Mayor de Blasio says NYC will run out of COVID-19 vaccine next week

Mayor Bill de Blasio sounded the alarm on Friday that New York City should run out of coveted COVID-19 vaccine by next week.

“We’re going to miss next week. I’m telling you, at this rate there won’t be doses in New York City by the end of next week if we don’t get a major resupply. [of vaccine]De Blasio said during his weekly visit to WNYC’s “The Brian Lehrer Show”.

Hizzoner explained that the Big Apple received a “very paltry” replenishment of 100,000 doses per week and that the city had 125,000 injections “in the first four days of this week.”

“Our numbers are increasing every day in the number of people we can immunize,” de Blasio said, noting that nearly 34,000 people were vaccinated in the city on Wednesday.

“If we don’t get a serious supply, we’re going to have to stop making appointments, as has happened at Mount Sinai Hospital and NYU-Langone,” de Blasio said. “If there’s no supply, we’re going to have to freeze the appointment system. It would be foolish.

Two of the city’s largest hospital systems, NYU-Langone and Mount Sinai, are no longer scheduling vaccine appointments at the moment and all systems are expected to run out of vaccines by the end of next week without replenishment, said the mayor’s office.

Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital was forced to turn away those looking to get trapped this week even though people had appointments to receive the vaccine.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, speaking at his own briefing later Friday, explained that 7 million New Yorkers are now eligible to receive the vaccine, but there is a backlog due to a supply insufficient since the state receives only about 300,000 doses per week from the federal government. government.

“It’s like opening a flood valve and putting it through a syringe,” said Cuomo, who added that the state had received less than 250,000 shots this week.

At this rate, it will take six months to vaccinate everyone who is currently eligible, the governor said.

“Seven million people are looking for 250,000 doses,” Cuomo said. “It’s the math problem you can’t solve.”

Of the 827,715 doses administered statewide, 731,285 of them were first doses, while 96,430 of them were second doses of the two-dose vaccine, Cuomo said, citing data from state.

Cuomo said anyone who has received their first dose shouldn’t “worry” that they won’t be able to get their second dose even though the supply is limited.

“We make sure we have a second dose for whoever got the first dose,” he said.

Commenting on de Blasio’s claims that New York City is on the verge of running out of vaccines, Cuomo said, “I’m not sure what the mayor was talking about… Some facilities are working on their past offering.

“Many facilities in New York City have [vaccine] unused allowance, ”Cuomo said.

The governor added that New York City will receive more doses next week, “but it will be less because the overall allowance is lower.”

City data on Friday shows that out of 800,500 doses delivered to the Big Apple so far, 337,518 injections have passed into people’s arms – about 42 percent.

The city administered 71.3% of the 175,000 vaccines it intended to distribute by the end of this weekend, according to the mayor’s office, which said on Friday the Big Apple had less 186,000 first doses remaining.