More than eight million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered across New York City to date and efforts to vaccinate children are progressing, Mayor Bill de Blasio said during his press conference on May 26.
The city has tallied 8,062,074 jabs thanks to what de Blasio describes as “extraordinary outreach” efforts to bring mobile vaccination sites directly to New Yorkers in public housing, transportation hubs, houses of worship, and other locations.
“What works is taking it to the streets, going out into communities,” de Blasio said.
He added, “It really is, for so many people, about convenience, about just that right moment to get vaccinated. All of this is working.”
The mayor touted other gains, including a dip in COVID-19 hospitalizations to 59 patients and a seven-day average of 0.79 per 100,000 hospital admissions. The seven-day average of new reported COVID-19 cases is 385.
The seven-day positivity rate is 1.08%.
“Keep getting vaccinated, New York City,” de Blasio said. “Let’s get that below one percent.”
In the campaign to vaccinate the city’s children and adolescents, Health Commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi said the city surpassed 50,000 vaccination doses among those between the ages of 12 and 15 — a number he expects to increase by tens of thousands in the coming days and weeks.
The game plan for the city, Chokshi said, includes working with community pediatricians to equip them with the information they need to answer questions from parents. The Department of Education is working with the Health Department to help establish lines of communication with families.
“We are seeing good clips thus far and we will keep pushing forward to make it as easy as possible for children to get vaccinated,” Chokshi said.
The mayor said schools are encouraging students to get vaccinated and the city will work in the coming months to boost outreach efforts before students return to the classroom in the fall.
“We’ll have more to say soon on how that specific effort is going to go, but I’m very confident we’re going to have a high percentage of kids vaccinated before the new school year,” de Blasio said.
The administration also pointed to ongoing work to reach diverse communities, including Latino New Yorkers. Chokshi said the Health Department has worked with community and faith leaders in the Latino community and provided doctors with material in Spanish to boost public awareness.
“What we are finding is 45 percent of adults who identify as Hispanic or Latino have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, which is great progress,” Chokshi said. “I will say it is an area where we have seen a particular increase in recent weeks, but we do have more to do and we are committed to the last miles of our vaccination campaign.”
