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.