Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday sounded the alarm that the city of New York will run out of the coveted COVID-19 vaccine by next week.
“We’ll run out next week. I’m telling you, at this rate, by the end of next week, there will be no doses in New York City if we do not get a large supply. [of vaccine], ”De Blasio said during his weekly visit to the WNYC’s” The Brian Lehrer Show. “
Hizzoner explained that the Big Apple received a very meager “100,000 doses a week and that the city went through 125,000 shots in the first four days of this week.”
“Our number is increasing every day with how many people we can vaccinate,” de Blasio said, noting that nearly 34,000 people were vaccinated in the city on Wednesday.
“If we do not get serious supplies, we will have to stop making appointments, just as happened at Mount Sinai Hospital and NYU-Langone,” de Blasio said. ‘If there is no offer, we’ll have to freeze the appointment system. It would be insane. ”
Two of the city’s largest hospital systems from NYU-Langone and Mount Sinai are no longer discussing vaccine appointments for the time being and all systems are expected to run out without vaccine by the end of next week, the mayor’s office said.
Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan was forced this week to reject those who planned to hide even though people had appointments to receive the shot.
Governor Andrew Cuomo, who spoke at his own press conference later Friday, explained that 7 million New Yorkers are now eligible to receive the vaccine, but that there is a backlog due to insufficient supplies, as the state only has about 300 000 doses per week received from the federal. government.
“It’s like opening a coil and putting it through a syringe,” Cuomo said. He added that the state received a smaller amount of 250,000 shots this week.
At the same rate, it will take six months to vaccinate everyone who is currently eligible, the governor said.
“Seven million people are chasing 250,000 doses,” Cuomo said. “This is the math problem you can’t solve.”
Of the 827,715 doses administered around the world, 731,285 were first-dose, while 96,430 of them were the second-dose of the two-dose vaccine, Cuomo said, referring to state data.
Cuomo said everyone who received their first dose should not be ‘worried’ about not being able to get their second dose, even though the offer is limited.
“We make sure we have a second dose for whoever gets the first dose,” he said.
Commenting on de Blasio’s allegations that the city of New York is on the verge of depleting the vaccine supply, Cuomo said: “I do not know exactly what the mayor was talking about … Some facilities work through their previous stock.”
‘Many facilities in New York have [vaccine] award unused, ”Cuomo said.
The governor added that the city of New York will receive more doses next week, “but it will be less because the total allocation is less.”
City data as of Friday shows that 337,518 shots of the 800,500 doses delivered so far in the Big Apple have gone into people’s arms – about 42 percent.
According to the mayor’s office, the city administered 71.3 percent of the 175,000 vaccines it wanted to distribute by the end of the weekend, which said the Big Apple left 186,000 first doses.