City Reveals White New Yorkers Have Received Lion's Share Of COVID-19 Vaccine Doses

 

GOTHAMIST

BY SYDNEY PEREIRA, JAKE DOBKIN AND NSIKAN AKPAN

An unidentified man receives a COVID-19 immunization on opening day of the large-scale vaccination site at the The Javits Center DON POLLARD

Three white residents receive a COVID-19 vaccine for every Black or Latino person in the city, according to new demographic data released by the mayor’s office on Sunday.

At a press briefing, Mayor Bill de Blasio said there was a “profound disparity” about seven weeks into the city’s vaccination program.

“Clearly, what we see is a particularly pronounced reality of many more people from white communities getting vaccination than folks from Black and Latino communities,” de Blasio told reporters. The vast difference in vaccine coverage shows the city isn’t meeting its pledge for equitable distribution.

The mayor said supply problems were central to the challenge of distributing vaccines equitably across communities of color. He and health officials at the briefing also cited vaccine hesitancy as another difficulty. Surveys have shown that Black and Hispanic New Yorkers are more reluctant to get vaccinated than white people.

The mayor also called on vaccine providers do a better job recording demographic information when doling out shots, as 40% of vaccine recipients—or 263,466 people—did not offer their race or ethnicity during their clinic visits.

Race: Overall, Black and Latino residents have received half the share expected for them based on the city’s population makeup.

While Latino residents make up 29% of New York City residents, they comprise only 15% of the vaccine takers. The Black community accounts for a quarter of the city, but their vaccination rate is merely 11%.

The immunization rate among Asian inhabitants (15%) mirrors their population rate among the five boroughs (14%).

Far and away, the largest proportion of the COVID-19 vaccine is going to white residents. Though they make up a third of the city, they account for about half of the known vaccine takers.

Age: The racial and ethnic disparities widen when you look at the breakdown for people over the age of 65, who are more likely to suffer severe consequences from COVID-19.

OIder white adults have taken about four to five times as much COVID-19 vaccine as their Latino and Black counterparts, respectively. They’ve also received twice as many shots as older Asian residents.

The data overall reveal that the COVID-19 vaccinations are mirroring the unbalanced realities New York City—and the nation—have seen throughout the pandemic: Black and Latino residents by and large suffer the highest death rates, which are attributable to inequitable access to health care and housing.

"We've got a profound problem of distrust and hesitancy, particularly in communities of color. We've got a problem of privilege, clearly," de Blasio said. "We've got to have a more systematic approach to ensuring that we focus on the places where the danger is the greatest."

The city did not release ZIP code data—though the mayor indicated the city’s “hard-hit” neighborhoods are suffering the vaccine disparity.

“We know factually the seniors in greatest danger are in those 33 neighborhoods that we’re not seeing as high a vaccination rate in,” de Blasio said. He added that zip code data would be released in the coming days. The data arrive days after Gothamist revealed the city had posted and then removed race and ethnicity data in December.

Similar disparities are emerging among the 20 or so states reporting race and ethnicity data for their vaccine rollouts. In New Jersey, white people have received 48% of the doses administered versus 6% Asian, 3% Black, and 5% Hispanic/Latinx.

In a press briefing on Sunday, Governor Andrew Cuomo said an early statewide assessment of hospital workers also showed less vaccine uptake among Black health care workers, while Asian and Latino health care workers were “overperforming.” Vaccine coverage is slightly higher among white hospital workers relative to their portion of the overall population.

“Listen to this, 70 percent of the hospital workers statewide are white. Sixty-three percent took the vaccine,” Cuomo said. "The Black population among hospital workers is 17 percent. Only 10 percent of vaccine recipients [were Black]."

The governor added that virtually all the hospital workers in the state had been offered the vaccine, and he described this data as “the clearest demonstration of hesitancy” among different racial and ethnic groups. He said the health department is analyzing the demographic data for all citizens now, but that his wager would be it's going to be proportionate to what you see in the hospitals.

