New York State Team
ALBANY – Where do you turn to find out who is offering the COVID-19 vaccine? In New York, there s no simple answer.
New York has no central, one-stop shop for seeking out vaccine locations across the state, leaving those searching for a shot to scour local websites and repeatedly dial up pharmacies to try to schedule a highly coveted appointment or spot on a waiting list.
The state Department of Health has refused repeated requests from the USA TODAY Network New York over the past week to reveal a list of pharmacies, clinics and other providers who have received vaccine doses recently.
New York State Team
ALBANY – New York residents with underlying health conditions ranging from cancer, diabetes and obesity will be eligible to get a COVID-19 vaccine beginning Feb. 15, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Friday.
Cuomo announced the change during his coronavirus briefing at the state Capitol, marking the second time this week he had expanded eligibility after previously cautioning against it.
The Democratic governor has been facing pressure from those with underlying health conditions to expand vaccine eligibility to help people who could face a greater likelihood of death should they become infected with the virus.
Earlier in the week, Cuomo suggested such an expansion could add 4 million people to the state s vaccine-eligible list at a time when supply is short.
New York State Team
ALBANY – New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo s administration is facing renewed pressure from Republicans, Democrats and even the courts to release more information about the COVID-19 crisis in nursing homes.
State Supreme Court Justice Kimberly O’Connor ruled against the state Department of Health on Wednesday, giving the state agency five business days to release the number of nursing home residents who died each day at each facility in response to a lawsuit by the Empire Center, an Albany-based think tank.
The ruling came the same day Republican lawmakers at the state and federal level renewed their calls for the Cuomo administration to be subpoenaed, pointing to a recent report from Democratic state Attorney General Letitia James that chastised the Health Department for underrepresenting the nursing home death toll.
something was hard to miss.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo, delivering a briefing from his Manhattan office on June 29, calmly discussed the state s latest COVID-19 numbers in front of a large, covered mound, waiting until the end of his presentation to pull the curtain and reveal what was underneath.
The grand reveal uncovered a giant prop: A large, multi-layered foam mountain, a visual metaphor built to the specs of the state s coronavirus curve to that point. We dealt with that spike, and we climbed right up the mountain, Cuomo said that day as he pointed to the sculpture s peak. We got smart. New Yorkers stepped up. We wore masks, we socially distanced, we closed down and we stopped the curve.