New York City reported less than 1,000 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine in its possession on Saturday, according to data from the city’s website, amid supply shortages due to the harsh winter weather that has hit parts of the US.
Avery Cohen, a spokesman for the mayor of New York Bill de Blasio
Bill de Blasio NYC Reports Less Than 1,000 Vaccine Doses Amid Delays In Winter Weather Shipping NYC’s Largest Union Endorsed Maya Wiley In Mayor’s Race The Hill’s Morning Report – Disaster Politics Bumps Cruz, Cuomo MORE (D), tweeted that the lack of adequate doses has “stalled” the city’s vaccination efforts.
Delayed shipments have brought our entire vaccination effort to a halt.
As of this morning, New York City has less than 1,000 first doses available. pic.twitter.com/frXPryVwKS
– Avery Cohen (@CohenAvery) February 20, 2021
The New York City government website states that 1,471,948 vaccine doses have been administered to date, including 873,223 first doses and 453,816 second doses.
The states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and others have experienced a winter storm and freezing temperatures that have made roads unsafe, caused power outages and damaged pipes, leaving Americans undrinkable.
The White House said Friday it estimated the extreme weather to have created a six million dose of coronavirus backlog as two major vaccine delivery sites in Memphis, Tennessee, and Louisville, Ky., Experienced an operational delay.
Andy Slavitt, senior White House adviser on the response to the coronavirus, said the weather had caused delays in all 50 states at multiple points in the supply chain.
Friday, more than 2,000 vaccination sites were in areas without power and could not accept doses, The New York Times reported.
As warmer temperatures in Texas and other states soared over the weekend, The Associated Press reported that about 70 people had died this week in states affected by the harsh winter weather.
Many deaths were due to hypothermia from freezing temperatures, as well as other related events, including car accidents, carbon monoxide poisoning and fires in the home.
And while the power of millions of Texans was restored on Friday, more than 40,000 people in Texas were without power Saturday night, according to poweroutage.us.
Gov. John Bel Edwards (D-La.) Announced Thursday that about 1 million people had no access to safe drinking water, adding that multiple cooking advisories have been released by the state.
Early in the week, Oklahoma had also been subject to deliberate power cuts to conserve energy, KOCO News said. According to poweroutage.us, the state appeared to have no outages as of Saturday night.
Celine Castronuovo contributed to this report