COVID Vaccine: Long Island Nurse, Lawmakers Say New York Needs To Speed Up Rollout
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- With 2020 behind us, the world is looking to leave the coronavirus pandemic behind, too.
Many people are hopeful for the COVID vaccine, including a Long Island nurse who wants to know why she still hasn't received it, CBS2's Jenna DeAngelis reported Friday.
Registered nurse Eva Jones carries a picture from peak pandemic with her to work to read the words her husband printed on it.
"Please give me courage as I approach each patient," she read.
The Glen Cove resident works for a private company on Long Island, treating patients suffering from kidney disease.
"My dialysis patients are all immunocompromised," she said. "They have to come out to get treatment or it's life sustaining. They don't have an option."
Jones wants to know where's the COVID vaccine?
"I just feel that we were just, just missed. And I know it's not intentional, but this is a high-risk community that really needs to be vaccinated -- staff and employees," she said.
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As of Dec. 22, New York had received 630,000 vaccine doses, but only about 203,000 have been administered throughout the state to high-risk hospital staff, EMS workers and those at nursing homes.
"We're going to have to increase the pace of vaccination probably by about 10 fold if we want to get to herd immunity by the middle of 2021," said New York City Council member Mark Levine, chair of the Health Committee.
Nearly 98,000 people in the city have been vaccinated so far. However, Mayor Bill de Blasio has a plan to vaccinate 1 million people by the end of January, launching COVID-19 vaccine hubs citywide.
"This is going to be part of the largest single vaccination effort in the history of New York City," he said Thursday.
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Levine said even that's not fast enough.
"We're going to have to pick up the pace, probably to about 400,000 a week," he said.
From the city to Long Island, nurses like Jones are ready and waiting to be next in line.
"I'm feeling hopeful," she said.
So far, Northwell Health has vaccinated around 20,000 employees.
"In a little over two weeks, we've been able to vaccinate close to 2,000 of our most COVID-frontline employees out of our workforce of 6,500, and we're steadily vaccinating the rest. We would love to be able to instantly make that happen, but we understand this is a process with a lot of moving parts and look forward to completing this rollout as soon as possible," said Dr. Brahim Ardolic, executive director of Staten Island University Hospital.
CBS2's Jenna DeAngelis contributed to this report