New York Governor Andrew Cuomo speaks out on Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) on November 15, 2020 at Riverside Church in Manhattan, New York City, United States.
Andy Kelly | Reuters
New York State will accept new federal guidelines to open the approval of Covid vaccines to anyone over the age of 65 as well as younger people with compromised immune systems, Governor Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday.
The governor accepted the new guidelines, which Cuomo said came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and also criticized the move. He said demand will quickly outstrip supply. The state had previously given priority to health workers and recently extended the eligibility to those aged 75 and over.
Cuomo said expanding it further to 65 and older would open the eligibility to about 7 million people, but the state only receives about 300,000 doses a week.
“We will accept the federal guidelines,” Cuomo said on a conference call with reporters. “I don’t want New Yorkers to believe that we are not doing everything we can to qualify them for the vaccine because I want to keep the people of New York as calm as we can keep people in these anxious times.”
Cuomo said the state is still facing a “drop, drop, drop from the faucet of federal dosage availability” that is inhibiting the state’s ability to vaccinate people. The federal government has withheld more than half of all available vaccine doses to ensure enough second booster vaccinations are needed to achieve maximum immunity.
But the Trump administration will announce Tuesday that the government will begin distributing these doses to states, a senior government official told CNBC.
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