While the city worked at full speed in the last preparations for the snowstorm that was expected to arrive on Wednesday afternoon and evening, the process of vaccination against Covid continued its march, in this case with new vaccines at Elmhurst Hospital.
The event at the hospital center in Queens was attended by Mayor Bill de Blasio and several leaders from the city’s Health Department. While not dissimilar to events in various hospitals since vaccines began Monday, Elmhurst Hospital has special significance as the site suffered brutally during the worst of the pandemic.
The hospital is located in one of the neighborhoods hardest hit by the coronavirus – with a large immigrant population among those affected.
Two members of the hospital staff were vaccinated on the spot, one, William Kelly, an African-American employee, and the other, Verónica Delgado, a Latina medical assistant.
“I don’t know of any healthcare worker in this hospital who doesn’t want the vaccine immediately,” said Delgado, 65.
Like the rest of those present, the mayor applauded when the two hospital workers were vaccinated. “It’s a huge ovation,” de Blasio said.
“One of the toughest battles against coronavirus anywhere in the United States occurred right here,” de Blasio added in reference to the hospital.
The mayor reported that since Monday around 1,600 members of the city’s hospital health personnel have received the vaccine.
Due to the arrival of the snow, in the afternoon of Wednesday and in the morning of Thursday the tests of the coronavirus have been suspended throughout the city.
The snowfall – or at least the forecast for the biggest snowfall in years – has come at a time when the city is experiencing a dangerous and at the same time hopeful stage in the short history of the pandemic.
On the one hand, hospitalizations and other coronavirus statistics continue to rise, with which the question is always in the air as to whether the authorities will again order the closure of the city – non-essential businesses and others.
On the other hand, however, there are moments of great hope with the arrival of the vaccine -or vaccines-, what many have called ‘the light at the end of the tunnel’.
On Wednesday, Governor Cuomo also reported that the state will soon finish receiving the 170,000 doses of Pfizer’s vaccine that correspond to it. And that once approved by the federal government, it will also receive 300,000 doses of the other vaccine – Moderna’s.
Cuomo declined to go into detail about whether or not there will be a city closure.
That everything will depend, he said, on how New Yorkers lead their lives – if they wear masks, keep social distance and so on – and the management that is made of the needs of hospitals.
While attention is focused on the snowfall, the Covid numbers serve to remind that even with the vaccine there is a long tunnel to go.
Cuomo reported that in the medical count of the last day there were still more than 6 thousand patients with Covid and that 97 people had died.
