A health care worker will administer the Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine to a vaccination site in a church in the Bronx, New York on Friday, February 5, 2021.
Angus Mordant | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The Biden government will work with New York to build and occupy two mass vaccination sites for Covid-19 in the New York City area that aim to hit the minority communities hardest hit by the pandemic.
The locations, which will open the week of February 24th, will be at York College in Queens New York and Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, Governor Andrew Cuomo said at a news conference on Wednesday. Each location can administer 3,000 shots a day, making it the largest vaccination center in the state to date.
The federal government will be tasked with supplying cans directly to the centers, and the sites will be manned by members of the New York State National Guard and Army personnel, Cuomo said. More websites are being added in New York state to help target what the governor calls “socially vulnerable” communities.
“These will be very large sites. They will be complicated surgeries, but they will meet a dramatic need to get the vaccine to the people who need it most,” Cuomo said.
A mass vaccination site for Queens residents and other key workers opened in Citi Field earlier Wednesday. The site’s debut, delayed due to lack of doses, comes just days after another mass site opened for residents at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.
New York City Mayor Bill De Blassio speaks to media representatives as an attempt is made to obtain a Covid-19 vaccine at the Citi Field Vaccination site in Queens, New York on February 10, 2021.
I have Betancur | AFP | Getty Images
New York isn’t the only state where the federal government will open mass vaccination centers.
President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 Response Team announced shortly before Cuomo’s briefing that they would be working in a similar manner with representatives from Texas to build three new community vaccination centers in Dallas, Arlington and Houston. Jeff Zients, Bidens Covid-Tsar, said these three centers will enable healthcare providers to administer more than 10,000 shots a day.
Beginning next week, the Biden government will be sending cans direct to community health centers to expand reach to traditionally underserved communities.
These doses will be used in addition to the vials sent directly to the states and pharmacy chains that will be accepting vaccine doses from the federal government starting Thursday.
While supplies are still limited, vaccinations at community health centers will help improve access to life-saving interventions for the homeless, migrant agricultural workers, social housing residents and those with limited English proficiency, said Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, Chair of the White House Covid-19 Health Equity Task Force.
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