Health committee just unanimously voted out 4 pieces of legislation.
* Intro 2236a: Creates unified covid vax scheduling website, and a system for NYers to pre-register to be alerted when an appointment opens up.
1/
* Reso 1535 (sponsored by @IDaneekMiller): calls for State to give local health depts power to take steps to reduce inequality in vaccination, including expanding eligibility in underserved zip codes, and expanded demographic reporting.
2/
* Reso 1529a: calls for State gov't to eliminate the planned medicaid pharmacy carve-out, which would devastate community health providers serving vulnerable NYers, include those who are homeless, living w/ HIV, etc.
3/
BREAKING: Beginning 8 a.m. tomorrow, aged 60+ in NY will be eligible for vaccination.
*** Beginning March 17 in NY ***
==> Government employees, nonprofit workers & essential building service workers will all be eligible for vaccination.
(still sorting out exactly which groups this includes, but this is undoubtedly a major expansion)
Big change in vaccine distribution in NY:
==> Starting March 17, all providers will vaccination *all* eligible NYers. Only exception is pharmacies which will only do aged 60+ and education workers.
(I am assuming geographic restrictions will remain in place at some sites.)
NYers should truly be optimistic about where we’ll be on covid in a few months—there are many reasons for hope.
We should also be very concerned about the *weeks* ahead—there are some dark clouds gathering.
A thread on where we're at as NYC approaches year 2 of the pandemic. 1/
First the good news. Our supply of vaccine is increasing. We were getting 100k/week in mid-Jan. Now we’re approaching 200k/wk. This will increase further in March. By May there will likely be enough supply so that every adult in NYC who wants a vaccine will be able to get it. 2/
It bears repeating just how amazing these vaccines are: they ensure almost zero death or hospitalization from covid, and exceedingly few light or asymptomatic cases. They have very few side effects. They appear to work against the known variants. 3/