Mayor De Blasio Plans to Start a “Sprinting” Vaccination Process, while Gov. Cuomo Plans to Start Fining Hospitals

By Yehudit Garmaise

   As New Yorkers accept that the vaccine roll-out of the last three weeks has not gone as quickly as some might have hoped, reporters are asking why.

   This morning, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that now in 2021, New York City would be administering vaccines “24/7,” but a reporter asked the mayor why the vaccination process have not been 24/7 since the day the vaccines arrived.

   The mayor responded by saying that the last three weeks in which New York City has had vaccines and has vaccinated 100,000 people so far, have been days in which to lay the groundwork for a mass vaccination effort.

    “Getting it right in the first few weeks was the trendsetter,” said the mayor. “Now is the time to sprint.”

   Among the concerns of the last three weeks mentioned by the mayor were ensuring the proper refrigeration of the vaccine, ensuring the vaccines were handled properly, and ensuring that those who received the vaccine had a good experience.

   “We saw almost no instance of negative reactions, and that has allowed trust in the vaccine to build,” the mayor said. “That has allowed people to see and feel comfortable with the vaccine.”

   While New York City has vaccinated 100,000 people in the last three weeks, the mayor is ramping up efforts and increasing vaccination sites to attempt to vaccinate 100,000 more New Yorkers by the end of the week, and 400,000 a week, by the end of month: a rate that does not quite add up to his pledge last week to vaccinate 1 million New Yorkers in January.

     While the mayor seemed to downplay the initial sluggish pace of vaccinating 8.5 million New Yorkers, Gov. Andrew Cuomo was not as understanding.

    Today, the governor said that hospitals across New York state will face up to $100,000 in fines if they do not use their current COVID-19 vaccine inventories before the week is up.

    New York’s hospitals have only used approximately 46% of the state’s total vaccine allocation over the past three weeks, Cuomo said at a news briefing. That percentage, however, is not high enough, the governor said.

Credit: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office.