ALBANY, NY – The vaccine rollout in New York State has been a fiasco since thousands of doses had to be tossed in the garbage because they went bad due to the tight restrictions initially imposed by Governor Andrew Cuomo on who can and get the vaccine. The New York vaccine red tape and bureaucracy was so bad, that doses went to waste. Now, facing a shortage, Cuomo announced the state will be getting an increased shipment from the Biden administration but said it’s not enough.
When asked about Washington Post and Associated Press reports that President Biden about a 16 percent dose increase in the coming months, here’s what the governor had to say.
“It’s not enough,” Cuomo said. “The governors just had a call organized with the National Governors Association with Jeff Zients, who is Counselor to the President and he heads the COVID-19 Task Force, Dr. Walensky from the CDC, General Perna, and it is very good news from our point of view, from the governors’ point of view. The allocation will go up 16 percent but even more importantly, Nicolle, we can count on that allocation for the next three weeks.”
Cuomo took the opportunity to criticize the Trump administration.
“We’ve been going week to week and you really can’t plan and schedule when you don’t know what you’re going to get next week. You can’t do it in any orderly way, so knowing what number we’re going to get for the next three weeks is very important because it will bring efficiency to the program that we haven’t been able to implement,” he said.
“I can now turn around and tell my distributors, you’re going to get 16 percent more for the next three weeks, so that’s good news. Is 16 percent going to make the difference for those states that can administer the vaccines at a higher rate? No. At this rate we’re talking about months and months obviously. And I think it’s important to remember, you used the expression federal production, the federal government is not producing this drug. It’s Pfizer, it’s modern, hopefully Johnson & Johnson gets approved, but they don’t have the factory under federal control and that’s the problem. They have inherited, I believe, a flawed production schedule that they’re now going to have to work with,” he added.