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Coronavirus Updates: Cuomo Tells Hospitals With Vaccine To "Use It Or Lose It"

Elizabeth Kim

and

Christopher Robbins

Published Jan 4, 2021

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Governor Andrew Cuomo and Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker at Monday's press briefing.

Mike Groll/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo

Elizabeth Kim

and

Christopher Robbins

Published Jan 4, 2021

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This is our daily update of breaking COVID-19 news for Monday, January 4th, 2021. Previous daily updates can be found here, and up-to-date statistics are here.

New York City is in Phase 4 of reopening now, which includes zoos, botanical gardens, museums, and gyms. Citing rising hospitalization rates, Governor Andrew Cuomo suspended indoor dining in NYC starting Monday, December 14th. After being shut down for several weeks, NYC public schools partially reopened on December 7th for 3K-5th grade students, with students with special needs returning on December 10th. Certain parts of Staten Island remain under a zoned shutdown.

Get answers to questions you may have with our "Ask An Epidemiologist" series, or learn more about NYC COVID-19 testing options with our explainer. Here are some local and state hotlines for more information: NYC: 311; NY State Hotline: 888-364-3065; NJ State Hotline: 800-222-1222.

Here's the latest:

1:59 p.m. Governor Andrew Cuomo blamed the delays on vaccine distribution across New York on the hospitals who are tasked with giving it to front-line healthcare workers, and threatened to seize their vaccine supplies if they aren’t used up within the next week.

At a press conference on Monday, the governor said that just 46% of all the vaccines allocated to hospitals across the state have been used in the three weeks since they began receiving them. Around 300,000 New Yorkers have received the first dose of the vaccine so far, including hospital workers, nursing home residents, and nursing home staff.

“This is a management issue of the hospitals,” Cuomo said. “They have to move the vaccine and they have to move the vaccine faster.”

A chart shows the percentage of vaccine doses that have been administered at New York hospital systems.

Governor Andrew Cuomo's Office

Cuomo and state Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker specifically called out New York City’s public Health & Hospitals system, which Zucker said received 38,000 doses, but has so far only distributed 31% of them.

“The hospitals are sitting at 99% [distribution]—so those at the top end, obviously there’s a sense of urgency,” Zucker said. “On the other end of the spectrum, for example in the H&H system, the mayor runs the H&H system, they have 23,000 eligible employees, 12,000 have been vaccinated…Those other 11,000 employees need to be vaccinated.”

Zucker and the governor did not specifically say what was impeding vaccine distribution at these hospitals, and made general references to “bureaucracy” and “urgency.” Nor did they reference the sizes of the individual hospitals. A representative from the state Department of Health has not yet responded to our query.

Cuomo said he was taking a “use it or lose it” approach with hospitals, with up to $100,000 in fines and the revocation of their vaccines if hospitals do not use their current doses within 7 days, and going forward, use any doses they receive within 7 days.

One reporter wondered if some hospitals weren’t being squeezed into inaction by state regulation: the hospitals also face steep state penalties if they improperly distribute the vaccine.

Cuomo sidestepped the question.

“The hospitals have been given the vaccines for expeditious administration. If you have been given an allocation and you’ve only used one-third of the allocation, then you shouldn’t have the allocation,” Cuomo said, framing his position as “constructive impatience.”

“I want to get needles in the arms and I want to get that done as quickly as possible...If you can’t do that within 7 days then just raise your hand, and say, ‘I can’t do this.’ Fine, we’ll go to a different hospital.”

A spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office, Avery Cohen, criticized the governor’s announcement.

"The Mayor has been clear that our public hospitals must show aggressive, forward momentum and get as many vaccines in arms as possible,” Cohen wrote in an email. “We've put a plan in place to help H+H go faster as we wait for the State to allow more people to be vaccinated. But threatening to ‘revoke’ the ‘privilege’ of vaccination from the City's public hospital system is punitive and unnecessary."

Dr. Zucker could not say specifically how many New Yorkers eligible to receive the vaccine have declined to take it, but noted that 10% of nursing home residents, and 15% of nursing home staff have declined it.

The governor pledged that 85% of nursing home residents in the state would receive the vaccine by week's end.

A nurse gets the COVID-19 vaccine at Northwell Health's Long Island Jewish Valley Stream hospital on December 21st.

EDUARDO MUNOZ/POOL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Only 1% Of NYC Residents Have Been Vaccinated So Far

10:33 a.m. Nearly 105,000 New York City residents have received the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine as of Sunday, representing a little over 1% of the city's total population.

The number of shots distributed to date is a little over a quarter of the amount of total vaccines that the city has already received.

The numbers reflect widespread struggles across the country in doling out the vaccine quickly and efficiently. Nationally, only 4 million of the 14 million doses that have been delivered to states have gotten in the arms of Americans, according to federal data. Long lines for vaccines have been spotted in some parts of Florida and Tennessee. In Fort Meyers, Florida, some seniors camped out overnight in hopes of receiving their shots under a first come-first serve policy.

Noting that the number of vaccinations in New York City has dropped on weekends, Manhattan City Council member Mark Levine called on the city to administer doses round the clock.

"We are in a war-like situation," he tweeted on Sunday. "We need to be vaccinating TWENTY FOUR-SEVEN. We are losing precious time."

Levine, who chairs the health committee, has said he will introduce City Council legislation designed to speed up immunizations.

At a press conference on Monday morning, Mayor Bill de Blasio said he too wanted vaccines to be administered 24/7. The Mayor said the first weeks of vaccine administration had been slow and methodical, "because our health care professionals were dealing with something they had never dealt with before and they had to get it right. That's all behind us now, and it's time to sprint."

City officials have argued that the pace of vaccination will increase once the pool of those eligible to receive the shots expands. Under New York state's prioritization plan, front line health care workers, including hospital staff, as well as nursing home residents and employees, have been included in the first phase of immunization.

Last Thursday, de Blasio pledged to administer 1 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine in New York City by the end of January.

The mayor said he would designate 250 community clinics, pop-up sites, schools across the five boroughs as vaccine hubs by the end of the month. As of this week, the city is operating 150 vaccination sites.

On Sunday, Moncef Slaoui, the head of the federal vaccine program, Operation Warp Speed, acknowledged the need to improve the vaccination rollout. In an interview on CBS's "Face The Nation," he said that officials were considering giving two half-volume doses of the Moderna vaccine to some individuals. Health officials in the United Kingdom, who are increasingly worried about a fast-spreading coronavirus variant, have already decided to shift their strategy by maximizing the number of people receiving the first dose and possibly delaying the second dose.

Both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccine require the second dose to be administered three or four weeks after the first in order to achieve maximum immunity. On Monday, the UK began rolling out a third vaccine, one by the company AstraZeneca.

The ultimate decision rests with the Food and Drug Administration.

However, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease specialist, warned against veering from the approved dosing schedule.

"We know what the science tells us," Fauci said on NBC's Meet the Press. "So my feeling ... is let's do it the way the clinical trials have instructed us to do it. But let's get more efficient into getting it into people's arms."

Tagged

covid-19 updates

coronavirus

Elizabeth Kim

Elizabeth Kim is a reporter on the People and Power desk who covers mayoral power. She previously covered the pandemic, housing, redevelopment and public spaces. A native of Queens, she speaks fluent Mandarin. Got a tip? Email [email protected]

Christopher Robbins

Twitter

Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.

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