A task force with external experts, convened by Mr. Cuomo to guide the vaccination plan, rarely met and rarely had the opportunity to provide guidance.
For help planning the vaccination campaign, the governor turned to consultants from Deloitte and the Boston Consulting Group. The in-house lobbyist for New York’s largest hospital system, Northwell Health, was directly involved in the deployment.
For about a month, starting in mid-October, Northwell lobbyist Dennis Whalen worked in an office within the State Department of Health and helped shape the state’s approach. Mr. Whalen had previously worked as the No. 2 employee in the department.
“If you ask for help, you help,” said Michael Dowling, president of Northwell and Cuomo’s longtime ally. “There is nothing nefarious about it.”
It was a nurse at Northwell Hospital, Sandra Lindsay, who received the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine in the country in mid-December, an iconic moment in the pandemic and a public relations victory for the private hospital system.
The governor and his aides said the vaccine’s implementation was hampered by the federal government, which they accused of lacking a vaccine. They also said that poor performance by local authorities and public hospitals, particularly in New York City, slowed down distribution. Lately, Cuomo has regularly used his almost daily press conferences to call hospitals by the name he said he was not vaccinating fast enough.
After opening eligibility to many more people, New York now quickly uses its weekly vaccine shipments, not including doses sent to the state through a federal program for nursing homes, state data show.