After being told by Washington the state would receive 300,000 doses weekly, Cuomo explained the state got only 250,000 last week. Yet that happened as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanded the groups eligible to start getting the vaccine.
At that weekly rate, it would take seven months to finish vaccinations of 7.1 million New Yorkers currently eligible for shots, including those over 65, as well as police, firefighters, teachers and other essential workers.
To understand how far behind schedule the current supply chain has dropped, think that even if all 7.1 million eligible New Yorkers were vaccinated by July, that reflects hardly 46% of the approximately 15.4 million adult New Yorkers authorized to get the vaccines.
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On Friday, after federal officials presented definitions for younger adults with pre existing situations to qualify, Cuomo stated that in-state numbers shot up to around 12 million.
At this point, he quipped it would be easier to report a record of people not fit to get the vaccine. He compared the issue to the opening of floodgates.
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“And that entire flood has to go through a syringe,” Cuomo said “All this volume, and it has to go through the point of a needle, literally and figuratively. That's the situation that the federal government created.”
State Republican officials, however, maintain that the governor bears some blame for the condition as well.
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State GOP Chairman Nick Langworthy presented the distribution system as an outrage.
“Every day that goes by, there is a new horrifying development of mismanagement and incompetence, which is hardly a surprise given the governor and his taxpayer-funded staff are spending all their time giving speeches and tweeting political attacks,” Langworthy said. “‘Blame Me, Blame Me,’ cried Cuomo as he took total control. Well, we do. This is a crisis of unprecedented proportions and it needs to be fixed immediately before another New Yorker unnecessarily loses their life at the hands of his incompetence.”
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New Yorkers on Twitter have protested regarding the state’s vaccination registration website. They say it crashes or times out regularly as they attempt to get an appointment for themselves or their families.
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In one bit of good news, Cuomo announced the vaccination rate for nursing homes across the state has got to 96 percent and should be finished by Sunday. The state participated in the federal rollout program in those long-term care facilities, yet earlier this month, Cuomo said the state had to add personnel to the pharmacies contracted by Washington to serve those doses.
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