A maintenance worker at the city hospital on Tuesday called on all New Yorkers to get vaccinated against the coronavirus and issued a warning that there is no worse side effect than dying from COVID-19.
Kevin Cruz, who works at NYC Health + Hospitals in the North / Central Bronx, said he was recently inoculated and “expects everyone to come shoot.”
“For me, it’s a no-brainer,” he said during a virtual press conference with Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“When you come up with the idea of, you know, ‘You don’t know what the side effects are,’ you know what the side effects of COVID are. We were filling refrigerated trucks with the side effects.”
Cruz said he suffered no side effects due to his vaccination, adding, “I consider myself fortunate to have been shot and lucky to be able to help these people who care for them every day.”
Cruz also described the pandemic as an unprecedented challenge for the Big Apple.
“I’ve been here since 1978. I was here in the beginning when AIDS broke out,” he said.
“We’ve lived a lot of things here, we’ve never seen anything like it.”
Cruz said the virus “had affected my family, my son, his wife, my stepdaughter, his family in Florida.”
“For me, it’s not a question of whether you’ll get it; it’s when you get it or someone close will get it,” he said.
The warning came when de Blasio announced a new public service advertising campaign called “New York Vaccine for Everyone”
Hizzoner unveiled three images of the Statue of Liberty with a face mask and an adhesive bandage covering an injection site on the shoulder.
“The idea of this campaign is to let people know [vaccine] it’s for everyone, ”he said.
“This works for everyone, it will be free, it will be easy, it will be effective and safe … All the pain, all the suffering, all the loss can be defeated by this vaccine.”
The City Council said the ads would start running immediately on social media and later on television, radio, metro and digital billboards, and would include messages in more than a dozen languages.
Officials did not immediately answer questions about the cost of the campaign or whether it would be specific neighborhoods.
Meanwhile, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday that so far 50,000 vaccines have been administered statewide.
The state, which began firing on hospitals last week and nursing homes this week, has so far received 630,000 doses and expects another 300,000 by the end of next week, Cuomo said.
“I am asking hospitals, residence operators and medical staff who provide vaccination services to the residences, to work during the holidays to provide them,” the governor said.
“I understand that a long year has passed and everyone needs free time, but we are in a race on foot, which is the increase in the spread of COVID compared to the vaccination rate. So I ask them to keep vaccinating during the holidays. “