Nurse Sandra Lindsay bumps elbows with hospital publicist Joseph Kemp after she is inoculated with the Covid-19 vaccine
Credit: AFP
As the governor put it, Ms Lindsay has “seen a lot.” LIJ is located in the worst-hit borough in the worst-hit city in the US.
The hospital has treated 100,000 patients for Covid-19 since February, and at the height of the pandemic in April they were seeing as many as 3,500 a day.
The vaccine comes at a crucial moment for the entire country, though. Covid-19 has killed nearly 300,000 in the US, more than a tenth of those from New York. Most of its 50 states are now recording uncontrolled spread.
Coronavirus USA Spotlight Chart — cases default
Mr Cuomo ordered the end of indoor dining in the city on Monday as positive cases rose above six per cent. The state recorded an average of 10,048 cases per day last week, an increase of 72 per cent from two weeks earlier.
“Every American has to do their part,” the governor urged.“We will need 75-80 per cent of the population to take it,” he said of the vaccine, adding that he hoped the state would reach that point by June. “There is light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s a long tunnel.”
Shipments of Pfizer’s vaccine will be staggered, arriving in 145 distribution centres on Monday, with an additional 425 sites getting shipments Tuesday, and the remaining 66 on Wednesday, federal officials said.
About 2.9 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine will be distributed this week in the first phase of the vaccine rollout.
Another 2.9 million doses will be held back to ensure that those who received the first dose of the two-dose vaccine get their second dose three weeks later, Gustave Perna of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed said. Pfizer said on Monday that it was negotiating with the US to provide another 100 million doses in 2021.
What happens once you’ve had the Pfizer/BioNTech jab?
The second phase of vaccinations will cover so-called essential workers, which will include police officers, firefighters, teachers, pharmacists, supermarket workers, public transport employees and others.
This stage would also include individuals in the general population with co-morbidities and underlying health conditions that especially put them at risk of contracting the virus.
Unlike the UK, states are not allocating vaccines based on age. Over-65 year olds who are not in nursing homes and do not have co-morbidities will likely be third in line.
President Donald Trump said on Sunday night that he would delay a plan for senior White House staff members to receive the vaccine in the coming days, tweeting that they should receive it “somewhat later in the program.” He said he would take one himself at an "appropriate time".
Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said it was “under discussion” when President-elect Joe Biden would receive one.
The nation’s top expert on the virus said his plan was to get publicly vaccinated to encourage others to do the same in the next week or two.
"We have rehearsed, tested, did mock deliveries, every single step of the process in order to make sure we understand how it’s working," said Dr Moncef Slaoui, who is leading the government’s vaccine effort as he sought to reassure the public.
He said that by the middle of March there will be enough vaccines to have inoculated 100 million Americans. By the end of May or the middle of June most Americans should have access to the vaccines.
In New York, where a staggering one in 375 people have lost their lives to the virus, it was an emotional day for many.
“I didn’t expect to cry, but there you go,” Ralph Rodriquez, 35, from Brooklyn, whose mother died from Covid-19 in the spring, told The Telegraph. “It came too late for my mom, but I hope it can save someone else’s.”
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