FULL SPEED AHEAD
Cuomo and Hizzoner promise to ramp up inoculations
ALBANY — A day after threatening slow-moving hospitals and city officials, Gov. Cuomo vowed to expedite the COVID immunization process and outlined New York’s future vaccination plans.
Thousands of sites across the state including pharmacies, urgent care centers, the Javits Center and even SUNY and CUNY campuses will be used to distribute doses for the general public, once available, the governor said.
“The distribution system outlined can deliver millions of doses, we are getting 300,000 per week,” he said. “We have to wait for that to increase. Again there is a lot of possibility for the feds to increase supply but they have to.”
Cuomo, who reiterated his threat to fine and even pull immunizations from hospitals not up to speed, is also calling on larger public agencies like police and fire departments, as well as teachers and transit unions, to organize their own distribution plans to help accelerate the process when essential workers become eligible.
The state will also use community partners to create “pop-up” vaccination sites at places like churches, community centers, and public housing to target poor and minority communities.
In all, officials have identified 3,762 provider sites for vaccine distribution across all regions of the state, including long-term care facilities, pharmacies, hospitals, urgent care facilities and community centers. Of those, 636 sites already have access to the vaccine, Cuomo said.
“We’ve signed up hundreds in every region in the state,” he added, noting that 845 sites signed up to become distribution centers in the five boroughs alone.
The distribution details come after Cuomo criticized city officials including Mayor de Blasio and some hospital systems for what he called a lack of “urgency” regarding immunization efforts.
Despite working under state-approved plans, some hospital systems have lagged as initial doses were delivered in recent weeks and frontline heath care workers were meant to be first in line to get inoculated.
De Blasio, meanwhile, pushed back against Cuomo’s critiques, calling the governor’s threat of fines for hospitals that don’t use up their doses quickly enough unhelpful.
“What they don’t need is to be shamed, what they don’t need is more bureaucracy, what they don’t need is the threat of fines,” the mayor said of health care workers.
He later sounded a more diplomatic note, saying he’d let his emotions “get the better” of him when he accused Cuomo of being arrogant on Monday night.
De Blasio also repeated his promise that the city is ramping up vaccinations, a process numerous elected officials aside from Cuomo have said is moving at a snail’s pace. The mayor said the city is preparing its own “mass vax” sites that will give shots 24/7, though he acknowledged not all the locations have been chosen yet.
City Hall is shooting to oversee 1 million vaccinations by the end of the month.
While announcing one
milestone — everyone who provides patient care at the city’s 11 public hospitals have received a vaccine, according to NYC Health + Hospitals CEO Dr. Mitchell Katz — the administration acknowledged another challenge: 30% of hospital workers are turning the vaccine down, de Blasio said.
The mayor was optimistic that more New Yorkers from all walks of life will warm to the idea of the new drug as immunizations continue.
“There’s a lot of people who are not yet ready. That’s OK,” Hizzoner said.
Cuomo, meanwhile, turned his ire on the Trump administration and said the supply of doses from the federal end is also lagging.
The governor said that about 900,000 vaccines have been distributed in total in the state, which he noted won’t cover even half of New York’s 2.1 million health care workers.
The vaccination debacle comes as COVID cases rise and New York reported the first case of a highly contagious variant of the virus upstate.
A total of 8,590 people in New York are currently hospitalized due to the virus, an increase of 339. Of those patients, 1,392 are being treated in intensive care units and 851 are intubated.
The statewide percentage of people testing positive for the virus was 8.31% as another 149 people died of COVID-19, Cuomo said.
The mutation, first detected in the United Kingdom, was found Monday in a man in his 60s from Saratoga County who had not traveled recently, indicating that the strain is already spreading in the state.
Cuomo said the variant could be a “game changer” in the fight against COVID, and infection rates and hospitalizations could increase dramatically.
“This is something we have to watch and we have to pay careful attention to,” he said as he blasted federal Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield.
“What happened to competent leadership in government? The U.S.A. must act,” Cuomo added. “If the United States won’t act, then New York state will act.”
Indeed, New York inked a deal with three airlines to test travelers flying from U.K. airports to JFK several days before CDC’s announcement that as of Dec. 28, the U.S would require people flying in from the U.K. to test negative.