New York keeps expanding its COVID-19 vaccine eligibility list even though people already on it are having a hard time getting an actual shot.
If you think another round of expansion seems “too fast, too soon,” some lawmakers would agree. Some say the state has “gone from A to D to C to F to E” when it comes to determining eligibility. And adding to the list exacerbates an already maddening problem of getting a vaccination appointment.
But they also say state has had to follow zigzagging federal guidelines and expanding lists and can’t go backwards on eligibility now. Vaccine supply — 10 million eligible New Yorkers are “chasing” the 300,000 or so doses the state receives each week — is the most important issue, they say.
“The quick answer is we never should have expanded the list to 65 (years old) and older because of the lack of supply,” Assemb. John McDonald (D-Cohoes), a pharmacist, said of one of the decisions that exploded the state’s eligibility list.
“But that die was cast” when the Trump administration said states should include that population, McDonald said.
“The reality is people would have been really mad if (New York) didn’t,” he said. “We followed the federal government and we went too far too fast, all with the best of intentions.”
At issue was Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s decisions to add those 65+ and quickly add taxi drivers, then restaurant workers and then people younger than 65 who have comorbidities. Combined with the others already on the list — health care workers, long-term care residents, essential front line workers — it grew the eligibility for the pool to roughly 10 million New Yorkers.
The crush came partly because of shifting federal recommendations on eligibility, which Cuomo said he is following, even though they are not binding.
“What they did was like opening the floodgates of eligibility, and you have a rush of seven million people: ‘I want the vaccine. I want it now. I was told I’m eligible,’ ” Cuomo said at the time the Trump administration told states to allow 65 year olds to register.
“We are going to accept the federal guidance,” Cuomo said on a separate day in January. “I don’t want New Yorkers to think that we are not doing everything we can to make them eligible for the vaccine, because I want to keep people in New York as calm as we can keep people in these anxious times.”
At the same time, Cuomo acknowledged continual expansion could make getting an appointment harder and increase anxiety.
“You’re telling people today, ‘You’re eligible.’ But you’re simultaneously telling people, ‘We don’t have enough dosages to get to you for the next six months,’” Cuomo said. “Is that helpful? I don’t think so. I think it creates more frustration and more anxiety.”
There has been some zigzagging about who was eligible and who wasn’t, state and local officials said.
And many of those decisions should have been months ago before a vaccine was even viable, said Assemb. Richard Gottfried, chairman of the Assembly Health Committee.
But the Manhattan Democrat doesn’t fault Cuomo for expanding eligibility so quickly:
“Given there’s going to be a degree of…
Read More: NY vaccine eligibility expansion called ‘too far, too fast,’ but unavoidable