Vaccinations resume in NYC; Cuomo adds restaurant workers, taxi drivers to group 1B

Vaccination sites across the city are back open

News 12 Staff

Feb 3, 2021, 1:16 PM

Updated 1,404 days ago

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Vaccination sites across the city are back open today.
New York City Health+Hospitals were able to deliver vaccines to residents during the nor’easter, but other facilities were closed due to the winter weather and treacherous travel conditions.
Mayor Bill de Blasio says appointments that were canceled from the storm will get priority before any new ones are made.
“We’ll be able to catch up on appointment quickly,” de Blasio says. “I wish we had so much supply that we’d have to say ‘wow we have so much to do,’ but because supply is limited, we’ll be able to catch up on those appointments very quickly.”
Gov. Andrew Cuomo also says they are working on opening a mass vaccination site at Yankee Stadium only for Bronx residents to get the borough’s high positivity rate down.
President Joe Biden says vaccine rollout will expand nationwide, with plans to deliver doses of the vaccine to around 6,500 pharmacies starting next week.
Cuomo says the state has administered two million vaccines so far, and used 91% of first doses they received.
The governor is granting flexibility to add restaurant workers, taxi drivers and developmentally disabled facilities to the 1B vaccine prioritization group. He says they are opening flexibility because each county in the state is different and has different needs.
Executive Director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance Bhairavi Desai says that taxi drivers should have been included in earlier rollouts.
“We are relieved to know Gov. Cuomo has corrected the gross neglect where drivers, a majority low-wage, immigrant and people of color workforce, were treated like second-class citizens and ignored in the first rollout of the vaccines despite the inclusion of all other transportation workers,” Desai says.
De Blasio would have to prioritize those workers for New York City for them to be able to schedule their appointments.