The Yankees and the Mets will not have to contend with having unvaccinated players barred from home games after a change in New York City’s private sector vaccine mandate was officially announced on Thursday by Mayor Eric Adams at Citi Field.

Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge, whose vaccine status had come into question with baseball’s opening day approaching, took the news in stride.

“I kind of told you guys that I wasn’t too worried about it,” Judge told reporters after news of an imminent announcement came out Wednesday before the Yankees beat the Baltimore Orioles in a spring training game.

Judge, who missed time with the team after contracting the coronavirus last season, has not said whether he is vaccinated. Rather than talk about how the news would relate to him or the Yankees, he instead pointed out how it would affect the Nets, who have dealt with the issue this basketball season because point guard Kyrie Irving is unvaccinated. So far, he has not been allowed to play home games at Barclays Center.

“If the mandate’s not there, then I guess that it’s good for Kyrie,” Judge said. “He can play some home games and help the Nets out a little bit.”

Flanked on Thursday by Randy Levine and Sandy Alderson, the team presidents of the Yankees and the Mets, Adams said the decision to alter the mandate, allowing for entertainers and athletes to be exempt from the rule that affects private sector employees, was made as the city attempted to address its economic and physical health. He said he felt the previous rule was unfair as it affected only local players and performers, not visitors to the city.

“Unimaginable,” Adams said of the disparity. “We were treating our performers differently because they lived and played for home teams. It’s not acceptable.”

Adams said that the decision did not come as a result from lobbying from any of the local sports teams and that his stance on the necessity of vaccination had not changed.

“Expanding this exemption, which only applies to a small number of people, is crucial,” he said. “We are simply making sure the rules apply equally to everyone who is a performer, regardless of where they perform their craft.”

At the news conference, Levine referenced baseball’s having “a lot of experience” with the coronavirus. He said that was why they had been patient waiting to see how Adams would proceed. “We got through it. We get it,” he said. “And that’s why we wanted to give the mayor the time to get to where he got today.”

Alderson and Levine declined to say how many players on their teams were unvaccinated, with Levine citing the collective bargaining agreement as preventing him from discussing it.

While the mandate’s changes are effective immediately in New York City, the Yankees will still have to deal with a strict vaccine mandate for the nine games they have scheduled in Toronto. Canada has barred unvaccinated foreign players from entering the country for games against the Blue Jays, and in an agreement between Major League Baseball and the players’ union, unvaccinated players can be placed on the restricted list for their teams’ games in Canada. The players would not be paid for the days they are on the restricted list.

As a result of that agreement, some Yankees players may have their vaccination status revealed when the team visits Toronto from May 2 to 4. As of two weeks ago, Manager Aaron Boone had said that the Yankees still had a “few guys, at least, who are not vaccinated.”

The Mets, on the other hand, were one of six M.L.B. teams that did not reach the 85 percent vaccinated threshold last season, a mark that eased some pandemic-related restrictions. It is not yet known if that changed in the off-season.

Many of the questions from reporters at Thursday’s news conference centered on the fairness to people who had lost their jobs to the mandate and on the change in the mayor’s stance after he had said recently that the way to get Irving back on the court would be for him to be vaccinated. Despite the shift in public policy, Adams said he had not wavered from that belief.

“Kyrie, you should get vaccinated,” Adams said. “Nothing has changed. Get vaccinated.”