Thousands of New York City teachers have had their appointments for COVID-19 vaccines canceled thanks to the supply and scheduling mess – a bureaucratic mess that could only delay the reopening of schools, union boss Michael Mulgrew told the Post on Tuesday.
The situation has made it virtually impossible to know who is shooting, Mulgrew said.
“I want schools to open in September. But there is a lot that needs to happen before we can make this call, ”said the union.
David Bloomfield, a professor at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Grad Center, agreed, warning: “Until we have a wide vaccination, it will be difficult to form a team.”
As for the city’s Department of Education and Blasio’s administration, both were still unable to say on Tuesday how many educators at the Big Apple received the injection.
There are about 75,000 teachers assigned to public school classrooms in the city. Current face-to-face teachers were given priority to take the pictures after the city reopened some schools from pre-primary to elementary school for classroom learning earlier this month.
Mulgrew told the Post that about 20,000 city teachers in the classroom have requested appointments through the union and that 10,000 have been contacted by providers so far.
Of these, about 5,000 received the vaccine.
But teachers also seek inoculation independently, whether through municipal services or channels outside the five districts.
Mulgrew said consultations scheduled by the city were canceled en masse due to a shortage of vaccines and scheduling problems.
“A few thousand people contacted us and said that their appointment was canceled,” he said.
Several teachers confirmed to The Post this week that their cities’ vaccination dates have been canceled and that they were unable to obtain new ones.
Mulgrew said on Tuesday that the city had promised to disclose how many teachers had been vaccinated by agencies outside the union, but had not yet provided the data.
What complicates things, said a union source, is the fact that some teachers who live outside the city can be immunized without direct notification to local agencies.
“The city really needs to coordinate the program better,” said Mulgrew. “We are at a point where we will be out of this in six to nine months because we have developed herd immunity or will be in it for another one to two years.”
Mulgrew said the union has sought to ensure that doses are available before matching members with providers.
This approach allowed the organization to avoid cancellations, he said.
“The federal government has to give us more vaccines,” he said. “This is not a debate. But you shouldn’t have all of those appointments booked and then cancel them because you’re overbooking. “
City officials complained on Tuesday that they are struggling with unpredictable supplies of the shot.
“There is a national shortage of vaccines,” said Avery Cohen, a City representative.
“Like many other cities in America, we were forced to reschedule thousands of appointments due to supply problems. With more than 650,000 doses administered to date, we have built the infrastructure to inject into the arms of millions of New Yorkers. We just need the doses to do that. “
Mulgrew emphasized that there is no vaccination fee for magical teachers that would trigger the reopening of the country’s largest school system.
He said that COVID-19 indicators across the city – and vaccination rates – will determine when classrooms will receive children full-time again.