Citi Field Baseball Stadium, home of the New York Mets Major League Baseball team on September 7, 2019 in Flushing, Queens, New York City.
Tim Clayton | Corbis Sport | Getty Images
New York City will turn Citi Field into a 24/7 “mega” coronavirus vaccination site in late January in an effort to vaccinate thousands of residents every day, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday.
NYC Health and Hospitals will operate the site, home of the New York Mets, with the goal of providing between 5,000 and 7,000 photos per day, de Blasio said in a joint announcement with Mets owner Steve Cohen.
The announcement comes a day after Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said his city would set up a vaccination site at Dodger Stadium by the end of this week. According to a statement from Garcetti’s office on Monday, that facility can deliver up to 12,000 shots per day.
“This is going to help so many people get vaccinated,” de Blasio said at a news conference. “We welcome all New Yorkers. We even welcome Yankees fans; there is no discrimination.”
The Mayor of New York has urged Gov. Andrew Cuomo to expand the number of people eligible for a coronavirus vaccine beyond the top-priority health workers. Cuomo granted the city’s request last week, saying that people 75 and older, as well as essential workers such as first responders, teachers, school staff and others, could be vaccinated against the disease starting this week.
A person wearing a protective mask will stand outside a Covid-19 vaccination site in Bathgate Industrial Park in the Bronx neighborhood of New York, USA, on Monday, January 11, 2021.
David Delgado | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Starting Tuesday, the state will open up Covid-19 vaccinations to anyone 65 and older, as well as younger people who are immunocompromised, the Democratic governor said during a phone call with reporters Tuesday morning.
However, it seems that the problem so far has not been finding space to vaccinate people – it is securing the delivery of the doses. Cuomo said the recently expanded federal guidelines apply to about 7 million people, but the state only receives about 300,000 doses per week.
“I am calling for patience because unfortunately there are many more eligible New Yorkers than there are vaccines supplied by the federal government,” Cuomo said in a tweet on Tuesday.
De Blasio said the city carried out 26,000 vaccinations on Monday. At that rate, the city will run out of vaccines within two weeks, he said.
“We will need the doses to keep this kind of effort going,” he said.