Citi field baseball stadium, home of the New York Mets Major League Baseball team on September 7th, 2019 in Flushing, Queens, New York City.
Tim Clayton | Corbis Sport | Getty Images
New York will turn Citi Field into a 24/7 “mega” coronavirus vaccination site by the end of January in an effort to vaccinate thousands of residents daily, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday.
NYC Health and Hospitals will operate the site, home to the New York Mets, with the aim of giving between 5,000 and 7,000 shots a day, de Blasio said in a joint announcement with Mets owner Steve Cohen.
The announcement comes a day after Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said his city would set up a vaccination site at Dodger Stadium by the end of this week. That facility will be able to give up to 12,000 shots per day, according to a statement from Garcetti’s office on Monday.
“This is going to help so many people to get vaccinated,” de Blasio said during a press briefing. “We welcome all New Yorkers. We even welcome Yankees fans; there’s no discrimination.”
The New York mayor has been pushing Gov. Andrew Cuomo to expand the number of people who would be eligible for a coronavirus vaccine beyond the top-priority health-care workers. Cuomo granted the city’s request last week and said people 75 and older, as well as essential workers such as first responders, teachers, school staff and others, across the state could be inoculated against the disease beginning this week.
A person wearing a protective mask stands outside a Covid-19 vaccination site at Bathgate Industrial Park in the Bronx borough of New York, U.S., on Monday, Jan. 11, 2021.
David Delgado | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Beginning Tuesday, the state will open up Covid-19 vaccinations to everyone 65 and older as well as younger people who are immunocompromised, the Democratic governor said during a call with reporters Tuesday morning.
It appears, however, that the problem so far hasn’t been finding space to vaccinate people — it’s been securing supply of the doses. Cuomo said the newly expanded federal guidelines apply to about 7 million people, but the state only receives about 300,000 doses a week.
“I urge patience as unfortunately there are far more eligible NYers than there is vaccine supply from the federal gov,” Cuomo said in a tweet on Tuesday.
De Blasio said the city conducted 26,000 vaccinations Monday. At that rate, the city will be out of vaccines in less than two weeks, he said.
“We’re going to need the doses to keep this kind of effort going,” he said.
