New York COVID-19 inspector booted from bar for failing to show proof of vaccination

A New York health inspector carrying out random COVID compliance checks was refused entry to a Staten Island bar as she was unable to show proof of her own vaccination.

Bar manager Maggie Koronilian, 38, told The Post on Friday how she had to ask the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene employee to leave the premises. “I don’t understand how you’re coming here enforcing something and not cooperating with the very thing that you’re trying to enforce,” she said of the Big Apple’s stringent Key to NYC rules for bars and restaurants.

Koronilian said the inspector came to the South Shore bar Tuesday with her official identification on clear display. “She said, ‘I’m here to do a COVID inspection,’ so I asked to see her vaccination card, as we do for anyone who comes here,” said Koronilian.

“She just said, ‘No. That’s what I’m here checking for,’ and that she wasn’t there to stay and eat,” recalled the manager. Koronilian said she told the inspector that she had to be “checked just like everybody else” if she wanted to come in. “I asked her a few times to show it to me before I told her, ‘Listen, we better go outside,’” said Koronilian.

As they stood outside Big Nose Kate’s, the inspector was able to check that the bar’s paperwork was indeed in compliance with the city’s latest COVID rules. “As she’s looking through the paperwork, I just looked at her and I said, ‘You know, you’re not above the law,’” recalled Koronilian, clarifying that she had meant to say mandate.

“She asked, ‘What law?’ and I pointed to the vaccination signs hung on the front of the bar and said, ‘This bulls–t,’” Koronilian said. “I have my notices on the door so I am 100 percent in compliance and doing everything to the ‘T,’ she said. “We’re not happy doing it, but we’re doing everything that’s required. And that means that anybody that comes in — whether a customer or an inspector — has to follow the mandate,” she said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene confirmed to The Post that “the inspector was able to complete this Key to NYC inspection and found this establishment to be in compliance.”