Last week, the Department for the Aging announced that the city’s nearly 250 senior centers, which serve hundreds of thousands among the 1.73 million New Yorkers age 60 and up, would soon begin reopening after more than a year of COVID-caused closures.
Except it’s not really a reopening. The centers still aren’t allowing in-person, indoor gatherings, only a shift to “grab-and-go meals” after months of meal deliveries and virtual programming. Unlike gyms and schools and restaurants and libraries and museums, there’s no announced timeline for when face-to-face socializing among the elderly can resume.
That’s lame. Everyone knows that COVID has devastated older folks — more than half of the nearly 33,000 COVID deaths citywide have been people age 65 and over — but with thousands upon thousands vaccinated, the time has come to let them meet safely in-person again.
More than 65% of New Yorkers age 65 to 74, and 60% of those aged 75-84 have gotten their life-saving vaccine. They’ve done so not only to prolong their lives but also so they can start living again: Seeing the grandkids, listening to music, playing bingo, shooting bull with old friends.
Social isolation and loneliness are serious health risks for older people. Isolation increases mortality, and is associated with a huge increase in the risk of developing dementia. That’s part of what makes senior centers, which provide exercise and social opportunities (and in the summer, an air-conditioned place to gather) so important to older New Yorkers, more than 30% of whom live alone.
City Hall says vaccination rates among not just seniors but also senior center staff must increase before the centers can reopen. That’s despite the fact the CDC says vaccinated people can safely visit with other vaccinated people indoors. Why not, at the very least, open senior centers to people and staff who’ve gotten their shots? Instead, thousands of older New Yorkers are being held hostage to the whims of those who won’t get the shot. That’s downright cruel.
