New York Governor Andrew Cuomo delivers remarks on the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at the Riverside Church in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., November 15, 2020.
Andy Kelly | Reuters
New York state will accept new federal guidance to open up Covid vaccine eligibility to everyone 65 and older as well as younger people who are immunocompromised, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday.
In accepting the new guidance, which Cuomo said came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the governor also criticized the move. He said demand will quickly outstrip supply. The state had previously been prioritizing health-care workers and recently expanded eligibility to include those 75 and older.
Cuomo said further expanding to those 65 and older will open the eligibility to about 7 million people, but the state is only receiving about 300,000 doses per week.
“We are going to accept the federal guidance,” Cuomo said on a conference call with reporters. “I don’t want New Yorkers to think that we are not doing everything we can to make them eligible for the vaccine, because I want to keep people in New York as calm as we can keep people in these anxious times.”
Cuomo said the state is still dealing with a “drip, drip, drip from the faucet of federal dosage availability,” which is inhibiting the state’s ability to vaccinate people. The federal government has been withholding more than half of all available vaccine doses to ensure that there’s enough for second booster shots needed to achieve maximum immunity.
But the Trump administration will announce Tuesday that the government will begin distributing those doses to states, a senior administration official told CNBC.
This is breaking news. Check back here for updates.
