NY Running Out Of Coronavirus Vaccine Week To Week: Cuomo

Six weeks into the nation's coronavirus vaccination program, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the state will run out of doses to give before the federal government ships the next batch — a problem that's going to happen over and over again for the foreseeable future.

New York is one to two days from distributing all the doses it has on hand, he said in his pandemic briefing Wednesday.

"What's clear now is we're going to be going from week to week, and you will see a constant pattern of basically running out, waiting for the next week's allocation, and then starting up again," Cuomo said.

It's a "hard truth" that means too many of the most vulnerable residents are having to wait too long to be vaccinated, said Putnam County MaryEllen Odell.

The reality of the shortage was brought home this week to Putnam County, the second-smallest in the 7-county Hudson region. There are almost 32,000 residents already eligible for the vaccine under the rule change made last week by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, she said.

"But this week, the state has allocated just 200 vaccines to our health department to inoculate essential workers and 200 vaccines to a pharmacy to administer to senior citizens," she said. "If you can’t get an appointment for a vaccine, that’s why. We are working with the state to try and get more vaccine."

Cuomo said the network of distribution sites is ready and able to get more vaccines to New Yorkers, faster. "All we need is the supply," Cuomo said Thursday.

In the meantime, Cuomo called on all vaccine distributors to refrain from scheduling any appointments for which they don't have a definitive allocation, because we don't know what we're going to get next week, and we don't know where we're going to distribute it next week.

"Otherwise you have to cancel appointments and it adds to the chaos, which is already inherent in the system," Cuomo said, decrying the "tremendous anxiety" created when the federal government expanded eligibility to everyone 65 and older without increasing the supply.

"We recognize there is concern about the wait for vaccines,” said Michael Nesheiwat, MD, Putnam County Commissioner of Health. “One thing that is important to realize is this was not completely unexpected. We need to look at vaccine implementation as the long-term project it is—more of a long-distance race and not an all-out sprint. It is an enormous undertaking and not physically possible to roll out large numbers of vaccines in an instant.”