Mayor de Blasio Wants to Jump-Start NYC’s Vaccination Process in January

By Yehudit Garmaise

   New York City has received 390,425 vaccine doses and has been able to administer only about 78,000 shots, according to city data, but yesterday Mayor Bill de Blasio said that he wants to put the vaccination process into “high gear,” and inoculate 1 million of the 8.4 people living in New York City by the end of January.

     “Every single time we vaccinate someone, we are one step closer to making the coronavirus a thing of the past in terms of the horrible grip it has on society,” said Mayor de Blasio, who said the city will use schools, pop-up clinics and “whatever it takes” to get shots in the arms of 1 million people within the first month of 2021.

     “We know New York City can vaccinate 1 million people in the month of January and really put this thing into high gear,” de Blasio who also told CNN that the vaccination process is not moving the way it needs to in the United States.

    According to the website ourworldindata.org, Israel, for instance, currently leads the world in administering vaccines to its population, as it has inoculated 9.18 out of every 100 people.

    Bahrain is a distant second in the race to vaccinate its citizens, vaccinating them at a rate of 3.37 per 100 citizens. Iceland, which has vaccinated 1.43 people out of 100, and the United Kingdom, which has vaccinated 1.18 people out of 100, are the next more efficient at vaccinating its populations against COVID-19.

    In the vaccination race, the United States comes in at a distant fourth place, vaccinating only .84 of a person, per 100 Americans. In fact, federal officials have admitted that the U.S. government has fallen far short of its original goal of administering at least 20 million COVID vaccine shots before the end of the year.

     “New York City is going to show that we can jump-start this and vaccinate people at a record pace. And we want to see the whole country to be a part of this because we need to go faster to fight back the coronavirus if we want to recover.”

Credit: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office.