Dr. Torian Easterling, the chief equity officer at the city’s health department, said Brooklyn faith leaders have told him hesitancy is apparent—but that there’s also an eagerness to get the vaccine.

“We need to build back trust,” Easterling said. He announced that vaccination equity efforts would now focus on 33 of the hardest-hit neighborhoods, an increase from a previous list of 27.

The new efforts build on the city's current plans, which the city has touted for weeks. There have been multilingual ad campaigns, public housing vaccine sites, and vaccine information sessions—alongside a repeated promise to ensure the disparities that happened during the peak of the virus would not occur again with the vaccines.

De Blasio emphasized a new push to reach public housing residents with additional vaccine sites, upgrade the complicated appointment website, add more languages to these sign-up sites, and create a “family plan” scheduling system for eligible workers to bring their eligible family members. Vaccination hubs in those 33 neighborhoods will have dedicated hours for neighborhood residents.

But, the mayor said: “I think the ultimate solution is to have a big enough supply, again, create momentum, create that kind of grassroots word of mouth effect.” The Biden administration is expected to increase deliveries by 16% this week and release an online planner to aid local distribution.

The head of the racial inclusion and equity task force, Sideya Sherman, emphasized efforts similar to those the city announced in mid-December, to train local leaders and a corps of “vaccine navigators” to help people find resources and make appointments. More than 200 NYCHA staff will be a part of the initiative.

De Blasio said repeated conversations with people unsure about the vaccine would be needed, because those with the highest COVID-19 risk are not receiving the vaccine. “People need to hear from members of their own community,” de Blasio added.

NYC Blows Past All Three COVID Indicators For First Time

GOTHAMIST

BY JAKE OFFENHARTZ

Mayor Bill de Blasio during a press briefing NYC MAYOR'S OFFICE

For the first time since launching the metrics this spring, New York City has surpassed all three infection and hospitalization thresholds meant to monitor the spread of COVID-19.

Mayor Bill de Blasio revealed the troubling milestone during a press conference on Friday, while previewing the launch of a new command center that will soon help distribute a COVID vaccine to New Yorkers.

Suggesting a new gravity of the crisis, de Blasio acknowledged what many experts have already said.

"This is now clearly a second wave in New York City," the mayor said. "There are some communities that the numbers are even higher — that is in some cases directly related to use of masks or unwillingness to use masks. But overwhelming, we’ve got a citywide problem."

Hospitalizations reached 205 on Friday, exceeding the 200 mark for the first time in months. The 7-day average of cases is 2,559 and the rolling positivity average is 5.35% — well above the existing thresholds.

"This is a sign of how deep this crisis is right now," the mayor said.

De Blasio said he'd spoken to the governor on Friday morning, but did not say whether the latest indicators would bring about any additional public health measures.

On Friday, Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered indoor dining closed in New York City beginning on Monday. Take out and delivery service could continue as could outdoor dining. Cuomo had warned earlier this week that indoor dining would likely be shut down in the city should hospitalizations continue to increase.

Across the state, there are currently more than 5,000 people hospitalized with COVID.

New York City hospitals have less than 20% of their beds available, according to state data.

Coronavirus cases are climbing in Midwest

 Coronavirus cases are climbing in Midwest states with previously low infections. / Mark Meadows / UPDATES

WASHINGTON POST

The novel coronavirus is surging in several Midwestern states that had not previously seen high infection rates while average daily deaths remained elevated Monday in Southern and Western states hit with a resurgence of the disease after lifting some restrictions earlier this summer.

Missouri, Montana and Oklahoma are among those witnessing the largest percentage surge of infections over the past week, while, adjusted for population, the number of new cases in Florida, Mississippi and Alabama still outpaced all other states, according to a Washington Post analysis of health data.

Experts also see worrying trends emerging in major East Coast and Midwest cities, and they anticipate major outbreaks in college towns as classes resume in August.

