Bill de Blasio promises to vaccinate one million New Yorkers in January as it's revealed NYC has administered just 20% of their refrigerated doses and just 88,000 people have the jab so far
An ambitious goal of vaccinating one million New York City residents against COVID-19 in January was set Thursday by Bill de Blasio.
The mayor noted that meeting the target would require outside cooperation and the city dramatically increasing access. He said 'vaccination hubs' would be created to help with the program.
De Blasio's pledge came Thursday on the day it was revealed New York City, where the virus is again resurgent, has administered just 20 percent of the doses that are now available.
Doses usually last 30 days after shipping, and millions could expire in January if they aren't used.
'We need to go into overdrive now,' the mayor said at his regular briefing. 'We need every day to speed up and reach more and more people.'
The city has vaccinated just 88,000 people since vaccines first became available December 14, working at a pace that would leave it far short of the goal for next month.
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The mayor who noted that meeting the target would require outside cooperation and the city dramatically increasing access. His pledge came Thursday on the day it was revealed New York City, where the virus is again resurgent, has administered just 20 percent of the doses that are now available
Health Commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi said officials want to double citywide access points to at least 250 sites, including hospitals, community health centers and urgent care clinics.
Deputy Mayor Melanie Hartzog said officials also plan to double the city's 150,000-dose-a-week capacity over the course of January.
For the second consecutive day, the United States has set a record-high number of coronavirus deaths.
On Thursday, the country reported 3,744 fatalities due to COVID-19, data from Johns Hopkins University shows.
This breaks the previous record set on Wednesday of 3,725 and brings the total number of deaths to 342,414.
The figure also marks the ninth day this month that deaths have exceeded 3,000, according to DailyMail.com analysis.
West Virginia has vaccinated the highest percentage of its population, followed by South Dakota and North Dakota. Kansas lags the farthest behind in population vaccinated, with just 0.42% of all residents having received the jab
A list shows the percentage of refrigerated shots that have been administered in each state, listed from the most efficient to the least
This map shows the number of doses that have gone un-administered in each state
Meeting the goal also would require help from the federal and state governments, as well as manufacturers, the mayor said. He called it a 'team effort' also involving schools, other city agencies and communities.
De Blasio announced the goal amid criticism that the nation's vaccine rollout has been too slow. Trump administration officials said this month they planned to have 20 million doses of the vaccine distributed by the end of the year.
As of New Year's Eve, roughly 12.4 million doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been distributed to states, but only 2.8 million of those doses have actually been administered, according to CDC data.
Why the vaccine rollout has proceeded so slowly:
Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar vowed to have administered 20 million doses administered by the end of the year. President Donald Trump boasted 100 million would be administered by January 1.
Perhaps most pathetically, nationwide just 8 percent of the 2.2 million distributed doses dedicated for residents of long-term care facilities have been administered thus far.
The failures have been blamed on various factors, including lack of federal oversight, chaos in distribution, 'woke' governors setting convoluted priorities for initial distribution, and the simple lack of staff to administer jabs in overstretched healthcare 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 lives lost in the pandemic.
'We need to recognize 25,000 of our fellow New Yorkers gone,' he said.
