Spike Lee paid a surprise visit to Yankee Stadium on the morning of the opening day – from the newest COVID-19 vaccination region in New York.
The director of “Do the Right Thing” – who was there for a film shoot, not a vaccine that was shot – looked in a gray Yankees bomb, khakis and baseball cap without modesty as he chatted with people in the queue to get their first jab.
The Bronx Bombers mecca opened for the first time on Friday as a vaccination mega-site after weeks of delays due to vaccine shortages.
The city achieved one of the highest coronavirus positivity rates. Only Bronx residents can be vaccinated there.
Several hundred people stood in line early to get the first shot of the two-dose vaccine.
Officials said they had already given a few hundred people a jabs in the stadium before morning, where the appointments were fully booked for at least the next five days.
On Thursday, there were still thousands of open timings for appointments, City Councilman Mark Levine said as he questioned whether the Big Apple had done enough outreach to spark interest in the shots.
Two lines extend from Gate 4, with one line for people with appointments and the other for those without.
“I’ve been trying to make an appointment for the past few months,” Ralph Davis, a 69-year-old sanitary worker, told The Post at 8:15 a.m. he heard from the website on “Michael” has. Kay Show. ”
“I just called and got the appointment right away,” he added.
Two restaurant workers, Jennifer Andon, 27, and her father, Ruben, 50, also waited online after signing up for the Somos Vaccinations website.
“My dad had an appointment at 8:10, it just needs to be more organized, especially in such temperatures,” Andon said.
‘It’s winter, it’s disorganized, but we’re more than grateful we have the vaccine anyway. I got the notification through the Citizen app. “I literally went straight away, I saw the link, I made the appointment,” she said.
“I also helped my neighbors and my aunts make their appointments because we are all Bronx residents,” Andon added.
Godwin Vorgbedor, a 58-year-old health care worker, waited online without an appointment.
‘I heard it on TV two days ago and tried to register on the computer several times. It keeps rejecting me, and I’m like, ‘I can not go on, just let me in and watch,’ ‘he said after waiting 45 minutes.
“It does not move. They just tell us to clean up. I am ready to pay the price for it, just to make sure I get it, ”Vorgbedor added.
Dr Ramon Tallaj, founder of SOMOS Community Care, a network of nearly 2,500 providers in The Bronx, Queens, Manhattan and Brooklyn, said “almost every appointment” was filled by next week.
“You could see it, it was raining, look at the people. They’re here. “They do not want to go anywhere, they want to get the vaccine,” Tallaj said.
A City Hall spokesman said Thursday that an outreach effort in The Bronx was well underway to spread the word and facilitate sign-ups.
The city has previously come under fire for a complicated online registration process for its own vaccination centers that has confused seniors, acknowledging that it needs to do more to encourage minority communities to get their shots fired.