“People will struggle to see who goes first or who doesn’t go first, but the important thing is that this is happening,” Dr. Tallaj, president of SOMOS Community Care, a network of clinics across New York City that treats many patients from Hispanic and Asian immigrant communities spoke of vaccinations.
Healthcare professionals, nursing home residents and staff members form what is called Phase 1 of the New York State vaccine distribution plan. About two million people are in this group, and the initial allocation of the vaccine by the state probably means that Phase 2, which includes essential workers, will not begin until the end of January. (Widespread distribution is not expected to begin before the summer, officials said.)
But the state mainly left it up to each health institution to draw up a vaccination plan during the first phase. In the first week of vaccination, many hospitals chose a wide variety of health professionals – nurses, doctors, housekeepers – from emergency rooms and intensive care units to be the first in their institutions to receive the vaccine. But in the days that followed the celebrations that accompanied the first photos, the atmosphere in the hospitals changed.
Asked about workers who cut the vaccine line at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian said in a statement: “We are proud to have vaccinated thousands of employees who deal with patients in just one week and will continue to do so until everyone receive a vaccine. We are following all New York State Department of Health guidelines on vaccine priority, with our initial focus on the ICU and emergency room staff and equitable access for all. ”
Still, The Times interviewed four health professionals at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, all of whom expressed resentment towards colleagues and dismay that hospital administrators had allowed the vaccine delivery system to dissolve.
A nurse at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital said she went so far as to confront a social worker who she believed had skipped the line about why the social worker thought she deserved the vaccine before others.
“She said, ‘We have to go to the ER someday’, but that is not true,” said the nurse about the social worker.