Blaz launches vaccine push with 24/7 sites in B’klyn, Bx.
24/7 vax sites open, with more to come
The city’s first 24-hour/sevendays-a-week vaccination centers opened in the Bronx and Brooklyn on Sunday — the latest effort to speed up New York’s sluggish COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
The two centers — one at the Bathgate Contract Postal Station in the Bronx, the other at Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park — are set up to administer 2,000 doses per day. Three more 24/7 centers will open Saturday, ensuring eligible residents in every borough will have access to vaccinations around the clock.
“I’m a health worker so I’ve been waiting for this,” said Pam Adams, 53, of Harlem, who got a shot at the Bronx site on Sunday. “I think it [the 24-hour schedule] is brilliant. People have different schedules, work different shifts, have limitations because of family or their own personal caregiving duties.”
With Gov. Cuomo expanding the number of those eligible to get a vaccine, Mayor de Blasio said the city will be able to administer 100,000 doses this week — compared with 185,000 vaccines that were provided over the last four weeks.
Hizzoner said 1 million city residents could get at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine by the end of January. Two vaccines approved so far by the federal government both require a total of two shots given weeks apart.
“I’ll tell you what the real concern is now, we’re going to need more vaccines, we’re going to need more doses,” de Blasio at the Bronx vaccination site. “Right now with the supply we have in New York City, and even what we expect to get in the current week, we’re going to run out in a couple of weeks.”
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who joined de Blasio on a tour of the Bronx site, urged New Yorkers to have faith in vaccines that have been deemed safe by the Food and Drug Administration and approved by health officials in countries across the world, including all of the European Union and the United Kingdom.
“This is just about science, this works,” said Williams. “It works for measles, it works for mumps, it works for all of the things that we normally think of. I know it’s new, I know it’s novel, but it’s science.”
Another 24-hour site will open Tuesday at the city’s Department of Mental Health and Hygiene headquarters in lower Manhattan, with two more slated to open on Saturday at Vanderbilt Hospital on Staten Island and at the city’s COVID-19 testing site in Corona, Queens.
Vaccinations also will be available at hundreds more locations around the city under the state’s expanded eligibility rules, which allow people over age 75 and some public-facing essential workers to get jabs at pharmacies, medical offices and other health care facilities.
Councilman Mark Levine (D-Manhattan) said, however, the 24-hour vaccine centers aren’t enough — and that the city should do much more to speed up the vaccinations.
“We need a 24/7 site in every neighborhood,” said Levine, who chairs the City Council’s health committee. “It’s the only way we will increase the pace of vaccination enough for our city to have hope of reaching herd immunity by the middle of this year.”
The current around-the-clock facilities may prove tough to get to for some people without a car. Subways remain shut down from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. — seven months after Cuomo ordered the closure to clean the cars and remove homeless people from the trains.