NEW YORK, Dec 6 (Reuters) - New York City expanded its array of COVID-19 mandates on Monday, setting vaccine requirements for children as young as 5 years old and for workers at all private-sector companies as the highly transmissible Omicron variant pushes into more U.S.

Eunah Ainslie, also from Queens, said: "I think the mandate is great." Ainslie said her niece and nephew both got COVID-19 at their daycare centers and that she supports vaccines for children.

A healthcare worker prepares a syringe with the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at a pop-up vaccination site operated by SOMOS Community Care during the COVID-19 pandemic in Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S., January 29, 2021.

Over the past week, the country has averaged more than 120,000 new infections a day, up 64% from the prior week, according to a Reuters tally.

Deaths, which lag infections, have averaged 1,300 a day over the past seven days, up from a rate of 800 a week ago, according to Reuters data.

states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin, according to a Reuters tally.

Anne Dana, an attorney at the King & Spalding law firm, said the mayor's private-sector mandate stands a better chance of going into effect than the Biden one because a similar city rule for restaurant, gyms and other private employers has already survived legal challenges

Some 94% of 378,000 city employees are vaccinated, up from 86% in late October, just before the city began enforcing its mandate for emergency responders, a spokesperson for the mayor said