NY's Coronavirus Vaccine Supply Runs Out In 2-3 Days, Cuomo Says

NEW YORK CITY — New York City's dwindling COVID-19 vaccine supply isn't just a local problem — the entire state is on track to run out of doses in two to three days, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

Cuomo on Wednesday said the flow of vaccine doses allocated by the federal government is too slow. He said the state will receive 250,000 doses next week — a rate that, if it continues, means it'll take seven months to vaccinate just those New Yorkers who are currently eligible.

"I get the frustration, but I want to at least be able to say we were fair what we had," he said.

The nation's vaccination rollout has been rocky, at best. Demand appears to far outpace supply and local and state officials have been frustrated by the now-former Trump administration's actions on vaccinations.

New York overall averages about 65,000 doses going into arms a day, Cuomo said. With only 145,780 doses left statewide, the supply will be exhausted in two or three days, he said.

Cuomo said providers need to follow strict priorities to ensure fairness in who gets doses. He broke down how many New Yorkers remain in the categories of those eligible to get vaccines:

• Health care workers — 1.3 million to be vaccinated — 21 percent of those remaining
• Essential workers — 1.7 million to be vaccinated — 27 percent of those remaining
• People 65 and older — 3.2 million to be vaccinated — 52 percent of those remaining

Cuomo said the state's doses — whenever they arrive week by week — will be allocated proportionately to certain providers that have strict priorities as to who they can vaccinate. Those are:

• Pharmacies — people 65 and older
• Hospitals — health care workers
• City/county health departments — essential workers

Each provider must follow the priorities or else the distributions will be unfair, Cuomo said.

"If everybody vaccinates everyone, then it's going to be unfair to someone," he said. "If a local health department receives an allocation which is calibrated to their number of essential workers, but they give it to people who are 65-plus, then the essential workers are going to have less of an allocation."

Cuomo also implored providers to not schedule more than appointments than their current allocation. He said that will stop situations like in New York City where providers recently canceled 23,000 vaccination appointments.

"Don’t schedule an appointment unless you know your allocation for the next week," he said.