An employee of the New York City Fire Department Bureau of Emergency Medical Services (FDNY EMS) receives a COVID-19 Moderna vaccine amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, USA, December 23, 2020.
Carlo Allegri | Reuters
New York City officials want to vaccinate 1 million residents against Covid-19 in January, saying the federal government and drug manufacturers need to speed up production and distribution of the vaccine.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Thursday that the city will use schools, pop-up clinics and “whatever it takes” to reach 1 million people within a month.
“We know that New York City can vaccinate 1 million people in the month of January and really put this thing in high gear,” de Blasio told CNN. “Every time we vaccinate someone, we are one step closer to making the coronavirus a thing of the past in terms of the terrible grip it has on society.”
IIt’s an ambitious goal, given the city has only received 390,425 doses of vaccine and was able to give only 78,000 injections, according to city data.
“This thing is not moving the way it should in the United States,” said the mayor. “New York City is going to show that we can jump-start this and vaccinate people in record time. And we want the whole country to be part of this, because we have to go faster to fight the coronavirus if we want to. want to restore. “
The U.S. government has left far behind its original goal of administering at least 20 million Covid vaccination shots by the end of the year – something federal officials have admitted is disappointing. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US has so far distributed 12.4 million vaccine doses and vaccinated only 2.8 million people with the first of Pfizer of Moderna’s two-step vaccine regimen. US officials say the data is 72 to 96 hours behind due to delays at the national and local levels. Yet it is still a fraction of the Trump administration’s original goal.
“We agree that number is lower than we hoped,” Moncef Slaoui, chief adviser on the government’s Operation Warp Speed vaccination program, told reporters on Wednesday. “We know it needs to be better, and we are working hard to make it better.”
De Blasio said the federal government should use all of its resources to mass produce the vaccine.
De Blasio’s statement comes as the city prepares for its annual New Year’s Eve celebration, albeit without the usual crowds. Only a few hundred people, instead of the usual thousands, will be in Times Square with masks on and invited only to drop the ball at midnight to begin in 2021. De Blasio said the one thing that unites all Americans in this divided country . year is “for God’s sake we want to get rid of 2020”.