De Blasio promises to fix long vax lines
Mayor de Blasio responded Friday to complaints about long COVID vaccination lines and wait times of up to five hours, saying “it is not acceptable that anyone would have to wait that long.”
“Whatever needs to be done, we’re going to fix that,” he said at his morning press briefing.
De Blasio was answering a question from a reporter who told him that people have waited as long as five hours to get shots at Citi Field in Queens and the Bathgate vaccination site in the Bronx.
“Sometimes when I hear this concern about wait times I want to emphasize there’s a problem that needs to be fixed at a center — and it’s been rare,” de Blasio said. “Really, the good news is that most of these centers, most of the vaccination centers, are moving pretty smoothly.”
Health Commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi also noted that the Citi Field and Bathgate sites have significantly expanded the number of appointments and staff over the last few days as the city’s vaccination supply has increased.
Hizzoner insisted he would examine the situation immediately. Later in the day, press spokeswoman Avery Cohen said wait times at the Citifield and Bathgate were between 30 and 45 minutes on Friday.
Alexandra Court, 34, of Manhattan, questioned Cohen’s statement, though, saying that “the wait time at Bathgate was 45 minutes once admitted inside the building,” not total. “We waited in line outside Bathgate for six hours yesterday.”
People standing in line included some with conditions like cancer, “who should not have been standing outside for six hours in the cold,” she added. “There was minimal effort to expedite very sick people through the line.”
The mayor fielded another complaint on Brian Lehrer’s call-in radio show when one caller, Christine from Kensington, described her own frustrating situation in downtown Brooklyn.
“Yesterday, my second vaccine was moved from George Westinghouse in Flatbush Avenue to the 49 Flatbush Avenue Extension location. I arrived at a quarter to one for my 2 o’clock appointment,” she said. “The lines were going all the way around the block, all the way around Flatbush Avenue to Tillary, around the corner, six blocks away, and they were not honoring appointment times.”
Christine said a manager at the site told her vaccines were being offered “first-come, first-served.”
“I had to get on the back of this line, so needless to say I didn’t because it was going to be two or three hours,” she said.
De Blasio responded this was “not acceptable” and “disturbing,” saying that no one working at a city vaccination site should be suggesting that vaccinations are “irst come, first served. “Everything has to be by appointment, or we would have huge lines that are not good for people’s health and well-being,” he said. “So I need to find out if someone is doing the wrong thing there, and I assure you it will be corrected.”