Baseball stadium of Citi field, home of the New York Mets Major League Baseball team on September 7, 2019 in Flushing, Queens, New York.
Tim Clayton | Corbis Sport | Getty Images
New York will transform Citi Field into a “mega” coronavirus vaccination site 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in late January, in an effort to vaccinate thousands of residents daily, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday. -market.
NYC Health and Hospitals will operate the site, home to the New York Mets, with the aim of administering between 5,000 and 7,000 injections per day, de Blasio said in a joint announcement with Mets owner Steve Cohen.
The announcement came a day after Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said his city would set up a vaccination facility at Dodger Stadium by the end of this week. This facility will be able to deliver up to 12,000 doses a day, according to a statement from Garcetti’s office on Monday.
“This will help many people get vaccinated,” said de Blasio during a press conference. “We welcome all New Yorkers. Even Yankees fans; there is no discrimination.”
The mayor of New York has been pressuring Governor Andrew Cuomo to expand the number of people who would be eligible for a coronavirus vaccine in addition to high-priority health professionals. Cuomo responded to the city’s request last week and said people aged 75 and over, as well as essential workers such as first responders, teachers, school officials and others, across the state could be vaccinated against the disease starting this week.
A person wearing a protective mask is outside a Covid-19 vaccination site at Bathgate Industrial Park in the Bronx neighborhood of New York, USA, on Monday, January 11, 2021.
David Delgado | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Starting on Tuesday, the state will open Covid-19 vaccinations for everyone aged 65 and over, as well as for immunocompromised youth, the Democratic governor said during a call with reporters early on Tuesday.
It seems, however, that the problem so far has not been finding space to vaccinate people – it has been ensuring the delivery of doses. Cuomo said the recently expanded federal guidelines apply to about 7 million people, but the state receives only about 300,000 doses a week.
“I ask for patience because, unfortunately, there are many more young people eligible than the federal government’s vaccine supply,” Cuomo said in a tweet on Tuesday.
De Blasio said the city had 26,000 vaccinations on Monday. At this rate, the city will run out of vaccines in less than two weeks, he said.
“We are going to need the doses to maintain that kind of effort,” he said.