Tech:NYC Digest: March 22

Tech:NYC Digest: March 22

March 22, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

Tuesday, March 22, 2022 

In today’s digest, NYC to end school mask mandate for youngest children, officials keep an eye on the Omicron subvariant, and what companies should do to protect employee safety in and out of the office.

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By the numbers:  

  • New positive cases statewide: 1.497

    • New positive cases, NYC: 640

  • NYC Positivity Rate: 1.2 percent (-0.2 percent)

  • NYC Hospitalizations: 305 (+13)

  • Statewide Vaccine Progress: 

    • New Yorkers with at least one dose: 89.4 percent

    • New Yorkers who are fully vaccinated: 76.0 percent

In today’s latest:

  • NYC will end the public school mask mandate and make mask-wearing optional for children under the age of five beginning April 4, assuming case counts remain low. The change follows a similar move that lifted mask mandates for students in kindergarten through 12th grades earlier this month. (New York Times)

  • The Omicron subvariant BA.2 is continuing to gain ground in the US, according to tests sequenced over the last two weeks. Genomics firm Helix estimates 50 to 70 percent of all COVID cases nationwide are now BA.2 strains. (Bloomberg)

    • There’s no indication BA.2 is more severe than the initial Omicron strain, but there's concern it carries greater ability to reinfect people and has stronger ties to the risks of long COVID.

    • Case counts in NYC are inching upward slightly as the subvariant continues to spread, but state officials don’t anticipate it will spur a serious spike in cases and stressed they will remain vigilant. (New York Times)

  • NYC’s museums and performing arts institutions are expected to drop their vaccine mandates by late spring, catching up to the city’s latest rules that give them permission to welcome unvaccinated guests back. (Crain’s New York)

  • And the city’s parks and gardens have officially declared it cherry blossom season! Fun fact: NYC has more than 34,000 cherry trees planted around the city, which you can find mapped here.

In other reading:

  • How the next pandemic surge could be different (Vox)

  • How protected are we against COVID-19? Scientists search for a test to measure immunity (CNN)

  • ‘It’s really, really insane’: NYC is back to partying again (New York Post)

With offices seeing more activity, companies are now beginning to turn more attention not just to office protocols, but all the other personal safety measures employees expect to be taken into account in the workplace of the future.

Most Americans have experienced at least one emergency incident while at work, according to new survey data from AlertMedia, a software provider of mass communications channels for organizations.

  • Surveyed employees cited public health emergencies (79 percent), cyberattacks (65 percent), and crime (62 percent) as among the top issues they’re concerned about in returning to the office.

Workers overwhelmingly agree it’s their employer’s job to protect them while on the clock.

  • 83 percent of employees feel that responsibility extends to those working remotely.

Safety concerns are increasingly linked to job satisfaction, and employees see room for improvement in how their companies communicate safety and hazard reduction plans:   

  • In an increasingly dispersed, hybrid workplace, employers can no longer confine their disaster preparedness to a single corporate site.

Our takeaway: The experiences of the last two years have refocused attention on both personal and public safety needs. If companies hope to retain their employees, they’ll have to provide resources that address both, inside and out of the office. 

In other reading:

  • The secrets to keeping engineers happy in a hybrid world (Protocol)

  • This CEO's Remote Work Policy Is Only 10 Words. It May Be the Best I've Ever Heard (Inc.)

  • Work friendships aren’t surviving the pandemic. Here’s how that could mean higher pay (Fortune)

  • Antidote Health, a NYC-based telehealth provider, raised $22 million in Series A funding. Participating investors include iAngels, Group 11, and Flint Capital. (Newswire)

  • Better & Better, a NYC-based provider of vitamin-infused wellness products, raised $4 million in venture funding. Fifth Quarter Ventures led the round and was joined by Dreamer’s Fund, Azure Capital, Alpaca Ventures, and others. (Insider)

  • Capitolis, a NYC-based financial SaaS platform for optimizing capital market resources, raised $110 million in Series D funding. SVB Capital, Canapi Ventures, and 9Yards Capital co-led the round and were joined by Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, S Capital, Spark Capital, Citi, State Street, and JP Morgan. (TechCrunch)

  • Jeeves, a NYC-based expense management platform for startups, raised $180 million in Series C funding. Tencent led the round and was joined by GIC, Stanford University, Andreessen Horowitz, CRV, SVB, FT Partners, Clocktower Ventures, Urban Innovation Fund, Haven Ventures, Gaingels, and Spike Ventures. (TechCrunch)

  • Kale, a NYC-based payment platform for influencers, raised $3.75 million in seed funding. Forerunner Ventures led the round and was joined by Pear VC and Amber Atherton. (The Information)

  • March 23: Virtual: Are you eligible for additional Employee Retention Tax Credits?, with Justworks director of payroll tax Matthew Oberting and Aprio partner-in-charge Justin Elanjian. Hosted by Justworks. Register here.

  • March 30: In-person: Real Estate Innovation Done Right, with Upward Labs CEO Shana Schlossberg, ClearAir.ai co-founder Michael Petgrave, Saya founder Sanjay Poojraym and others. Hosted by the Williamsburg Hotel. Register here.

  • March 31: Virtual: The Future of NYC: Charting an Equitable Recovery for All, with Federal Reserve Bank of New York president and CEO John C. Williams, BlocPower founder and CEO Donnel Baird, Regional Plan Association president and CEO Tom Wright, and more. Hosted by the New York Fed. Register here.

  • April 6: Virtual: Data Science Day 2022, with White House Director of Science and Technology Policy Alondra Nelson and IBM Research AI vice president Sriram Raghavan. Hosted by the Data Science Institute at Columbia University. Register here.

  • April 7: In-person: New York Product Conference, with Squarespace VP of product Natalie Gibralter, 1stdibs chief product officer Xiaodi Zhang, Noom VP of product Raj Krishnan, and others. Hosted by Product Collective. Use code TechNYC to save 20 percent off any pass by registering here.

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