NEW YEAR’S DREAM
Blaz’s ambitious goal: To vaccinate 1M by Feb. 1
Mayor de Blasio made a bold New Year’s resolution.
He’s aiming to have 1 million New Yorkers vaccinated for COVID by the end of the month — a move that would require the city to significantly step up its vaccination operation.
“This is going to be a massive effort. This is going to be part of the largest single vaccination effort in the history of New York City. It’s going to take a lot of work,” de Blasio said Thursday at his morning press briefing. “We’re making clear to the whole world we can achieve a million vaccinations in January.”
To move the vaccination effort into “overdrive,” de Blasio said the city would launch new vaccine hubs, offer vaccinations at city Test and Trace sites and scale up the vaccination capacity of local community groups.
So far, 88,000 New Yorkers have been vaccinated, but Hizzoner said it’s nowhere near enough and called on the federal and state governments, as well as vaccine manufacturers, to help the city in reaching its ambitious goal.
City Health Commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi projected the city would have to double the number of sites it uses to provide vaccinations, saying it plans to have 250 of them up and running by February. Some of those sites will be in public school gymnasiums and city housing complexes.
The city now has the capacity to administer 150,000 vaccine doses per week, according to Deputy Mayor Melanie Hartzog, who predicted that by the end of January it will be able to vaccinate up to 300,000 people a week.
“These are aggressive goals,”
Chokshi said. “We need a sufficient supply of vaccine with a clear road map of what New York City can expect to receive from the federal government, not just for next week, but for the months ahead.”
The city is now vaccinating people who fall into the first priority group to receive doses — hospital workers, EMTs and people who work and live in nursing homes. To speed up the rate of vaccinations, Chokshi said the city wants to expand that group to include home health workers and other lower priority health care workers.
“For us to move quickly, as is our intent, we have to be able to expand the circle of eligibility swiftly,” he said.
To expand vaccinations out of the first priority group, the city would need authorization from the state government as well as additional vaccine doses.
State Health Department spokesman Gary Holmes said Thursday he expects “next steps” in “the coming weeks.”
“Right now the priority is on at-risk hospital and health care workers, nursing home residents and staff, as well as other people in congregate care facilities, which is a universe of 2 million New Yorkers,” Holmes said. “Next steps will come in the coming weeks, along with additional supply that will allow us to continue to vaccinate as many people as safely and efficiently as possible.”