41% of public school students did not comply

Chalkbeat

Just over half of New York City public school students are fully vaccinated, according to data the education department released Friday.

In total, 59% of the city’s public school students have received at least one vaccine dose and nearly 52% are considered fully vaccinated.

The information is required under City Council law, and includes a breakdown of school-level vaccination rates and the number of students who have consented to in-school COVID testing. Updates will be shared every two weeks. The figures don’t include charter schools.

The data show that there are wide disparities by school and neighborhood. Schools in Brooklyn’s District 23, which includes Ocean Hill, Brownsville and parts of East New York, had the lowest rates of vaccination, with just 38% of students receiving at least one dose. Districts 16, which includes a significant chunk of Bedford-Stuyvesant, and 18, which includes Flatbush and Canarsie, both had vaccination rates of 43%. On Staten Island, the rate is 47%.

“In the coming months, we are working with our partner health care agencies on an outreach campaign to encourage vaccination in the communities with the lowest rates,” education department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer said in a statement.

Manhattan’s District 2 has the highest vaccination rate, with 80% of students receiving at least one dose. That district spans much of Lower Manhattan, some of Chinatown, and the Upper East Side. Not far behind: District 3 in Manhattan, which includes the Upper West Side and part of Harlem, at 77%. Next is District 26 in Bayside, Queens, where 74% of students have at least one dose.

At nearly 250 of the city’s schools, fewer than a third of students have received at least one dose. Out of the city’s nearly 1,600 district schools, the share of students who have been vaccinated with at least one dose ranges from from just 12% to 94%.

Board of Ed vaccination retribution

NY Post 

They are unvaccinated and shunned.

New York City educators granted medical or religious exemptions from the required COVID-19 vaccination were mandated to report to school buildings Monday where some said they were treated like pariahs.

The teachers and other staffers who showed up at a building on Ocean Avenue in Flatbush were met with hostility from vaccinated DOE workers already at the site. The unjabbed were directed to one stairwell — forbidden to walk down the first-floor corridor where the vaccinated staff work, and forbidden from using their restroom.

Upstairs, those with exemptions made do with only a single toilet that flushed irregularly, or tiny children’s toilets, staffers told The Post. The kiddie commodes were replaced Wednesday night after they complained.

“The whole thing just reeks of discrimination and segregation. I never in my life have ever experienced something like this,” said a teacher who normally works on Staten Island and has a medical exemption for the vaccine.

The teacher, who had been working from her New Jersey home since October, says commuting to the Brooklyn site takes up to three hours one way.

A Staten Island administrator reporting to the building said the DOE also reassigned her from the regular duties she had performed from home since September to work remotely doing what she called busy work.

“I’m miserable because I’m not with children and I’m not with my teachers. I’m sitting here in a room not helping a soul. I feel like we’re being punished,” said the educator who has a medical exemption.

Davey Chokshi reminds you to serve your unvaccinated relatives outside on Thanksgiving

 

 

CBS New York 

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.

State and City makes vaccination online applications and hotline a pain in the ass

  

PIX News

  As New York expands eligibility for the COVID-19 vaccine to millions more people, including those 75 years old and older, concerns are being raised about the steps it takes to register online for an appointment.

Harris Ton’s 85-year-old mother is among the new batch of New Yorkers now eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. She stood in line — among many others — on Monday after making an appointment through one of the city’s websites.

But others who showed up at the Brooklyn Army Terminal vaccination site were left confused by a process too digitally advanced for them. Those who did not have an appointment were turned away and told to call the city’s new hotline if they’re unable to complete registration online.

The hopeful but rejected walk-ins illustrate how dependent the appointment process is on technology and digital literacy.

New York City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Scott Stringer on Sunday called the online vaccine registration process a "major problem," especially for older residents.

The [Health Department] site for signing up for a COVID vaccination is complex, burdensome, and buggy,” Stringer said on Twitter.

 According to the comptroller, the Health Department’s website features a multi-step verification process just to set up an account. Then users looking to make a vaccine appointment have to complete a six-step registration process that includes as many as 51 questions or fields to fill out and requires uploading images of an insurance card.

 

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.