New York, Jan 8 (EFE) .- The mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, and the governor of the state, Andrew Cuomo, both Democrats, are engaged in a new battle, this time due to the slowness of the vaccination against the covid -19, which the Big Apple attributes to overly restrictive guidelines imposed from the state administration.
According to data this Friday, in the city – with a population of more than 8 million people – only about 168,000 doses of the more than 489,000 that have been distributed have been used, about 34%.
New York has set a first group to receive vaccines consisting of front-line healthcare workers and nursing home residents and workers, and so far Cuomo has been adamant about calls to begin inoculating other at-risk groups.
The governor, who is the one who has the power to decide how the distribution is made, has instead threatened hospitals and centers that do not quickly use the vaccines assigned to them with fines and also with significant sanctions for those who administer them to people that are not in this first group.
Meanwhile, multitudes of doses remain in hospital and clinic freezers waiting for centers to find who to put them on or to end the bureaucracy to decide who should be inoculated first within their own templates.
In recent days, the mayor of New York has called on Cuomo to relax the rules so that vaccines do not go unused and this Friday he has further toughened his message, insisting that it should be possible to start vaccinating any older person 75 years.
De Blasio, in a press conference, stressed that this group is the “most vulnerable” in the city and regretted that right now “the state of New York does not allow them to be vaccinated.”
“If we cannot vaccinate the people who are in most danger, we are going to lose lives that we did not need to lose,” insisted the councilman, who has had a tense relationship with Cuomo for years despite the fact that they are party companions.
According to the mayor, in New York there are 270,000 doses that could be used to protect those over 75 years of age, which is around 560,000 people in the city.
De Blasio also claimed permission to vaccinate emergency personnel and other essential workers and insisted that, given the green light, the Big Apple has the capacity to rapidly administer all available vaccines.
According to local media responsible for different hospitals and clinics, the very strict guidelines imposed by the state on who should receive the vaccine first – even within the first priority group – make the process move slowly and with great caution to avoid mistakes.
Meanwhile, coronavirus cases continue to increase, although for now at a slower rate than in the most critical areas of the US and New York hospitals, which were overwhelmed in the first wave, continue to have spare capacity to attend to the sick. EFE
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