NEW YORK (AP) – New Yorkers over the age of 16 can apply for the COVID-19 vaccination as of Tuesday, a major expansion of eligibility, as the state seeks to immunize as many people as possible.
© Provided by Associated Press
ARCHIVE – In this February 24, 2021 archival photo, Pastor Darryl Frazier, on the left, and state senator Leroy Comrie receive a COVID-19 vaccine before the opening of a mass vaccination post in the Queens neighborhood of New York. New Yorkers over the age of 16 can apply for the COVID-19 vaccination from Tuesday, April 6, a major expansion of eligibility, as the state seeks to immunize as many people as possible. (Photo by AP / Seth Wenig, pool, archive)
New York State University also announced plans to offer vaccines to tens of thousands of college students before returning home in the summer.
Governor Andrew Cuomo increased eligibility to 30 or more last week and announced that people aged 16 to 29 would be eligible from April 6.
Adolescents aged 16 to 17 will be limited to receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech two-dose vaccine, since it is the only one that has been authorized for use by children under 18. Parental consent will be required for 16- and 17-year-old vaccinations – sold on government-run websites, with certain exceptions, including teenagers who are married or parents.
None of the available vaccines have yet been approved for children under 16.
New York State health officials hope that increased eligibility will help reduce COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations – particularly among millennials and the Xers generation.
The number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in New York dropped to 4,400, from about 8,600 in early January.
But since mid-March, the number of new cases of COVID-19 has increased and hospitalizations have stagnated. And more young people with COVID-19 are now landing in New York hospitals, according to data from the state Department of Health provided to The Associated Press: 1,146 patients with COVID-19 on Sunday were between 20 and 54, against 986 – an increase of 16% – at the beginning of March.
About half of COVID-19 patients in New York hospitals are under the age of 65, a contrast between January and February, when that age group accounted for a third of patients. New Yorkers aged 20 to 44 represent 13% of patients with COVID-19 hospitalized in the state, up from 7% in early January.
SUNY students will receive the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which, by requiring only one dose, will allow them to be fully vaccinated by the end of the semester, in early May.
Although some colleges, including Rutgers University and Cornell University, have announced that they will require COVID-19 vaccination for students who return in the fall, SUNY has yet to say whether vaccines will be mandatory.
Chancellor Jim Malatras said the public college system secured its first shipment of vaccines and is working with the state to reserve additional doses for students. About 18,600 vaccines were distributed to 34 campuses on Tuesday.
More than 350,000 students were receiving e-mail messages urging them to make an appointment, according to SUNY.
About one in five New York State residents were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 on Monday, according to the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Just over a third of the state’s residents received at least one dose of vaccine.
The new vaccination rules add 1.7 million people to the list of eligible New Yorkers, for a total of 15.9 million individuals, officials from the state Department of Health said.
Malatras said the vaccine distribution plan on campus takes months to work out.
“Giving residential students the one-time option helps to overcome a crucial logistical obstacle in the race to fully vaccinate people before they leave campus and return to their hometown communities,” he said.
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This story has been corrected to remove an erroneous reference to Rutgers as a private university. It’s public.
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