The University of Texas at Austin notified students that parties are prohibited when the campus reopens in three weeks. The school cited city health guidelines prohibiting groups larger than 10 people and requiring a mask when out in public.

President Trump continued his push to fully reopen schools, even as some of the nation’s largest districts are delaying in-person instruction amid continuing spread of the virus. “Ideally, we want to open those schools. We want to open them,” Trump said during a White House news conference

Trump also said the United States is doing much better dealing with the virus than most other countries — a claim inconsistent with the facts — and accused the news media of trying to make him and the country look “as bad as possible.”

The head of the World Health Organization warned “there’s no silver bullet at the moment, and there might never be.” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Monday that “a number of coronavirus vaccines are now in Phase 3 clinical trials, and we all hope to have a number of effective vaccines that can help prevent people from infection.”

He cautioned, however, that “of course there are concerns that we may not have a vaccine that may work,” or that its protection would be short term.

• White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows drew a hard line during the talks.

“In private, [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi began to refer to Meadows as ‘the Enforcer,’ the implication being he was there to ensure [Treasury Secretary Steven] Mnuchin didn’t make a deal with the Democrats,” Seung Min Kim, Erica Werner and Josh Dawsey report. “Unlike in previous rounds, when Pelosi held out for a better deal for Democrats and ultimately forced major concessions from Republicans, this time administration officials, led by Meadows, walked away. Now, Democrats are facing questions about their tactics and whether playing hardball will continue to work when someone like Meadows is intimately involved. … Democrats say it was Meadows more than anyone else who was responsible for the failure to deliver on this round of talks. They had successfully negotiated four bipartisan bills in March and April, mostly before Meadows had officially joined the White House as chief of staff.”

This nugget from the story illustrates how little mutual trust existed between the White House and Democrats: Irritated by leaks, Pelosi instituted a rule forbidding anyone in the negotiations from bringing in their phones, so that talks couldn’t be recorded. But Meadows refused to surrender his device upon entering Pelosi’s office last Wednesday, insisting he had an important call to take. Pelosi told Meadows that the phone had to go or he did. She suggested that Meadows’s aide exit the room with Meadows’s phone and alert him when the call arrived. Meadows said the assistant had to stay to take notes. Finally, Mnuchin intervened, offering up a Treasury Department staffer to exit the room with Meadows’s phone and tell him when the call came through. Meadows accepted that solution — while insisting to Pelosi that he was not the source of any leaks.

“Meadows, 61, was never a legislative guru during his seven years on Capitol Hill — a tenure that was marked more by his willingness to wage ideological internecine warfare against other Republicans. … As a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, Meadows … endorsed an ultimately futile strategy in 2013 to force a government shutdown over funding for the Affordable Care Act. He served on committees that tended to showcase partisanship, rather than consensus. … During one meeting with senior Senate GOP appropriators, Meadows acknowledged that he was in an awkward position of advocating for a deal he would not have supported but that his task now was to help Trump strike an agreement. …  ‘If Mark Meadows were still alive, he’d be appalled at the amount of spending going on around here,’ Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) quipped at a closed-door party lunch on Aug. 5. … Everyone laughed, including Meadows.”

THE DAILY

The global count of confirmed coronavirus cases surpassed 20 million. 

“Worryingly, that number represents double the infections that had been reported as recently as late June. After the first coronavirus cases were found in China in December, it took roughly six months for the worldwide count to reach 10 million. Another 10 million cases have been detected in the past six weeks alone,” Antonia Farzan reports. “Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, noted in a Monday video message that the global death toll was poised to surpass 750,000 this week. Behind such milestones is ‘a great deal of pain and suffering,’ he said, adding that it was ‘never too late to turn the outbreak around.’ ‘My message is crystal clear: suppress, suppress, suppress the virus,’ he said. ‘If we suppress the virus effectively, we can safely open up societies.’”

