A COVID-19 vaccination bus gave doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in Sunset Park on Wednesday.
Dr. Ted Long, of the NYC Test & Trace Corp, says the bus allows six patients to come in at a time. He says the staff is able to get 200 people vaccinated a day.
The city choses where the vans and buses will be based on the neighborhoods identified by the city's Task Force for Racial Inclusion and Equity as hardest hit.
For the first week, Mayor Bill de Blasio says the focus is on restaurant workers and restaurant delivery workers.
Sean Feeney co-founded the organization Restaurants Organizing, Advocating Rebuilding last year to help restaurant workers. She says the mobile vaccination unit is essential to rebuilding city businesses and getting residents back to their jobs.
"Essentially, we're going to the communities where the most restaurants in NYC are and where the most people who work inside of them live," Feeney says. "We just have to make sure that coming out of this crisis as we rebuild our industry as we rebuild our city, that we're not missing these people."
Restaurant workers and restaurant delivery
workers can schedule appointments by emailing
vaccbus@roarnewyork.org, or by
calling
1-833-ROAR-NYC (
1-833-762-7692). Details about additional mobile
vaccine sites, including hours and days of operation, will be announced in the
coming weeks.
The city will
expand its walk-up appointment pilot for New Yorkers over the age of 75 at city-run
sites, with a full list below. Additional, site specific information can be
found on
nyc.gov/vaccinefinder.
Some people came to the bus even though they were not able to schedule an appointment ahead of time. Staff took down their contact information and promised to call if any spots open up due to cancellations.
The mobile vaccination unit will remain in Sunset Park until Friday. It will go to Williamsburg this weekend, and next week it will be in East Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant.