NYC set to get another ‘paltry’ amount of COVID-19 doses this week

New York City is expected to receive another “paltry” 100,000 new doses of the COVID-19 vaccine Tuesday — a fraction of what is needed, officials said Sunday.

As of last week, the Big Apple was administering 30,000 to 40,000 shots a day, eating up its supply to the point where even a single blip in a manufacturer’s delivery chain forced the city to delay at least 23,000 upcoming appointments.

“We should be vaccinating 400,000 a week,’’ said city Councilman Mark Levine (D-Manhattan), chairman of the council’s Health Committee.

“The new shipment is expected in the city Tuesday, but I don’t know if they have to wait for that shipment to be parceled out to locations, which might push [distribution] to Wednesday,’’ he told The Post on Sunday.

“Relative to the 2.5 million people in the five boroughs who are eligible [to currently be immunized] — and [as] we also vaccinate a significant number of people who don’t live here — 100,000 a week is really a paltry sum.’’

The city said last week that it had to temporarily shut down 15 vaccine hubs between Thursday and Sunday because of the supply snafu of doses from Moderna.

Asked if all of the centers would reopen as planned this week, city officials told The Post on Sunday that it all depends on the flow of new doses.

The state is expecting to receive 250,000 doses in total this coming week, a portion of which goes to the city.

The same can be said for new planned mass immunization centers such as the Mets’ Citi Field stadium, which was supposed to open this week and hand out shots to up to 7,000 people a day, officials said.

As of Sunday, New York has used 88 percent of its supply of first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, administering 1,144,070 of the 1,304,050 shots it has, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office said in a statement.

The state has a stockpile of 564,600 doses for the required second shot. Of that amount, 139,929 second doses have been administered, or just under 25 percent. A person must wait at least 21 or 28 days between shots, depending on whether they first received Pfizer’s or Moderna’s.

The first person to receive a vaccine in the state — and in fact the country — was a Queens nurse in mid-December.

Cuomo said the state’s vaccination figures show “once again that the problem we face is lack of supply from the federal government.”

“We have the operational capacity to do over 100,000 doses a day — we just need the dosages,” he said.

New York City has used 74 percent of its supply of first doses to date, administering 532,132 of the 717,350 shots on hand, according to the city’s Web site. The city calculates its numbers slightly differently to the state — including doses allotted to, and administered in, the federally-run nursing home inoculation program.

As for second doses, it has administered just under 29 percent, or 86,740, of its supply of 301,950, the city said.

“The big problem for the city is the inconsistency and lack of certainty” on shipments, Levine said.

Vials with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine
As of Sunday, New York has used 88 percent of its supply of first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
CHRISTOF STACHE/AFP via Getty Images

“We got tripped up last week. They scheduled more appointments than supply,’’ he said, referring to the pushback of immunizations by a week.

Part of the problem was a delivery issue with manufacturer Moderna, the city has said.

But the city and state’s rollout has been far from smooth.

The feds have in the accused New York of hindering distribution with overly restrictive rules on who could receive the vaccine ar first.

As for the city, users have ripped its buggy and overly complicated registration system, which involves a host of different websites for different clinics.

“Oh my god,” Levine said when asked about what he called the city’s “maddeningly complex system for getting an appointment.”

The country as a whole hit more than 25 million confirmed coronavirus cases Sunday, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Meanwhile, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the administration of more than 21.8 million shots across the country as of Sunday.

With Post wires

source: nypost.com