Blaz pushes to up sites, hours for vax
The de Blasio administration is ramping up COVID vaccination efforts — with a goal of administering 400,000 doses per week by the end of the month — and calling on the state to authorize more groups of New Yorkers to get shots.
The city will also provide vaccinations around the clock as the number of distribution sites grows, de Blasio said at a Monday press conference.
“This is a whatever-it-takes situation,” he said as he announced three high schools will be used as distribution sites starting Sunday, with more to come.
That will bring the total number of locations where New Yorkers can get the vaccine to 160, with a goal of 250 such locations established by the end of the month, de Blasio said.
Since the city received its first shipment of the vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech in mid-December, more than 110,000 doses have been administered, according to the city Health Department.
The city is on track to quicken the pace to 100,000 doses per week starting this week, de Blasio said. If it can meet its goal of 400,000 shots per week by the end of the month, the city will achieve “herd immunity” — defined by the World Health Organization as “the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection” — around the middle of the year, the mayor said.
State authorities have determined who can get vaccinated and when. After starting with high-risk healthcare workers and nursing home residents and staff, eligibility was expanded to staff at community clinics and urgent care centers. As of Monday, a range of additional groups are eligible: COVID testing site workers, “contact tracers” who track people who encountered positive cases, outpatient and ambulatory care providers, dentists, physical therapists, staff at specialized clinics and NYPD medical personnel.
De Blasio called on the Cuomo administration to authorize more groups, eyeing additional healthcare workers, people age 75 and up and “frontline essential workers,” among others.
“We need to focus on essential workers across the board — a whole range of first responders,” the mayor said. “Obviously EMTs, paramedics have been crucial already. We’ve got to go farther — police, fire, first responders across the board, correction officers. We’ve got to get to teachers, school staff, the whole range of folks who are there at the front line.”
Essential workers also include grocery employees and others, he noted.
Throughout the country, authorities have administered vaccines more slowly than expected. Over the weekend, local elected officials called on the city to take steps including 24/7 distribution of the vaccine.
The mayor said the city will do so, though he did not specify how many locations will run around the clock.
Councilman Mark Levine, who chairs the Council’s Health Committee, welcomed news that the city would start distributing the vaccine beyond hospitals.
“I’m somewhat sympathetic to hospitals which are dealing with the ongoing emergency of our second COVID surge,” he told the Daily News. “Their staff is under enormous strain. The logistics are complicated. That’s why the city needs to use its own vaccination sites.”
The city is setting up distribution centers at the Bushwick Educational Campus in Brooklyn, Hillcrest High School in Queens and the South Bronx Educational Campus in the Bronx, de Blasio said, with more such operations in the works.