By Don Driggers
Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced today that NYC can allow restaurant workers to be included in current vaccine-eligible groups, namely Phase 1b.
The federal government had released additional vaccines to New York, according to Cuomo, which allowed the state to distribute 20 percent more vaccines to local governments, NY Post reported.
Cuomo stated he will leave it up to local governments to decide who to prioritize with this new batch of vaccines.
“I’m leaving it up to local governments to make sure what fits their situation best,” said Cuomo during a press conference Tuesday. “I don’t know if Mayor de Blasio will want to vaccinate taxi drivers or restaurant workers first but that’s a local determination for the local health department to make,” he added referring specifically to the decision making in NYC.
Mayor de Blasio only hours before was openly calling for the state to allow restaurant workers to receive the vaccine.
“Restaurant workers now are going to be in enclosed places with people eating and drinking,” de Blasio said. “Every doctor on this line [referring to people like the CEO of NYC’s Health and Hospitals, who often participates in the mayor’s daily press conferences] and anywhere else would say that is an area of concern. We have to protect the people who work in our restaurants. So now that the state has made this decision, it follows that we have to protect those workers and they should be added to the 1b category”, the mayor said at a press conference.
“I think when I say these things publicly it’s duly noted in Albany,” he said. “These are folks who serve us, who we depend on, who in the course of one of their shifts will be in contact with multiple people. We need to protect them’
Eater, an outlet which reports about the restaurant business reported: Allowing NYC the option to make restaurant workers vaccine-eligible now represents a sharp departure from comments that Cuomo made yesterday, when he said that restaurant workers haven’t been made eligible to receive the vaccine yet because the state has a limited vaccine supply. New Yorkers in Phase 1a and 1b of the state’s vaccination distribution program who currently have access to the COVID-19 vaccine include public-facing grocery store workers, public transit workers, and people ages 65 or older.