Millions of members and followers on Facebook support  QAnon conspiracy theory,”

“An internal investigation by Facebook has uncovered thousands of groups and pages, with millions of members and followers, that support the QAnon conspiracy theory,” NBC News reports. “The top 10 groups identified in the investigation collectively contain more than 1 million members, with totals from more top groups and pages pushing the number of members and followers past 3 million. … The company is considering an option similar to its handling of anti-vaccination content, which is to reject advertising and exclude QAnon groups and pages from search results and recommendations.”

Adm has pushed thousands of migrant children back to their home countries

ProPublica reports that the Trump administration has pushed thousands of migrant children back to their home countries since March without legal screenings or protection, citing the risk that they could be carrying the coronavirus: “But by the time the children are boarded on planes home, they’ve already been tested for the virus — and proven not to have it. ICE’s comprehensive testing appears to undermine the rationale for the mass expulsion policy.”

• New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) plans to bring 700,000 students back to school buildings next month. Under the plan, approved by the state, students who opted for in-person instruction will still do much of their learning virtually and will go to the classroom only on certain days to prevent crowding. (Moriah Balingit)
•  

 

Cuomo Urges Caution as Coronavirus Cases Continuing to Flatten. UPDATES

Weeks after ordering a shutdown across the state, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Saturday said the efforts were beginning to pay off and the curve of new coronavirus cases was continuing to flatten.

But, as the focus began to turn to reopening the state and New York City, Mr. Cuomo emphasized that it would be premature to look too far ahead.

“Reopening is both an economic question and a public health question,” he said. “And I’m unwilling to divorce the two. You can’t ask the people of this state or this country to chose between lives lost and dollars gained.”

A rushed decision, he said, could lead to resurgence of the outbreak. “We don’t know if there’s going to be a second wave or not,” he said, urging caution in the rush to get the economy back off the ground. He cited places around the world that had reopened too quickly and experienced resurgences in the virus.

Although New York may have reached an apex in new cases, Cuomo cautioned against reopening businesses and schools too soon. He quoted Winston Churchill that this is “the end of the beginning.”
“The game isn’t over yet,” the governor said. “Are we in the sixth inning? Are we at halftime? No one knows.”

Cuomo warned against politicizing the timeline of lifting quarantine orders and said the decision should be based on ensuring there is not a second wave. He said he was working “hand-in-glove” with President Trump, who has said he is eager to reopen the country and restart the economy.

Cuomo said saving the economy and saving lives should not come at the expense of one another.

Other updates from Mr. Cuomo’s briefing:

The state death toll rose to more than 8,600, up from 7,844 the day before.

Hospitalizations, including the three-day average of new virus patients being admitted to hospitals, were down, as were intubations — considered a sign of the severity of the health crisis.

Potential hot spots on Long Island and in upstate New York appeared to be under control. “We’ve had hot spots, but we attacked them aggressively and we believe that we have stabilized the situation upstate,” the governor said.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the state increased to 180,458, from 170,812. There were 18,654 patients in hospitals, up from 18,569 on Friday, and there were 5,009 patients in intensive care, up from 4,908.
N.Y.C. will move hundreds of homeless people into hotels as deaths in shelters surge.

New York City will begin placing hundreds of single adults, regardless of age and health conditions, into hotel rooms instead of dormitory-style shelters where coronavirus has continued to spread.

About 2,500 people, including those 70 and older, those who are symptomatic or have tested positive for the virus, and those in crowded shelters, will be moved out of shelters and into hotel rooms by April 20.

A coalition of advocacy groups, including the Urban Justice Center and VOCAL-NY, has called on Mr. de Blasio to use 30,000 empty hotel rooms to house not only people living in shelters, but people living on the street and in other congregate settings. The Urban Justice Center began a GoFundMe campaign to begin moving people into hotels independently.

There have been at least 20 deaths among the homeless, including 12 men and one woman from shelters for single adults. About 100 out of the city’s 450 traditional shelters and private apartment buildings and hotels used as shelters are designated for single adults.

