Also opening Sunday: the first vaccine hubs in Brooklyn (Bushwick Educational Campus), Queens (Hillcrest High School) and the Bronx (South Bronx Educational Campus). Those will be open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and require advance appointment scheduling on the city s Department of Health website.
The three new hubs and two 24-hour centers add to the city s library of some 125 sites already providing the vaccine to qualified New Yorkers. The majority of those 125 sites are hospitals, clinics and federally qualified health centers and urgent care.
Opening up new hubs comes as the state expands its eligibility criteria for those allowed to receive their first shots. Beginning Monday, the state welcomes people in group 1B (teachers, police and firefighters, public transit and safety workers, and people over 75) to schedule appointments.
For Claudia Zain, a home healthcare aid in New York City, getting the first shot of the coronavirus vaccine on Sunday felt like being "a little part of history" that left her excited and hopeful for the future as the United States struggles to contain the raging pandemic.
New York teachers can begin receiving coronavirus vaccines starting Monday, state and city officials said Friday afternoon.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo approved the next phase of vaccine distribution, also known as 1b, which includes education workers, people over the age of 75, public safety personnel, and transit workers. Frontline health care workers and nursing home staff and residents have been eligible to receive the vaccine since last month.
“We will begin administering shots to City Workers and the elderly in 1B starting on Monday,” Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted shortly after the governor’s announcement. Those who are eligible, including educators, may sign up for a vaccine appointment here.
New York found three additional cases of the more transmissible U.K. COVID strain now confirmed in at least six other states, including nearby Pennsylvania and Connecticut, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Saturday. State health officials have confirmed a total of four cases so far, but Cuomo’s team believes that number is likely higher as new cases of the U.K. variant are.