New York City will run out of supplies of COVID-19 vaccine by the end of next week, Mayor Bill de Blasio warned on Friday. The scarcity would interrupt the mayor’s goal of administering 1 million doses in the five districts by the end of January, delaying the prospect of quickly reaching herd immunity and reopening safely.
“We will be without a vaccine next week in New York if there is a very different approach from the federal government, the state government and the manufacturers,” said de Blasio at the Brian Lehrer Show at WNYC. “We will not have enough vaccine until the end of next week.”
A source from Blasio’s administration told Gothamist that the city has 186,000 doses available at the moment. At the current rate of dose distribution, the city’s supply will end on January 21.
This morning, de Blasio pointed out that the shortage of the vaccine kept even hospitals like Monte. Sinai and NYU Langone to schedule new appointments. A review of hospital websites confirms this. Mt. Sinai was also canceling appointments leaving.
Earlier on Friday, the Trump administration admitted that the country’s vaccine stocks were empty last week, long before the Department of Health and Human Services announced on Tuesday that it would release the stockpiled doses. It is unclear when the federal government will be able to come up with another batch of vials, potentially reducing access for millions of people who are still waiting to receive the vaccine. This includes those who fall into the Phase 1b category, the largest in the group in Phase 1 of the state’s vaccine implantation plan.
New York City increased vaccinations across New York City after opening about 160 vaccination centers, including several locations 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to get up to 7,000 people inoculated with the Moderna or Pfizer- BioNTech. About 250 vaccine centers will be opened across the city by the end of the month. Between Monday and Thursday, 125,000 people were shot, de Blasio said. He expects more than 175,000 people to be vaccinated this week, exceeding the goal he set on Monday.
We will be without #COVID-19 vaccines next week.
We know that there are unused doses in this country.
We know that New York City takes our doses to people quickly.
The federal government must send us the doses we need NOW.
– Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) January 15, 2021
De Blasio said that anyone who still shows up for the first appointment will have a second appointment for now, given the three and four week waiting period between the second injections for Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, respectively.
“But the growing problem now is that there is not enough vaccine available to accompany the first visit, let alone the second visit,” said de Blasio.
Currently, the city receives 100,000 doses, which New York City and Blasio city council members have called a paltry sum.