A New York City Fire Department Emergency Medical Services (FDNY EMS) employee receives a COVID-19 Modern vaccine amid the coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19) in the Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, USA , December 23, 2020.
Carlo Allegri | Reuters
New York officials want to inoculate 1 million people against Covid-19 in January, saying the federal government and drugmakers need to speed up vaccine production and distribution.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday that the city will use schools, pop-up clinics and “whatever it takes” to reach 1 million people during the month.
“We know that New York City can vaccinate 1 million people in January and can really put it at high speed,” de Blasio told CNN. “Every time we vaccinate someone, we are one step closer to transforming the coronavirus into the past, in terms of the horrible grip it has on society.”
IThis is an ambitious goal, given that the city received only 390,425 doses of vaccine and managed to administer only about 78,000 photos, according to city data.
“This is not moving properly in the United States,” the mayor said. “New York City will show that we can start this and vaccinate people at a record pace. And we want to see the whole country part of this, because we have to go faster to fight the coronavirus if I want to recover. “
The US government has far exceeded its initial goal of administering at least 20 million Covid vaccines before the end of the year – which federal officials have acknowledged is disappointing. The United States has distributed 12.4 million doses of vaccine so far and inoculated only 2.8 million people with the first two-shot vaccine regimen from Pfizer or Moderna, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. US officials say the data is 72 to 96 hours due to state and local delays. Even so, it’s still a fraction of the Trump administration’s original target.
“We agree that this number is lower than we expected,” Moncef Slaoui, chief adviser to Operation Warp Speed’s vaccination program, told reporters on Wednesday. “We know it should be better and we are working hard to improve it.”
De Blasio said the federal government must organize all its resources to mass-produce the vaccine.
De Blasio’s statement comes as the city prepares for its annual New Year’s Eve festivities, albeit without the usual crowds. Only a few hundred people, instead of the usual thousands, will be in Times Square in masks and at the invitation only to drop the ball at midnight to strike in 2021. De Blasio said that the only thing that unites all Americans in this country divided the year is “we want to get rid of hell in 2020”.