NEW YORK (AP) -- Two mass COVID-19 vaccination sites have opened in New York City as the state widened vaccine eligibility to people over 75 and frontline workers, including teachers and police officers, on Monday.
The two vaccination sites that opened Sunday in Brooklyn and the Bronx will operate by appointment 24 hours a day starting Monday.
They are located at the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park and at the Bathgate Contract Postal Station in the Bronx.
There was a bit of a slow start with just a handful of people on line when the doors opened at the Bronx site. Some who showed up without appointments were turned away.
But demand is high. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced at his daily briefing that all of the overnight appointments had been snatched up for the first set of late-night inoculations.
"The overnight appointments for tonight, starting from midnight, we already have 100% booking on the appointments at those two 24/7 sites between 12 a.m. and 4 a.m.," de Blasio said. "So you can see New Yorkers are going to take advantage of it. This is the city that never sleeps, people are immediately grabbing those opportunities to get vaccinated."
The city will open three more 24/7 sites this week: one at the Department of Health headquarters at 125th Worth Street in Manhattan will get up and running Tuesday, NYC Health + Hospitals/Gotham Health, Vanderbilt in Staten Island on Wednesday and the Queens Corona Clinic on Saturday.
Mayor de Blasio toured the vaccine hub at Bathgate Industrial Park in the Bronx on Sunday.
He has vowed to set up a total of 250 city-run vaccination sites by the end of January with the goal of administering 1 million vaccine doses this month.
The city also opened its first vaccine hub locations in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens: South Bronx Educational Campus (701 St. Ann’s Avenue); Bushwick Educational Campus (400 Irving Avenue); and Hillcrest High School (160-05 Highland Avenue in Jamaica).
To find a vaccination location and make an appointment visit nyc.gov/vaccinefinder.
Some New Yorkers complain scheduling an appointment to get the vaccine is like trying to get tickets to a sold-out show.
"No options. It just says filled, filled, filled. Every single site in the entire city," said therapist Mary Hertzog, who is over 75 and would like to get vaccinated to be able to see her patients in person.
Others had trouble with the multi-step verification process.
Miriam, who tried to get her 82-year-old father a vaccination appointment, said when she finally finished answering all of the questions there were no appointments available.
"If I'm fairly comfortable with technology and I'm having this much trouble, I can imagine someone who's less comfortable having a lot of trouble too," she said.
City Comptroller Scott Stringer, who is running for mayor, said the website is an "obstacle" for too many people.
"It is the most difficult website ever invented by government bureaucrats," Stringer said.
In response, the city put out a new phone option to schedule an appointment. The toll free number is 877-VAX-4NYC and will be available from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.
"The number one group we're concerned about is our elders, folks over 75 years old, some of their are great online, others really don't feel comfortable online so we need to have a phone reservation system as well," de Blasio said. "We'll be adding more and more staffing, that will go to a 24-hour operation soon."
Vaccine eligibility in New York was initially limited to health care workers and residents and staffers at nursing homes, but Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Friday that people over 75 years old as well as frontline workers including teachers, firefighters, police officers and transit workers would be able to schedule vaccinations starting Monday. Here's who is eligible under the state guidelines.
The governor's announcement represented a change in course after he insisted earlier that the state would only expand eligibility once it had enough doses to vaccinate all willing health care workers.
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Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, which represents teachers and some other staff members at New York City public schools, said the union will survey its members to see who wants a vaccine now and coordinate with health care systems to ensure that its members can be inoculated as soon as possible.
"Thousands of vaccine doses sit idle, or are even wasted, as the current system leaves health care providers waiting and hoping for eligible recipients to show up," Mulgrew said. "We are creating a pool of members who opt in, who want the vaccine, and then will match them to providers who have vaccines available.''
Cuomo said Friday that the state is now receiving about 300,000 vaccine doses a week, which means it will take until mid-April to get everyone eligible vaccinated unless the federal government increases the supply.
"Our distribution network will far outpace our supply," Cuomo said.
New York City administered 101,000 doses of vaccines last week alone and plans 175,000 this week. It has 230,000 on hand, but the mayor cautions, "The most important thing we need right now is for the federal government, state government, and manufacturers to help us to get the doses we need. We're accelerating. We're going to run out of doses in the next few weeks if we don't hry more of a supply coming in."
WCBS 880 contributed to this report
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