A healthcare worker at Brookdale Hospital receives the Pfi zer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.
One Brooklyn Health System
Mayor promises one million
vaccinations by February
amid criticism of rollout
COURIER LIFE, JANUARY 8-14, 2021 3
BY BEN VERDE
Amid criticism from local
leaders, the mayor on Monday
committed to a ramp-up
of the city’s efforts to administer
the COVID-19 vaccine,
with a goal of distributing a
million doses by February.
“We’re going to be doing
a variety of things to expand
sites where we will have,
through our Department of
Health, pop-up sites that will
be focused on health care
workers. We’re going to have
sites created by Health +
Hospitals, our public health
system. We’re going to have
vaccine hubs created and
three of them will be open
on Sunday,” Bill de Blasio
said. “This is the shape of
things to come.”
New vaccination sites
will be continuously brought
online during the month, including
the Bushwick Educational
Campus on Irving
Avenue, which will open as
a vaccine hub on Jan. 10, according
to City Hall.
According to the city’s
COVID-19 vaccine tracker,
443,000 vaccines have been
delivered to New York City,
but just 110,241 doses have
been given to recipients —
meaning less than a quarter
of the city’s stockpile
has reached members of
the public as of midnight on
Monday.
Many local leaders have
blasted the slow initial rollout
of the life saving concoction,
including the city’s
lack of a single dose given on
Christmas and New Year’s,
has been limited to the daytime,
rather than the around
the clock inoculations which
experts say are necessary
in the wartime scenario the
city has found itself in.
City Council Speaker
Corey Johnson announced
on Twitter that the legislature
would be holding a hearing
on the roll-out efforts.
“New Yorkers are rightly
concerned about the slow
pace of the vaccine rollout
so far,” he wrote. “We will
hold an oversight hearing
on Tuesday, Jan. 12 to determine
if the city is doing
everything in its power to
safely and effi ciently vaccinate
New Yorkers as quickly
as possible.”
Borough President Eric
Adams and Councilman
Robert Cornegy held a press
conference on Sunday in
front of the Department of
Health’s Manhattan offi ces
urging the city to expand the
criteria for who is eligible for
the vaccine in order to ensure
as many New Yorkers
as possible are vaccinated as
quickly as possible.
“I am calling for a sevenstep
plan that will expand
eligibility for the vaccine,
create a streamlined and
transparent system for determining
and communicating
what tier New Yorkers
fall into, and mobilize
all available resources to set
up vaccine hubs around the
city,” Adams said. “This is a
24-hour, 7-day a week operation
and we need to be on the
ground to ensure everyone
receives a vaccine.”
The beep is also pushing
for a color-coded system
to determine who is eligible
for the shot, divided into red,
yellow, and green groups.
Under Borough Hall’s proposal,
those in the ‘red’ category
— frontline workers
and fi rst responders would
receive the vaccine fi rst, before
those in the “yellow”
system — those in the zip
codes most affected by the virus,
those in high-risk industries,
and those with pre-existing
conditions, before the
general public in the “green”
category received the shot.
Implementing a colorcoded
system would help
prevent confusion with regards
to who is eligible, Adams
argues.
On the hyperlocal level,
Community Board 6 leaders
urged the mayor to implement
24/7 test sites in a letter
written by District Manager
Mike Racioppo and Chair
Peter Fleming.
“There is a growing concern
with the pace of the vaccine
distribution and the
limited days and hours at inoculation
sites, for example,
the lack of vaccinations being
done on weekends,” the
letter reads. “We know the
city can do this the right and
equitable way, we must make
sure that it happens.”
HOPE
Our Stages Act’
State banned ticketed events
— even outdoors.
The Save Our Stages Act
sets aside $2 billion for venues
with 50 or fewer employees, a
potential lifeline for off-off-
Broadway theaters like The
Gallery Players, a long-running
local playhouse on 14th
Street in Park Slope.
Since going dark in March,
the volunteer-run theater has
shifted to online programming
and expanded their summer
theatre workshop into a
year-round offering. Gallery
Players Director of Development
Rhiannon McClintock
hopes the theater can secure
a grant, but worries the high
demand for funds will leave
some small organizations in
the dust.
“Even though there is priority
Andrew Kelly/Reuters
for those who are hardest
hit, there is some concern that
there won’t be enough funding
to meet the needs of all of the
small and independent venues
in the city because the entire
industry is affected, and this
funding will be the only way
for some organizations to survive,”
said McClintock.
Her group has also leaned
into fundraising efforts during
its closure, relying on sustaining
members who have
stepped up, but McClintock
says it is essential that small
venues like Gallery Players
are not left out of the larger
conversation.
“Theaters like ours need
this additional emergency
funding,” she said. “The future
of live performance in
the city depends on it.”