City Health Department is wasting doses and vac sites are fugazi

Lincoln HS in Coney Island this morning. Mostly staff and almost no one getting vaccinated. Irony is the city’s website says no appointments are available for my constituents today, but no one is there & they’re sitting on vaccine supply. This is unacceptable @nycHealthy ! pic.twitter.com/6jXOnyndSs

— Mark Treyger (@MarkTreyger718) January 30, 2021

 

 

 NY Post

 The city’s 15 vaccination hubs were ghost towns last Saturday, and the city Department of Health is refusing to reveal just how bad distribution went.

One DOH staffer stationed at the Hillcrest High School hub in Queens on Jan. 30 said he did nothing all day.

“You cannot imagine how much nothing it was,” he said of the demoralizing day.

He said there were about 70 workers on hand — some earning overtime pay for 12-hour shifts — and about 10 people to vaccinate.

The worker said several appeals were made to DOH officials to be able to vaccinate people without appointments, and they were denied. He said the hubs had about 400 to 700 doses.

“We could have used that day to vaccinate thousands of people … and we just blew it,” he said

 NY Post

As desperate New Yorkers scramble to get the COVID-19 vaccine, one Brooklyn clinic stood largely devoid of recipients Saturday morning.

A video of the vaccination hub at Abraham Lincoln High School in Coney Island showed plenty of gowned workers ready to jab arms and few, if any, patients.

“This is crazy. This is nuts. This is insane,” a woman can be heard saying in the video as the camera pans empty vaccination stations. It was tweeted by Councilman Mark Treyger, who said it came from a worker at the site.

A furious Treyger, who represents Coney Island, called the situation “unacceptable.”

“There is no excuse for what happened today,” he said.

The city Department of Health blamed the problem on its website not being updated “to show that there is availability,” Treyger said.

South Queens, home of the highest COVID positive cases in the city, finally gets a vaccination site

 

Queens Chronicle

Vaccines are coming to New York City’s top Covid hot spot: South Ozone Park.

The new vaccination center at the Aqueduct Race Track, the sole state-run site announced in Queens, will bring much-needed relief to the neighborhood, which currently has the highest positivity rate of all New York City ZIP codes at 15.94 percent as of Friday. 

Its two adjacent ZIP codes in Ozone Park and Richmond Hill have the second- and third-highest rates in the city.

The distribution site will open on Monday, and will fill a void left in the surging heart of the second wave left by the city’s vaccination sites, which do not extend into South Queens west of the Van Wyck Expressway. Community leaders in South Queens, who had been watching the positivity rate increase at an alarming rate for months, have been critical of the mayor’s decision not to include Richmond Hill or South Ozone Park on his list of priority neighborhoods.

The new site’s announcement, however, left some residents confused because it does not show up on the city’s Covid site map, leading them to wonder whether they were eligible. It seems to be the latest in a gap of communication between the city and state’s vaccination efforts.

In a meeting of the Ozone Park Residents Block Association and Cityline Ozone Park Civilian Patrol on Thursday night, President Sam Esposito said that the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Queens community liaison did not have the eligibility information on the site when he had asked him about it.

“The mayor and the governor have to get on the same page because when they argue we get hurt. And that’s not right,” said State Sen. Joe Addabbo Jr. (D-Howard Beach) at the meeting, who added that his office had received inaccurate information about the vaccination efforts as well.

Get your vaccines on

 

 

Queens Post 

Three COVID-19 vaccination sites will open in Queens next week, the New York City Health Commissioner announced Wednesday.

The sites will open on Friday, Jan. 15 and health care workers — along with others who qualify — will be able to receive the vaccine. The sites will be open seven days a week, by appointment only.

The three “vaccine hubs” are located at schools in Long Island City, Springfield Gardens and on the Rockaway Peninsula.

The announcement of the three sites comes two days after the DOH said it would open its first “vaccine hub” in Queens this Sunday at Hillcrest High School in Jamaica Hills. That site is now accepting appointments and will be open daily.

 LIC Post

The city plans to open a COVID-19 vaccination site for frontline workers in South Ozone Park Monday — despite the fact that the state has not approved frontline workers to be vaccinated yet.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city will be ready to open vaccination sites prioritized for frontline workers in each of the five boroughs, including a site at John Adams High School in South Ozone Park.