NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — New York City has ramped up its COVID-19 vaccine distribution efforts with two pop-up clinics that opened Tuesday while the mayor unveiled a plan to launch mass vaccine hubs that would operate around the clock across the five boroughs.
There was no line when at a pop-up vaccination site in a city-run community health center on East 115th Street opened at 8 a.m.
Physical therapist Kelly Picciurro was in and out.
"It was pretty easy," she said. "I don't know if it's because it was early in the morning, but you have to register online, so I came in today, showed them my forms, they took my temperature, they sent me downstairs and I had the vaccine within two minutes."
Emily Long works at a physical therapist's office in Brooklyn and got her shot Tuesday morning.
"As healthcare workers I think many of us are just hoping that as many people can get the vaccine as physically possible as quickly as possible so that we can get back to some state of normal," Long said.
There's one more pop-up vaccination site on Worth Street in Lower Manhattan.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been critical of the slow rollout of vaccinations, threatening hospitals to use their available vaccines or lose them.
At his daily briefing on Monday, the governor singled out New York City's public hospitals, saying the system had only used 31% of their vaccines.
The mayor calls the threat "punitive and unnecessary" saying what hospitals need is flexibility in getting the shots administered.
"This is a moment for cooperation, this is a moment for trust, this is a moment for partnership," Mayor Bill de Blasio said, responding to the criticism. "What we need is the freedom to vaccinate... What they don't need is to be shamed. what they don't need is more bureaucracy, what they don't need is the threat of fines."
He added, "Why don't we stop talking about fines and start talking about the freedom to vaccinate."
The mayor hopes to double the number of community vaccination sites by the end of the month from 125 to 250.
Mayor de Blasio's goal is to vaccinate 1 million New York City residents against COVID-19 in January.
The mayor said Tuesday that speed and accesibility are two of the key missing ingredients in distributing the vaccine.
That's fueling the plan to set up what he calls mass vaccination sites across the five boroughs that would operate 24/7 with the capacity to administer 100,000 shots a week.
The mayor plans to open five sites over the coming weeks, with the goal of two this weekend.
The first three are slated to open at Bathgate Industrial Park in the Bronx, the Brooklyn Army Terminal Annex Building in Brooklyn and the La Marqueta in Manhattan.
The sites in Queens and Staten Island have not yet been announced.
De Blasio is also calling on the governor to allow New York City to start vaccinating people over 75 years old.
"Let's all work together, let's create the flexibility, give this city the freedom to vaccinate, give our health care heroes the freedom to vaccinate," the mayor said. "We can do more than one thing at once. We can focus on vaccinating all the health care heroes who want the vaccine, all the folks in nursing homes and who work at nursing homes who want the vaccine while simultaneously expanding the categories reaching folks over 75, reaching educators, reaching police officers, reaching all of the folks who we need to get the vaccine to as quickly as possible."
Currently, the state is vaccinating health care workers as part of 1A priority.
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