NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — New York City has set an ambitious goal of vaccinating 1 million residents during the month of January, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday.
In an interview with CNN’s “New Day,” the New York City mayor said the city is “going to do a call to arms here.”
“We’ve set a goal for the month of January, we’re going to vaccinate a million New Yorkers,” de Blasio said in the interview.
During his daily coronavirus briefing, the mayor reiterated the goal, saying that he hopes New York City “will lead the way” in vaccination rates.
“This city can do it,” de Blasio said. “We’re going to set up new sites all over the city on top of the many, many sites that are already operational.”
Under the mayor’s plan, the city would expand vaccination locations inside city hospitals, clinics and urgent cares. He notes that the city hopes to have at least 250 vaccine locations citywide in January.
The effort will involve launching COVID vaccine “hubs,” offering vaccines at some Test and Trace sites and scaling up the capacity of local organizations.
“This is going to be a massive effort. This is going to be part of the largest single vaccination effort in the history of New York City,” de Blasio said.
The city is currently working on vaccinating high-risk healthcare workers and nursing home residents and staff. By January, the city hopes to begin vaccinating everyday New Yorkers.
“We need everyone to pull together,” de Blasio told CNN. “We know New York City can vaccinate a million people in the month of January and really put this thing into high gear. And every single time we've vaccinated someone, we are one step closer to making the coronavirus a thing of the past in terms of the horrible grip it has had on our society.”
The effort, however, could be more ambitious than previously thought.
According to a recent report by the Los Angeles Times, a recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 29% of healthcare workers nationwide were “vaccine hesitant,” a number just above that of the general population, at 27%.
The paper says hospital administrators in California are already struggling to figure out what to do with the unused vaccines. It’s unclear if the same hesitations will be seen in New York City.
Mayor de Blasio says he hopes residents of the five boroughs “can jumpstart this” and set a record pace for vaccinations.
The ambitious goal came as New York City reported over 3,200 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, bringing the seven-day positivity rate in the five boroughs to 8.87%.
However, the mayor did note that over 88,000 New Yorkers have already been vaccinated within the five boroughs.