NYPD puts a hold on vaccination

The COVID vaccine shortage has led the NYPD to stop inoculating its members, even as two officers sent to Washington D.C., for President Joe Biden’s inauguration tested positive for the virus.

The agency’s medical division notified the rank and file of the change in a message sent out Tuesday night. “Effective immediately, due to a statewide shortage, the department will temporarily cease the first dose distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine,” the message said. Another message will be sent once the vaccination program resumes. This does not pertain to the second dose of the COVID 19 vaccination, the message noted. More than 12,000 cops have gotten the vaccine so far, NYPD figures show. Meanwhile, more than two dozen of the 200 city cops sent to Washington, D.C., to help with security for President Biden’s inauguration spent the ceremony quarantined in their hotel rooms because two of their brethren tested positive for COVID-19, authorities said. The officers arrived in the capital on Monday, and a day later one of them began experiencing coronavirus symptoms, and complained that he couldn’t taste or smell the onion bagel he was eating, sources said.

That cop — along with the 21 others who were on the bus with him and the bus driver — were given rapid COVID tests. The officer with the symptoms and another cop tested positive, sources said.

The sick officers were quarantining in their Washington Hilton hotel rooms on Wednesday. Local authorities were aware of their diagnosis and were helping to treat them, an NYPD official said. “We’re relieved that the diagnosis was caught in time and that they are being treated properly,” the official said. “We are monitoring the other officers to see if any symptoms develop.”

The rest of the 20 officers didn’t get their negative tests back in time to attend Biden’s inauguration, said sources.