New York lags behind Florida in its efforts to administer the coronavirus vaccine, according to federal data, despite Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio boasting of the Empire State’s best plan.
To date, Sunshine State has administered vaccines at a rate of 823 per 100,000 residents, according to the online tracker of the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
New York has administered vaccines to 723 per 100,000 residents, a rate of approximately 14% of the Florida rate, according to the tracker.
Crawler data is updated as of December 30, due to informational lags during the holidays.
The figures call into question Blasio’s bold claim that a million New York residents would be vaccinated in January, although so far the state has administered less than a third of the doses at hand.
Asked earlier this week about a delay in launching the vaccine at the NYPD, de Blasio acknowledged that the city could move faster, if not for strict state restrictions on who can receive the shot when.
“This is something we do based on state guidelines and we are in constant communication with the state about it,” he said in part during a news conference Tuesday. “Certainly, if we are given permission, we can move forward very quickly.”
Among the cases that highlight the disparity are that of Nathan Burkan Jr. and Greg Heinrich.
Burkan Jr., an 89-year-old Manhattanite who has suffered from congestive heart failure and stroke, told The Post that he has not been able to get the vaccine despite having an advanced risk of getting the disease.
“Viouslybviament me and my wife [who is 83] I would like to get the vaccine now, ”he said.
But his daughter-in-law’s father, Heinrich, simply went to his local library in Clermont, Florida, to get the vaccine recently, without even getting out of his car.
“I went down through the car window and they shot me,” Heinrich, 72, told The Post of his experience getting the shot fired. “I didn’t have to get out of the car.”
Although the wait was long (about three hours), he simply had to relax in his car until a nurse stabbed him, then he was on his way.
“Was it worth the wait? Absolutely! He said. “It was painless.”
Heinrich said it’s wrong for New York to reduce the distribution of vaccines at the expense of some of the most at risk, such as Burkan Jr.
“If older people like me can get the vaccine in Florida, why can’t they get it in New York?” he asked. “People 65 and older are much more vulnerable than younger people.”