NY Failing to Use Two-Thirds of Its Vaccine Allotment Thus Far

Despite bold claims and criticisms hurled at President Donald Trump's administration, New York is failing to deliver its 630,000 vaccine doses to its residents in a timely manner.

Just 203,000 doses, less than one-third, have been used to vaccinate New Yorkers, the New York Post reported, citing state data.

"We are far, far behind where we need to be," New York City Councilman Mark Levine, chair of the New York City Health Committee, told the Post, calling vaccinating the public "the biggest, highest-stake challenge of the pandemic."

"We should be vaccinating 400,000 people a week."

Thus far, just 88,000 in New York City have received the first dose over three weeks, per the report.

The state and city have put healthcare workers and nursing home residents on the first list for priority to be inoculated. There are 500,000 healthcare workers in the city, Levine told the Post.

Mayor Bill de Blasio vows, in a "call to arms," to step up the vaccination rates in the new year.

"We're going to vaccinate 1 million New Yorkers in January," de Blasio told CNN, per the Post. "More and more people want to get the vaccine and we're going to do that."

Ayman El-Mohandes, dean of the Dean of the City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, told the Post there needs to be an operational overdrive.

"It's doable but it will require a lot of organization," El-Mohandes told the Post. He said that vaccinating frontline health workers is "the easiest part."

The hard part will be finding and getting it to the elderly and private citizens.

"Everyone of the stages depends on human behavior," El-Mohandes told the Post. "How are you going to reach these people?"

The difficulties are a state-by-state problem, as only 22.5% of the vaccines distributed have been reported to have been used as of Wednesday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That is around 2.8 million first doses of the 12.4 million doses delivered nationwide, per the CDC.

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