They’re not throwing away their shot at a COVID-19 vaccine.
Within a 24-hour period, at least 17,000 teachers in New York City responded to a survey saying they wanted to get a COVID-19 shot as soon as possible, according to the United Federation of Teachers.
The union emailed the survey to its members yesterday and has since sent the names of roughly 7,000 teachers and other educators two partner health care providers — the NYU Langone hospital system and EmblemHealth — who said they had that number of vaccine doses available.
On Jan. 10, UFT President Michael Mulgrew announced the union was working with a few major healthcare systems to expand access to the vaccine for its members with priority given to teachers allowed to give in-person classes and supplement the city’s effort to vaccinate public school educators.
Neither the Department of Education nor the UFT have released how many teachers or other school staff have received the first dose of the vaccine — both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require patients to receive two shots — because inoculations started over the weekend, with the union pledging to do so once it gets total numbers from its health care partners.
That number will only include teachers inoculated against the virus through the UFT program, according to a statement from the union.
