Cuomo: New York on verge of running out of COVID-19 vaccine

(The Center Square) – New York is “functionally” out of its stash of COVID-19 vaccines, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday. However, he said there’s some good news on the way.

Overall, 96 percent of the vaccines the state has received has been injected into people, Cuomo told reporters at his daily briefing. That means, moving forward, the state’s vaccination plans will be handled on a weekly basis as officials wait for more shipments to arrive.

“It has been very difficult to plan up until now because we don’t know what we’re going to get next week in allocation,” he said. “So, literally you have to wait to find out what you’re going to get from the federal government, what number of doses, and then plan the distribution.”

The governor added that the federal government will be delivering more doses, however, in the next three weeks. The state will now receive about 290,000 doses, or 16 percent more than they had in prior weeks.

Still, with the extra doses, it will still take several weeks for New York to vaccinate the 7 million residents in the first population phases. That includes first responders, essential workers, senior citizens and individuals with medical conditions that make them more susceptible.

Cuomo also said that with the Biden administration placing an order for 600 million doses, which is enough to vaccinate 300 million Americans, those vials should be coming to the states over the next six months.

As the state awaits the new shipments, officials believe the worst of the holiday wave is now behind them in New York. Both hospitalizations and positivity rates are down, and as a result, Cuomo said changes will occur in the state’s micro-clusters across the state.

That’s not the only change likely to happen. The governor said he will meet with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and other stakeholders about reinstating indoor dining.

Details of the reopening plan will be unveiled by the end of the week, Cuomo added.

That announcement comes a day after Republicans in the state Senate proposed a slate of bills to help restaurants recover from the pandemic.

The New York State Restaurant Association, which called on the state to reopen the city’s establishment, hailed the governor’s announcement and said it looked forward to working with the administration on the plan.

“New York must continue to take steps towards reopening the economy, and the restaurant industry will do our part to keep our diners and our employees safe,” NYSRA President and CEO Melissa Fleischut. “We appeal once again to the Governor to consider extending the curfew to midnight so that our restaurants are able to have that last turn of diners, which is of vital economic importance to so many of the state’s restaurants.”

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