is continuing its efforts to educate and encourage reluctant players to get vaccinated.
The Mets are not among the 23 teams that have reached 85 percent vaccinations, the threshold that allows teams to loosen restrictions.
According to sources, club officials have made several attempts this season to convince players to get vaccinated, including making the case that an outbreak -- or even one positive test for an impact player -- could cost the entire team in a pennant race.
So far, those arguments have not been persuasive to enough players, but management has not given up -- and is well aware that the variant that has emerged in recent weeks could pose a serious threat to the health and safety of the group.
A report published Wednesday in the New York Times underscored that the Delta variant is on the rise in New York City.
Per the Times:
"Just a few weeks ago, there were only 200 new cases a day across the city on average, the lowest level since the early days of the pandemic. But the city has now had a streak of days with 400 or more cases. And the test positivity rate has doubled: from below 0.6 percent on average to about 1.3 percent.
"Those numbers are still low, but the increase has been swift, surprising some epidemiologists and public health officials who had not expected to see cases jump so quickly after remaining level throughout June."
The Delta variant, on the rise over the past two months, is far more contagious than the initial version of the virus that hit the city in the spring of 2020.
The Times cites the city’s 64 percent vaccination rate as a source of hope that the Delta variant will not cause an outbreak on the level of the first or second waves of the pandemic last year.
"Health officials have said the vast majority of those testing positive have not been fully vaccinated," the Times reported.
Even those testing positive for the virus have typically seen much more favorable outcomes if they were vaccinated. Yankees third base coach Phil Nevin became seriously ill with COVID-19 in May, but believed that his decision to get vaccinated prevented a potentially lethal outcome.
"[Doctors are] convinced that the vaccine kept the infection, the COVID, so to speak, out of my lungs," Nevin said upon rejoining the team last month.
"If that had been compromised and tacked on to what I had before I contracted it, I was just told it would probably have not been a very good outcome as far as the healing process, and I don't want to talk about anything worse than that, but it certainly would have been a longer time to get better."
Nevin said that if he did not work in baseball, he might not have agreed to receive the vaccine. His experience with the virus turned him into an advocate for vaccinations.
"What it did for me, I would certainly encourage anybody that asked me, I would say to absolutely get it," Nevin said.