Counties push back against state
Local officials ask: Let us use existing vaccination plans
Amid signs that the state’s coronavirus vaccination rollout is sputtering, county leaders across New York on Tuesday urged Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to allow them to activate their mass-vaccination plans that have been in preparation for years but that were recently set aside in favor of a regional approach run by hospitals.
The unrest came a day after Cuomo criticized the pace at which many of the regional hospitals have vaccinated the first round of recipients; he threatened to impose hefty fines and revoke their vaccination privileges if the situation doesn’t improve.
“If a hospital is not competent and can’t do this, we’ll use another hospital,” Cuomo said. “It’s literally a matter of life and death.”
Some counties have received small batches of vaccines in order to administer doses to frontline health workers and first responders, while other counties are still waiting. Officials say there is also growing frustration among the general population, which has not been given a clear picture of when they will be vaccinated.
“The reason we were doing regional hubs, based on the state’s argument, was that we didn’t want 63 separate plans,” said Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro. “Instead, what we have is no plan.”
During a news conference Monday, Cuomo used a slide in his presentation to highlight the hospitals that have distributed the highest and lowest number of doses. It included a photograph of Westchester County
Executive George Latimer that noted Westchester Medical Center, and two other hospitals, had distributed only about 30 percent of the vaccines provided to them.
“As if George Latimer runs Westchester Medical Center,” Molinaro said. “The shame is unnecessary.”
The New York State Association of Counties conducted a news conference Tuesday afternoon during which multiple county leaders said that if the counties were more engaged with the vaccination planning — including receiving more detailed data and holding leadership positions in the regional hubs — the vaccinations could be delivered quickly and more efficiently.
“We’re wasting resources by duplicating efforts,” Chemung County Executive Chris Moss said. “We’ve got to have better coordination and communication efforts if we’re going to make it work.”
The tumult is occurring after Cuomo announced in a second Monday briefing that a highly contagious variant of COVID -19 was detected in a Saratoga County man — an indication that the dangerous variant that first surfaced in the United Kingdom has arrived in New York and may be triggering the recent surge in cases.
State and local officials agree the arrival of that variant, which is more contagious but not more lethal, makes it extremely critical to speed up the pace of vaccinations.
Cornell University issued a statement on behalf of one of its professors Tuesday criticizing the state’s vaccination rollout as too slow to be effective.
Cynthia Leifer, an associate professor of immunology at Cornell University, said the state should not be disqualifying vaccination sites but expanding the number of dispensing locations.
“It is great news that New York is rolling out the COVID vaccine, but we need to move much faster,” Leifer said. “The FDA approved Pfizer’s emergency use authorization request on Dec. 11, and New York received the first shipment on Dec. 14. Since then, roughly 274,000 New Yorkers have received the vaccine. That is about 13,047 per day. The bad news is that at this rate, it will take nearly four years to immunize nearly 19 million New Yorkers.
“Cuomo is right that we need to make sure the vaccines are being given as quickly as possible and that sites are not allowed to stockpile,” Leifer continued. “However, I agree with those who are critical of Cuomo’s plan for rigid rules and disqualifying sites, especially hospitals, from getting future distributions.”
The governor’s office on Tuesday afternoon did not acknowledge any faults with its vaccination strategy. The administration contends that the local mass-vaccination plans that have been developed over the course of years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks are not the right approach and that the state needs to control distribution.
“Like we said, the virus doesn’t respect county lines and we needed to coordinate all the county plans with the state response to avoid 63 different counties going 63 different direction with no one talking to each other,” said Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi. “As we move through vaccinating the frontline health care workers and nursing home staff and residents in our first tranche of New Yorkers, we have 46 counties ready to join our efforts in the next two weeks.”
Rensselaer County Executive Steve Mclaughlin said another important aspect of vaccinating people — assuring them that the vaccines are safe — was hampered last year when Cuomo repeatedly questioned the safety and efficacy of the vaccines that were being fasttracked by the administration of President Donald J. Trump.
“I think that played a role here in some people’s reluctance, but we do think that’s going to dissipate,” Mclaughlin said.
Mclaughlin, a former state assemblyman and frequent Cuomo critic, echoed Molinaro in saying that counties have for decades been tasked in New York with developing health programs on a local level that protect people from diseases, including administering vaccinations.
“The chaos, confusion and delay created by the governor hurts counties to be able to carry out this mission, and endangers lives,” Mclaughlin said.
Putnam County Executive Maryellen Odell’s small county — with a population of roughly 100,000, according to the 2010 census — has just nine public health nurses but also a largely volunteer reserve medical corps, which most counties have as an element of their mass-vaccination plans. Odell said they are set to administer about 600 vaccines on Wednesday at a senior center. But she said the state needs to listen more to the county leaders.
“County government is the closest government to the people, and I’d like to send that message back up to New York state when they ’re making decisions that affect us,” Odell said.
Molinaro likened the governor’s plan to “building the plane while it’s flying.”
“When it came to vaccine distribution, we had a perfectly healthy plane on the runway ready to take off,” he said.
Molinaro said some of the caregiver facilities that are supposed to be administering vaccinations under the regional hub plan also have still not received authorization to do so.
“Our message today is there is an existing infrastructure, we need to flip the switch, we need to use it ... and stop the counterproductive efforts,” he said.