NEW YORK — New York City will exhaust its supply of COVID-19 vaccines on Thursday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a Tuesday morning press conference.
The city received 53,000 doses from the state’s supply on Tuesday, bringing its total remaining doses to 116,000, de Blasio said.
“At the rate we are going we will begin to run out on Thursday,” de Blasio said. “We will have literally nothing left to give as of Friday.”
The lack of vaccines will mean canceled appointments throughout the city starting Friday, de Blasio added. As of now, the city is not expected to receive a resupply of the vaccine until next Tuesday, meaning that vaccinations would likely not be able to proceed until next Wednesday.
De Blasio said that the city exceeded its own goal of vaccinations for last week, distributing 220,000 doses of an expected 175,000.
“We are proving with literally every passing day we can reach more and more people,” he said.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo, however, has cast doubt on the efficiency of city vaccine providers in distributing the vaccine. In a press conference Monday, he said that the state would give fewer doses to immunization sites that have a poor distribution record, and more to sites that are distributing all or nearly all of the vaccines they receive.
A graphic Cuomo shared during the press conference showed that 10 NYC Health + Hospitals vaccination sites have distributed less than 80% of the vaccines they have received, while four such sites have distributed more than 80% of the vaccines they received.
On Monday evening, de Blasio pushed back against that approach.
"We are moving so quickly now, we have built up such a head of steam, that we're going to use up our supply. So by definition, if he's taking supply away from New York City, that makes no sense," de Blasio responded in his weekly "Mondays with the Mayor" interview with Inside City Hall anchor Bobby Cuza.
On Tuesday, de Blasio said he was hopeful that the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden would immediately make more vaccine doses available to New York, and called on the federal government, New York State and vaccine manufacturers to do more to provide more doses.
“We need the vaccine for each of all the New Yorkers who are ready to put out their arms and take the shot,” he said.
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