'BLOCKING' SHOTS, GOV
Vax unused because of rules: city
New York City’s public hospital system has “thousands of slots available” for New Yorkers to get the COVID-19 vaccine — but the doses are going unused because of state restrictions, city officials charged Thursday.
Dr. Mitchell Katz, president and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals, said at Mayor de Blasio’s City Hall press briefing that all health-care workers in the city’s network of 11 public hospitals who want to get vaccinated have had “that opportunity.”
“But I still have thousands of slots available. I want to put that vaccine in the arms of people who need it,” said Katz, who has previously noted that around 30 percent of eligible health-care employees are refusing shots.
Katz made the remarks as he and de Blasio again pushed the state to allow local officials to begin vaccinating elderly patients, as well as cops and other city employees, who they say desperately want the shots.
“For weeks, we appealed to the state to give us more flexibility and freedom,” de Blasio said. “Because that hasn’t happened, it’s important to raise the issue publicly.”
Until Monday, those eligible to get the COVID-19 vaccine were frontline hospital workers, EMS workers and nursing-home residents and staff. The pool has now expanded to include homecare workers and aides, hospice workers, dentists, doctors in private practices and others.
“In the real world, you know that you need freedom and flexibility if you’re really going to vaccinate a lot of people,” de Blasio said.
“I’ve got a huge numberof folks over 75 whowould show up right now if we would allow them to do it. State won’t allow it.”
The city cannot move on to vaccinating those in the next group, Phase 1B — which includes all New Yorkers over age 75 — until the state gives authorization to do so.
Of 487,375 doses distributed to New York City so far, only 149,930 — a little over 30 percent — have gone into people’s arms, the latest city data show.
Gov. Cuomo has repeatedly ripped the city and NYC Heath + Hospitals for not doling out more of its doses, noting that the public network’s hospitals have administered only a third of their stockpile.
Cuomo argued on Thursday that the city still has many more eligible workers who could be receiving the shots before it moves on to the elderly, police and others.
“New York City, overall, has 917,000 eligible health-care workers in 1A, NewYorkCity has done 144,000 vaccines,” he said, using slightly older figures.
“Even if you want to say the city says their refusal rate is 30 percent — that means the ac-acceptable rate is 70 percent — but they’ve only done 14 percent.”
If the hospitals have given doses to all of its eligible workers who want them, they need to tell the state and “we’ll reallocate it,” Cuomo said.
“In total, we have 2 million health-care workers in the state. In total, we only have 900,000 doses for the 2 million. Statewide, wedon’t even have enough vaccines for half the number of health-care workers,” he said.