the most urgent task as we begin the year is a massive ramp-up of vaccine distribution.

View this email in your browser ([link removed])
Dear Friend,

Happy New Year. I hope that 2021 is off to an OK start for you. If we get it right -- and that is going to take all-hands -- then we’ll be able to look back on this year as one when we acted together to save lives and take care of each other.

Toward that end: the most urgent task as we begin the year is a massive ramp-up of vaccine distribution. While the approved vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are a bright light, the slow start to the roll out has been extremely troubling.

So far, we’ve only been vaccinating about 5,000 people a day in NYC (you can see the data here ([link removed]) ). At that rate, it would take over three years to get to 80% of us. We need to get that number over 30,000 per day to hit the mayor’s goal of 1 million people in January (and that’s just the first dose; two doses are needed for the full benefit, 3 or 4 weeks apart). There aren’t enough sites, staff, or volunteers. We haven’t been using nights and weekends. Eligibility is confusing and limited. Public health outreach is scarce.

We need a massive emergency mobilization, and we need it now. So much depends on it -- lives especially, but also jobs, small businesses, and our city’s economy.

We are capable of this. We are now testing over 50,000 people per day for Covid-19. And we can look to our history, too. In 1947, facing a smallpox epidemic, the New York City Health Department vaccinated 6 million people in under a month ([link removed]) .

Massively ramping up capacity

Yesterday afternoon, I joined an emergency call with NYC Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi. He acknowledged frustration at how slow things are going, conveyed a real sense of urgency, and outlined a concrete plan. They are moving rapidly toward 24/7 vaccination, opening up new City vaccine hubs, and expanding the staff for them.

The City will double the number of vaccination sites from 125 to 250 vaccination, and open its first “vaccine hubs” this weekend. Vaccines will be available primary through three networks of locations: (1) hospitals (who have started by vaccinating their staff); (2) drugstores and pharmacies (as with flu shots); and (3) City vaccine hubs

Much more than this will be needed. Right now, hospitals are only vaccinating their staff and some patients. They must quickly become community vaccination sites. And we will need City vaccine hubs in every neighborhood.

You can read more about the City’s plan here ([link removed]) . The City Council will be holding a hearing about the vaccine distribution plan next Tuesday, January 12th at 10 AM (you can watch on our website at council.nyc.gov ([link removed]) ). If you have questions you want pass along to us for the oversight hearing please feel free to email to us at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])

But I won’t be waiting a week to push with questions, watch the data, and demand action. I’ll be doing it every day.

Making the phasing work better

More sites and staff is not all that’s necessary. Right now, eligibility -- which is determined by New York State -- is confusing and limited (even the State’s vaccine eligibility website ([link removed]) is limited and confusing).

With vaccine supply limited, we must prioritize, of course. It obviously makes sense to begin, as we are in the State’s Phase 1A ([link removed]) , with nurses, doctors, and health care workers (to protect them from exposure and keep our hospitals functional). And with vulnerable seniors in nursing homes, as we are. And we must attend to issues of equity, surging capacity in the hardest-hit neighborhoods, so there are not racial inequities in vaccine distribution, as there have been in so much else.

But we need to vaccinate everyone (or at least, the vast majority of us), as quickly as we can. What’s critical is getting shots in arms. So we can’t let prioritization become bottlenecks -- and that is starting to happen.

We need to move quickly to the next phase, which I believe should be ALL essential workers. That means teachers, grocery store and food delivery workers, police officers and firefighters, all the people who have been out on the front lines for the past 10 months, and who continue to be. It should also include older New Yorkers, first those over 75, then 70 (which means we’ll need a plan to get to people’s homes). And we should be vaccinating everyone in our prisons and jails already (as we are with NYS facilities like OMH, OPWDD, and OASAS).

And we should be making plans now to get to all of us. That means establishing a website that makes it easy to start registering, even if it’s going to be several months before widespread eligibility. We need to encourage people, not discourage them. And we should make it easier for people to volunteer to help, too, as many of you have asked about.

I’m in touch with my State Assembly and Senate colleagues, talking with them about aggressive oversight at the State level, as I promise to provide at the City level.

Public health outreach effort (to overcome vaccine skepticism)

We are going to have a massive task in persuading people to get vaccinated as well. Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been shown to be safe and more than 94% effective in clinical trials, and side effects are mild. But we know there is going to be vaccine skepticism across a too-wide array of communities. We need a smart, ambitious public health plan to address it -- that speaks every language, and speaks thoughtfully to people across ideologies and perspectives.

That means a massive public outreach plan, with trusted validators in every community, mindful and not judgmental about where resistance comes from, in addition to strong language access and connections to distribution. In addition to their own public health outreach capacity, the NYC Health Department should rely on the network of community groups from the City’s census outreach efforts, who did a strong job in boosting the City’s response rate.

We must keep up our social distancing

While we ramp up vaccine distribution, it is critical that we keep up our social distancing and mask wearing, and keep getting tested. Covid-19 positivity rates are high and rising. You can see it in the data, and I’m guessing you know people who are sick right now, too. While hospitalizations and deaths thankfully remain well below where they were in the spring, they are rising too.

I continue to believe that the governor should put gyms, nail salons, and offices on pause for the next few weeks, until we bend the curve on the second wave. I know the burden by business owners has been an incredibly hard one, and I will continue my call on the State and Federal Governments, both of whom are starting their new sessions, to act immediately to support them.

My office is available and eager to do as much as we can to help navigate relief and resources available to you and our community. Please be in touch at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) , or leave us a message at 718-499-1090 and we’ll follow up.

And I promise to stay aggressively on top of vaccine distribution, to demand accountability, and to provide you with all the information we can.

We can do this. We must do this.
Brad


Updates and Resources
* Latest Virus Data: In NYC, 4,204 new COVID cases were reported January 3rd. We have lost 25,284 people in NYC from the virus, including sadly 33 reported on January 3rd, and 450,658 total cases have been identified in the city since the start of the pandemic. The citywide 7-day rolling average of positive test rates is 8.75%.
* Donate blood: Health officials say the city needs 14,000 New Yorkers to donate blood before the end of the to bolster blood supplies. You can make an appointment at www.nybc.org/donate.
* Get Tested: Even with these new vaccines in circulation it is still so important to get tested. For information about testing sites around the city, vist the City’s Covid-19 testing website here ([link removed])
* Vaccine Updates: For more information on the vaccines available, vaccine locations, and data please visit the NYC Vaccine Command Center’s Website here ([link removed]) .
* Watch the Council Hearing: watch the Council’s Health Committee’s hearing on vaccine distribution Tuesday the 12th at 10am here ([link removed])
* We are still collecting Fresh Direct Bags!: You can drop your (folded!) Fresh Direct bgas at any of the locations and times below
+ Kensington: 3 Avenue C, Saturdays at 4 PM
+ Park Slope: 256 13th St, M-F, 9 AM to 6 PM
+ Carroll Gardens: 71 3rd Pl, M-F, 8 AM to 6 PM
+ Cobble Hill: 359 Henry St, Mon-Wed, 9 AM to 6 PM


============================================================
** Twitter ([link removed])
** Facebook ([link removed])
** Instagram ([link removed])
** Website ([link removed])
Contact us:
District 39
456 5th Ave Ste 3
Brooklyn, NY 11215-4076
USA
[email protected]
718-499-1090

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can ** update your preferences ([link removed])
or ** unsubscribe from this list ([link removed])
.