Mayor Bill de Blasio claims NYC will run out of COVID-19 vaccines in just TWO DAYS - even though only 52% of its supply has gone into peoples' arms
Mayor Bill de Blasio has claimed New York City will run out of COVID-19 vaccines in just two days, even though only 52 percent of the city's supply has actually made it into the arms of New Yorkers.
'At the rate we are going we will begin to run out on Thursday,' de Blasio said in a press briefing Tuesday morning.
'We will have literally nothing left to give as of Friday.'
The city needs more doses delivered, de Blasio said. But the city also is hamstrung by federal and state rules that require it to hold back a certain number of doses for residents of nursing homes and for second doses.
The mayor hit out at the 'crazy' lack of supply coming from the federal government and the state.
He said the city received just 53,000 doses Tuesday and will not receive another supply until next Tuesday.
New York City has administered 455,737 doses as of 12 a.m. Tuesday, according to city data. This includes 403,157 first doses and 52,580 second doses.
But the city has received a total supply of 876,550 doses from the federal government.
This means 48 percent of doses delivered - or 420,813 doses - are sitting unused instead of in the arms of at-risk New Yorkers.
De Blasio announced a target for 300,000 doses to be administered this week.
Based on the data released by his own health department, there should be enough doses to achieve this target with 120,813 left over.
However, the city's remaining allocation includes 104,525 for the federal government's long-term care facility program and 200,170 that the state requires it to hold back as second doses, according to a source familiar with the matter.
This leaves just 116,118 first doses, which, with around 30,000 doses administered per day in the last week and climbing, will last around three days.
A representative from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com
Mayor Bill de Blasio has claimed New York City will run out of COVID-19 vaccines in just two days, despite just 52 percent of doses delivered to the Big Apple having gone into the arms of New Yorkers
De Blasio said one New Yorker was getting vaccinated for COVID-19 every three seconds Sunday as he described the city's progress in ramping up the rollout as 'extraordinary.'
'And we're going to keep going. The pace of vaccinations is going faster and faster - those numbers keep growing,' he said.
The city had a target to administer 175,000 doses last week.
De Blasio said the city surpassed the goal, reaching 220,000 vaccinations by the end of Sunday - 45,000 more than the target.
He said the target for this week was 300,000 - so long as supply keeps up - with half a million doses likely to have been administered in total sometime tomorrow.
But, as the city accelerates the pace of rollout, the supply of shots is not keeping up, he said.
'Right now we had a small supply come in today of 53,000 doses, leaving us with only 116,000 for the week ahead,' he said.
'At the rate we are going, we will begin to run out on Thursday - this Thursday - two days from now and we will have literally have nothing left as of Friday,' he said.
A woman receives a vaccine at a vaccination site at South Bronx Educational Campus. One New Yorker was vaccinated every three seconds on Sunday, the mayor said
'What does that mean? It means if we don't get more vaccines quickly we will have to cancel appointments and no longer give shots after Thursday at a lot of our sites.'
He added: 'We will hit zero Friday.'
De Blasio said, on the current schedule, the city will not receive another supply until next Tuesday.
He said this means many sites will not be able to administer vaccines again until the day after - marking a six-day pause in getting shots in arms.
'This is crazy. This is not the way it should be,' he said.
'We have the ability to vaccinate a huge number of people. We need the vaccine to go with it.'
The mayor pushed the blame on the federal government - which sends the supply of doses to the state; the state government - which then allocates this supply across parts of the state; and the manufacturers.
So far, the US has administered just 14.7 million shots of the vaccine - out of 31.2 million sent to states - 37 days from the day the first American was given the first dose on December 14, according to data from Bloomberg
'Right now, it's up to the federal government, it's up to the state, it's up to the manufacturers to do everything they can do to get us the maximum supply as we are proving literally every passing day that we can reach more and more people,' he said.
However, just one day earlier, Cuomo raised questions about the ability of some of the city's vaccine providers to get shots in arms.
In a press conference Monday, Cuomo pointed out 10 NYC Health + Hospitals vaccination sites that had administered less than 80 percent of the doses they had been supplied with so far.
Just four sites had administered more than 80 percent of the doses, he said.
Cuomo pledged to reduce the supply to poor-performing sites across the state and give more to sites that are rolling out doses quicker.
'For the lower performing facilities, we are going to give them less, if any, of the new allocation. They'll all have enough to do their staff, but we want to make sure that the faster facilities - the higher-performing facilities -get more of the new allocation because we want it out the door,' he said.
'We don't want it sitting on the shelf. So those that can vaccinate faster will get more of the new allocation.'
Cuomo also announced he had contacted Pfizer to ask if New York can buy vaccines directly from the drug manufacturer as a way to speed up the vaccination process by sidestepping the US government.
In his letter to Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, Cuomo asked if he could bypass the federal government and buy direct from the manufacturer because they weren't part of Operation Warp Speed.
'The company's decision to opt out of Operation Warp Speed, which the Biden administration plans to overhaul, puts it in a unique situation that could help us save lives right here in New York,' Cuomo wrote.
No other state buys the vaccine directly from the manufacturer.
Cuomo said that the federal government has decreased its supply from 300,000 doses a week to 250,000 doses.
This comes after the state last week expanded who is eligible to get the vaccine in the current rollout - phase 1B - adding people aged 65 and over and the immunocompromised.
This means 7 million people are currently eligible.
Statewide, around one million of the 1.8 million doses the state has been allocated - 53 percent - have been administered, Bloomberg data shows.
De Blasio said Tuesday he is 'very hopeful' that the incoming Biden administration will 'fix' a lot of the issues with supply.
Biden announced an ambitious target Thursday to get 100 million Americans vaccinated in his first 100 days in office as part of his $1.9 trillion 'American Rescue Plan'.
So far, the US has administered just 14.7 million shots of the vaccine - out of 31.2 million sent to states - 37 days from the day the first American was given the first dose on December 14, according to data from Bloomberg.
The Trump administration had set a goal of inoculating 20 million Americans by the end of December, while Trump even claimed they would reach 100 million vaccinations in that time frame.
But the federal government has fallen drastically short of this goal.
De Blasio praised President-elect Joe Biden's pledge to vaccinate 100 million Americans in 100 days.
'That's the kind of commitment that's going to help us here in New York City to get the vaccine that we need,' he said.
'Because the central message is that we are vaccinating people faster and faster and it's getting better and better.'
New York City now has four 24/7 vaccination sites, 15 health department hubs and at least three new 24/7 sites opening soon. These are: Empire Outlets in Staten Island, CitiField in Queens, and the Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.
De Blasio once again called for the list of people currently able to get the vaccine to be expanded.
Last week, he issued a plea to Cuomo to add food delivery, deli and bodega workers to the priority list.
On Tuesday, he said he also wants sanitation workers and people in the court system such as district attorneys and grand juries to also be prioritized.
This comes as the city recorded 255 new hospitalizations and 5,009 new cases Monday.
The seven-day average positivity rate reached 8.23 percent.
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