Nursing homes to get first round of vaccine in New York
New York plans to prioritize nursing home residents and staff members when it begins distributing the first doses of a vaccine for the coronavirus, hopefully this month, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday.
The state expects to receive 170,000 doses of Pfizer’s vaccine by Dec. 15, if the pharmaceutical company gets the federal government’s OK to make it available to the public on an emergency basis, Cuomo said.
The Democrat said New York expects at a later date to receive at least 40,000 more doses of a vaccine made by Moderna, if it gets federal authorization.
That would be enough to cover the state’s roughly 85,000 nursing home residents and 130,000 staff members, though Cuomo said he expects not all residents and staff members will agree to take the vaccine.