New York has administered less than a third of the coronavirus vaccine doses available to him, even when Mayor Blasio boldly said Thursday he would have a million city residents. inoculated in a month.
About 630,000 doses of vaccine have been sent to the Empire State, but only 203,000 doses had reached New Yorkers ’weapons as of Wednesday, according to state data.
The figure, at about 32 percent, is slightly higher than the national rate, as about 22.5 percent of the 12.4 million distributed doses are administered as of Wednesday, according to the Control Centers and Disease Prevention.
In New York City, some 88,000 people have received a first dose in the past three weeks as the vaccine began to be given to health workers and nursing home residents.
“We’re far, far behind where we need to be,” said Councilman Mark Levine, chair of the New York City Health Committee.
Levine noted that the Big Apple has only 500,000 health workers in the high-risk category.
“We should vaccinate 400,000 people a week,” he told The Post, which defined the inoculation effort as “the biggest challenge of the pandemic.”
De Blasio on Thursday promised that many more people would get the shot next month.
“We vaccinated a million New Yorkers in January,” Blasio told CNN.
“More and more people want to get the vaccine and we will,” he said, calling the campaign a “call to arms”.
However, the city had only received 347,525 doses as of Thursday.
To achieve the goal stated by the mayor, officials will need to make a well-coordinated planning and mobilization effort, said Ayman el-Mohandes, dean of the CUNY School of Public Health.
“It’s feasible, but it will require a lot of organization,” el-Mohandes said.
Vaccinating the city’s 500,000 health workers and other first aid workers is “the easiest part,” el-Mohandes added, because it’s a captive audience you can sign up for at work.
But moving to the vaccination of the elderly and other private citizens will be more difficult.
“Everyone on the stages depends on human behavior,” el-Mohandes said. “How will you reach these people?”
Even among health centers, there appear to have been some problems in staff vaccination.
Brahim Ardolic, director general of Staten Island University Hospital, said Thursday that of 6,500 hospital workers, just under 2,000 have been vaccinated.
“We would love to receive more doses” from the state, Ardolic said. “I have people who want to get vaccinated.”
“I’d love to have 6,500 gifts at the door, but I don’t expect that.”
New York State representatives said they have received weekly shipments of vaccines from the feds and hope to have enough so that those who have received the first dose have the second after the necessary three to four week period between the two. shooting.
Officials noted that about 221,000 of the 630,000 doses were sent to CVS and Walgreens by the feds for the federal program to inoculate nursing home residents and argued that the state effort is moving much faster.
“New York has had one of the most successful vaccine launches compared to other states,” said Rich Azzopardi, a senior adviser to Governor Cuomo.
“The goal is to make sure nothing stays on the shelf.”
Health officials in the Trump administration have discussed in recent weeks the goal of sending enough doses to vaccinate 20 million Americans by the end of 2020.
But as of Wednesday, only about 2.8 million first doses had been administered nationwide, according to the CDC, although officials said there was a delay in reporting in some states.
“We agree that this number is lower than we expected,” Moncef Slaoui, one of the leaders of Operation Warp Speed, told a news conference on Wednesday.
“We know it should be better and we’re working hard to improve it.”
Additional reports by Kate Sheehy and Lia Eustachewich