Moderna Vaccine Site Coming To Bayside This Week

BAYSIDE, QUEENS — COVID-19 vaccines will be offered at several new locations in Queens this week, including Queensborough Community College in Bayside.

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Tuesday that the CUNY will operate as a COVID-19 vaccination site, in addition to a new site for airport employees at JFK Terminal 5 and two pop-up locations in the Rockaways. Another large capacity site is coming to the Rockaways next week, he said.

According to the city’s vaccine tracker the Queensborough College site at 222-05 56th Avenue will offer doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine and include walk-in appointments for anyone 50 years or older.

The site, which will be closed Mondays and Tuesdays, will operate from 7:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays and 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, according to the vaccine tracker.

Everyone older than 18 can register online or by calling (877) 829-4692, though the vaccine tracker indicates that appointments may be restricted by zip code.

This announcement comes after the city opened a vaccination site at the Queens Mall in Elmhurst last week — despite a call from local lawmakers, including Congresswoman Grace Meng and five other state and city politicians, for sites in the western part of the borough.

At the time, Congresswoman Meng said she was “pleased” to learn about the site at the Queens Mall, but was “continuing to call for a site in the western portion of my district, and we will continue to push for that to happen and work with the city and state on this effort.”

According to city data, over 60 percent of all adults in the 11364 South Bayside ZIP code, the site of the Queensborough College vaccination site, have received at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccine.

The vaccination rate in Bayside is higher than areas that Meng represents in western Queens, some of which are under 50 percent vaccinated, and remains double the rate of nearby neighborhoods in southeastern Queens.

Speaking of southeastern Queens and the Rockaway Peninsula — predominantly Black and brown communities that still have some of the lowest rates of vaccination citywide — Mayor de Blasio announced a new vaccination site at JFK and two pop-up sites in the Rockaways opening this week, as well as a large capacity site at Beach and 39th Street that is slated to open next Thursday, April 29.

“The Rockaways always deserve attention and historically haven’t gotten its fair share,” he said, while announcing a pop-up vaccine site at NYCHA Ocean Bay Apartments that will operate this Thursday, April 22, through Sunday, April 25, and another at Challenge Charter Middle School that will operate this Thursday, April 22, through Saturday, April 24.

The vaccination site at JFK will just be for airport employees, since “ we want to make it easier for people to get vaccinated and sometimes the best place to reach people is where they work,” said the Mayor.

“We’re going to look under every stone and go everywhere we can to make sure everyone gets vaccinated,” he concluded.