Thousands of teachers in New York have canceled the COVID-19 vaccine due to the supply and scheduling of snafus – a bureaucratic mess that could further delay the reopening of schools, union chief Michael Mulgrew told The Post on Tuesday.
The situation made it virtually impossible to track who gets the shot, Mulgrew said.
“I want the schools to open in September. But a lot of things have to happen before we can make that call, “said the Big union.
David Bloomfield, a Brooklyn college and CUNY Grad Center professor, agreed, warning: “Until we have large-scale vaccinations, it will be difficult to hire staff.”
As for the city’s Department of Education and Blasio’s administration, both have not yet been able to say on Tuesday how many Big Apple educators received the jab.
There are about 75,000 teachers in the city’s public school classrooms. The current teachers present were given priority to get the photos after the city reopened several schools from the fifth to the fifth grade for classroom learning earlier this month.
Mulgrew told The Post that about 20,000 teachers in the class had requested appointments through the union and that 10,000 had been linked to suppliers so far.
Of these, about 5,000 received the vaccine.
But teachers are also looking to inoculate independently, either through city services or through canals outside the five neighborhoods.
Mulgrew said appointments in the city were canceled en masse due to a lack of vaccines and scheduling problems.
“We had several thousand people who contacted us and told us that their appointment had been canceled,” he said.
A number of teachers confirmed this week to The Post that their vaccination dates in the city had been reduced and that they had failed to receive new ones.
Mulgrew said on Tuesday that City Hall had pledged to pass on the number of teachers who had been vaccinated through agencies outside the union but had not yet provided the data.
Complicated issues, a union source said, are that some teachers living outside the city could be immunized without direct notification from local agencies.
“The city needs to coordinate the program better,” Mulgrew said. “We are in a place where we will either get out of this in six to nine months because we have developed the herd’s immunity or we will be in this time for another year or two.”
Mulgrew said the union tried to make sure doses were available before associating members with suppliers.
This approach allowed the organization to avoid cancellations, he said.
“The federal government needs to give us more vaccines,” he said. “This is not a debate. But you shouldn’t have all these meetings done and then cancel them because you’re overbooking. ”
City officials admitted Tuesday that they were facing unpredictable shooting supplies.
“There is a national shortage of vaccines,” City Hall spokesman Avery Cohen said.
“Like many other cities in America, we were forced to reschedule thousands of meetings because of supply problems. With over 650,000 doses administered to date, we have built the infrastructure to set fire to the arms of millions of New Yorkers. We only need doses to do it. ”
Mulgrew pointed out that there is no vaccination rate for magic teachers that will trigger the reopening of the nation’s largest school system.
He said city-wide COVID-19 indicators – and vaccination rates – will determine when classrooms meet children once again.