An ambitious goal for a million New York City residents to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in January was set Thursday by Bill de Blasio.
The mayor noted that the target of external cooperation had to be met as the city significantly increased access. He said ‘vaccine hubs’ would be set up to help with the program.
De Blasio’s promise came Thursday on the day it was unveiled in New York City, where the virus is once again recovering, having administered just 20 percent of the doses now available.
Doses usually last 30 days after delivery, and millions could expire in January if not used.
‘We have to get into overdrive now,’ the mayor said at his regular meeting. ‘We need every day to accelerate more and more people.’
The city has vaccinated just 88,000 people since vaccinations first came out on Dec. 14, working at a pace that would leave it much shorter than the target for next month.
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The mayor noted that meeting the goal of external cooperation would be necessary as the city significantly increased accessibility. His promise came Thursday on the day he was unveiled in New York City, where the virus is once again recovering, having given just 20 percent of the doses now available
Health Commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi said officials want to double access points across the country to at least 250 sites, including hospitals, community health centers and emergency care clinics.
Deputy Mayor Melanie Hartzog said officials also plan to double the 150,000-dose-a-week budget capacity over January.
For the second day in a row, the United States has set the highest number of coronavirus deaths.
On Thursday, the country reported 3,744 deaths due to COVID-19, data from Johns Hopkins University shows.
This breaks Wednesday’s previously established record of 3,725 and brings the total number of deaths to 342,414.
The figure also marks the ninth day of this month that deaths have exceeded 3,000, according to a DailyMail.com survey.
West Virginia has vaccinated the highest of their population, followed by South Dakota and North Dakota. Kansas ranks last in the vaccine population, with just 0.42% of all residents receiving the injection
A list shows the percentage of cooling images provided in each state, listed from most effective to minimum
This map shows the number of doses administered in each state
Meeting the goal would also require assistance from the federal and state governments, as well as manufacturers, the mayor said. He said it was also a ‘team effort’ involving schools, other city groups and communities.
De Blasio cited the goal amid criticism that the country’s vaccine distribution has been too slow. Trump administration officials said this month that they expected to release 20 million doses of the vaccine by the end of the year.
On New Year’s Eve, about 12.4 million doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were distributed to states, but only 2.8 million of those doses were given, according to CDC data.
Why distribution of the vaccine has been so slow:
- Shipping delays created chaos in the first few weeks, General Gustave Perna apologized
- Overcrowded hospitals find it difficult to find enough staff to manage the photographs
- Some regulators have introduced increasingly controversial restrictions on who gets the injection
- Local and state officials are complaining that their public health offices are underfunded
- Some healthcare workers have refused the vaccine, with a dramatic 50% decline in some areas
- Cold storage requirements create logical bumps and tight windows to deliver the vaccine
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar has voted to deliver 20 million administered doses by the end of the year. President Donald Trump boasted that 100 million would be administered by January 1st.
Perhaps patiently, nationwide only 8 percent of the 2.2 million doses dispensed given to residents of long-term care facilities have been administered to date.
The failures were blamed on a number of factors, including a lack of federal oversight, chaos in distribution, ‘awakened’ regulators setting controversial priorities for the original release, and the simple lack of loads. to provide jobs in overstretched health care systems.
De Blasio also said that March 14, a year after the first COVID-19-related death in New York, will be a day of remembrance for a life lost in the pandemic.
‘We have to recognize that 25,000 of our New York peers are gone,’ he said.
