Vaccines, seen

Kudos to the City of New York and its Health Department, which this week launched a vaccine tracker letting the public see how many vaccine doses the city’s set to get, how many it has already gotten — and how many of those doses have made their way into New Yorkers’ arms.

The tracker’s tally, as of Dec. 22: Of the 274,200 doses the city’s been allocated so far, we’ve received 86,150 of them, and 22,369 firstdose shots have been administered.

For this vaccine to really work, we need enough people to take it to achieve herd immunity, estimated to be at least 75% of the population. But people won’t take the vaccine if they don’t trust the process. Key to nurturing that trust is transparency about who’s getting what.

But don’t take our word for it, listen to native New Yorker Dr. Tony Fauci, who told this Editorial Board Tuesday that, in general, “Everything I do, I always feel there should be a strong degree of transparency and fairness and equity.”

It’s not just government. Hospitals distributing the vaccine should share as much information as they can, with both their workforce and the public. Don’t do what Mt. Sinai did, for example, leaving employees largely in the dark about who was where on the list. Turned out, some less at-risk employees got the vaccine while doctors regularly exposed to COVID patients were left waiting.

With new doses set to arrive, the state’s tasked distributors across New York’s 10 regions with running the next phase of dissemination. Each regional coordinator must deliver plans by the first week of January detailing how they will run “efficient and expedited delivery and administration of the vaccine,” based on a “fair and equitable strategy.” Make those plans public.