Saturday 22 / June / 2024
NEW YORK: New York City's COVID-19 vaccination campaign started at NYU Langone Health on Monday with the first dose administered to nursing quality specialist Tara Easter.
"Tara Easter has nerves of steel. Didn't even flinch at that needle. But what else do you expect from a nurse? The #COVID19 vaccine has arrived in New York City. Better days are on the way," tweeted Mayor Bill de Blasio with Easter's injection photo attached.
"This is a beautiful moment, powerful moment. You are going to see healthcare heroes getting this vaccine. You are going to see them being protected, so they can serve all of us," he told a brief ceremony prior to the vaccine administration.
"It feels good. This is the first of the two vaccines. I feel very lucky," Easter told reporters after the vaccination at NYU Langone Health, an academic medical center located in NYC, affiliated with New York University.
The government announced Friday that a vaccine command center would open on Monday to facilitate citywide vaccination.
The command center serves as a hub for all things vaccine-related. It will manage and monitor distribution in real-time, from delivery efforts to troubleshooting. It also works to ensure fairness in vaccinations, transparency with the public and address the issue of vaccine mistrust.
According to NYC Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi, COVID-19 vaccinations would be administered at five city hospitals on Monday. More than 30 hospitals are expected to have the vaccine by Tuesday.
The city is planning to receive 465,000 doses of coronavirus vaccine over the next three weeks, Chokshi said. It's clearly not enough to vaccinate all New Yorkers, so Chokshi stressed the need for New Yorkers to remain vigilant.
Before Easter's vaccine administration at NYU Langone Health, Northwell Health Director of Employee Health Services Michelle Chester administered the vaccine to Sandra Lindsay, an ICU nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center who is eligible to receive the vaccine under Phase 1 of New York's Vaccine Distribution Plan.
NYC's COVID-19 test positivity rate on a seven-day average went down to 5.50 percent, compared with 5.53 percent one day earlier, said the mayor on Monday, adding that there were 185 new hospitalizations and 2,137 new cases of the coronavirus in the city.
As of Sunday evening, coronavirus deaths added up to 24,501 and confirmed cases to 355,052 in NYC, according to The City, a project that tracks the spread of confirmed COVID-19 infections and fatalities in New York City, based on information provided by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the governor's office, The COVID Tracking Project and the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
