Expect 'a crush' of vaccine appointments for pre-existing conditions

But state officials warned – as has already been the case with those seeking a limited supply of vaccines – that the process will not be smooth. 

"There will be a crush. This will not be perfect," Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa said during a briefing Monday from Albany. "Everyone should go into this with their eyes wide open. It's going to be a tough period."

Last week, Cuomo announced that the state would be taking vaccine doses that were originally allocated for health care workers away from hospitals who were not using all of that allocation; those doses would then be made available to people with pre-existing conditions, including cancer, liver disease and heart conditions. 

On Monday, state officials said that those with such comorbidities would be able to begin making appointments through the state website on Sunday, with the first possible appointments starting the following day.

Individuals who qualify for a vaccine due to underlying health conditions must provide a doctor's note, provide other medical evidence of their health condition, or sign a certification of their qualifying health condition, Cuomo said.

"We'll leave it to the local health department to determine what exact validation they want, but they have to validate," Cuomo said. "And the state will audit the local validation system."

Anyone who lies about their health condition to get a vaccine will have committed fraud and should be held accountable, he said.

Officials said local health departments, which run the bulk of the vaccine administration for those with comorbidities, would be determining and announcing the sites and times and process for making those appointments.  

Cuomo and DeRosa acknowledged the problem of having more people eligible for vaccines, while the vaccine supply remains essentially the same.

"Expect the portals to be open, expect the appointments to fill up very quickly," Cuomo said of the state website, "and this will be a problem until the supply is increased."

New Yorkers "need to understand the facts about why this is happening. It's not because there's a portal problem, or a software problem; it's because you have 10 million people chasing 300,000 vaccines, every week, and that's not going to change," he added.

Cuomo said the Biden administration has increased vaccine supply by about 10%, "but we need more."

The governor said that the state has administered 2.4 million vaccine doses – about 1.8 million first doses, 600,000 second doses – and that 90% of the state's allocated first dosages for the first eight weeks of vaccines are "in arms."

Cuomo also said that New York has 5,000 vaccine distribution sites lined up, but that they are waiting for supply.

The governor said to vaccinate the 15 million people in New York State, at 300,000 doses per week, will take almost a year. He said of the 15 million people, 10 million are currently eligible. 

Regarding potential avenues for more doses, Cuomo said that the vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson – which has applied for emergency use authorization – "could be a game-changer."

The governor also said that the state is looking into whether excess doses will be available from those allocated to New York's long-term care facilities; that program is run by the federal government. 

Cuomo said this would be the final week for hospitals to administer doses to their own workers, with unused doses going to the effort to vaccinate those with comorbidities. He added that if a hospital worker says that he or she will take the vaccine, that a dose will be made available for him or her.

The number of health care workers vaccinated statewide has leveled off at 75%, Cuomo said. The governor again displayed the hospitals that had the state's lowest percentage of their staffs vaccinated, and for the first time that list did not include a Western New York facility. North Tonawanda's DeGraff Memorial Hospital had been on the list Friday.

In other developments at the governor's briefing:

• Cuomo announced that the program he has mentioned that is designed to accelerate the arts' return from the pandemic will be called "NY PopsUp" and will include 300 statewide, free "pop-up" performance events over 100 days.

"They're not designed to be scheduled to draw a crowd, because we don't want to draw a crowd," he said. "We're trying to thread the needle. We don't want mass gatherings, we don't want large crowds."

The performances will begin Feb. 20 at the Javits Center in New York City, with a program to pay tribute to health care workers, and the opening weekend will include a Garth Fagan company dance performance at Rochester Institute of Technology. 

Cuomo again cited the Buffalo Bills playoff games, where 7,000 people went through pregame testing, as a model for possibly reopening arts venues. He did not provide a timetable for Broadway's reopening. 

• Monday's statewide positivity rate was 4.28%.

There were 197,000 tests Sunday, 114 statewide deaths due to Covid-19 and 7,716 hospitalizations, which was down 67.

Western New York had 356 hospitalizations Sunday, down one from Saturday, while its seven-day positivity rate, now at 4.26%, continued to drop.