An estimated 79,000 people are homeless in the city, and about 5 percent normally live on the street.


New York has so far avoided the surge at hospitals that some models predicted.


On March 24, Governor Cuomo offered the public a dire assessment: To stave off a catastrophe, New York might need up to 140,000 hospital beds and as many as 40,000 intensive care units with ventilators.

Two weeks later, however, with a lockdown across the state, New York has managed to avoid the apocalyptic vision that some forecasters predicted.

The daily death toll has still been staggering: Mr. Cuomo announced on Saturday that an additional 783 people had died of the coronavirus in New York on Friday — the national epicenter of the pandemic — pushing the state’s total to 8,627.

But the number of intensive care beds being used in New York — one of the main measures to track the progress of sick patients — declined for the first time in the crisis on Friday, to 4,908. And the total number hospitalized with the virus, 18,569, was far lower than the darkest expectations.



Nearly 2,000 Dead as Coronavirus Ravages Nursing Homes in N.Y. Region

The facilities knew that frail and aging residents were especially vulnerable to the outbreak, but they were unable to stop it.

The virus has perhaps been cruelest at nursing homes and other facilities for older people, where a combination of factors — an aging or frail population, chronic understaffing, shortages of protective gear and constant physical contact between workers and residents — has hastened its spread.

In all, nearly 2,000 residents of nursing homes have died in the outbreak in the region, and thousands of other residents are sick.

As of Friday, more than half of New York’s 613 licensed nursing homes had reported coronavirus infections, with 4,630 total positive cases and 1,439 deaths, officials said.The actual infection rate in nursing homes is almost certainly higher than the data indicate because few homes have the capacity to test residents. The assumption among many in the industry is that every nursing home in the region has people with Covid-19.

In New York, nursing home administrators said they had been overwhelmed by an outbreak that quickly spun beyond their control. They were unable, they said, to have residents tested to isolate the virus or to get protective equipment to keep workers from getting sick or transmitting the virus to residents.

“The story is not about whether there’s Covid-19 in the nursing homes,” said Scott LaRue, the chief executive of ArchCare, which operates five nursing homes in New York. “The story is, why aren’t they being treated with the same respect and the same resources that everyone else out there is? It’s ridiculous.”

Advocates for nursing home residents in the New York region lashed out at the homes’ owners, saying they were negligent and had hastened the crisis by cutting staff to a minimum.

“The residents are sitting ducks,” said Richard Mollot, the executive director of the Long Term Care Community Coalition.

Andrew M. Cuomo, New York’s governor, said last month that the pandemic was difficult to stop. “Coronavirus in a nursing home can be like fire through dry grass,” he said.

New York State health officials defended their oversight of nursing homes, saying they had adopted a raft of regulations in recent weeks to protect residents.

The regulations barred visitors from homes and ceased all group meals and activities — difficult choices because loneliness is its own plague in nursing homes — and required that every worker be tested for fever or respiratory symptoms at every shift.

Gary Holmes, a state Health Department spokesman, said, “We’ve said from the start that protecting our most vulnerable populations including people in nursing homes is our top priority, and that’s why the state acted quickly and aggressively to issue guidance specifically for these facilities on testing, infection control, environmental cleaning, staffing, visitation, admission, readmission, and outreach to residents and families.”


White House rejects bailout for Postal Service battered by coronavirus

The Postal Service’s decades-long financial troubles have worsened dramatically as the volume of the kind of mail that pays the bills at that agency ― first-class and marketing mail ― withers during the pandemic.

The USPS needs an infusion of money, and President Trump has blocked potential emergency funding for the agency repeating instead the false claim that higher rates for Internet shipping companies Amazon, FedEx and UPS would right the service’s budget.


U.S. surpasses Italy for most confirmed covid-19 deaths in the world

The United States’ covid-19 death tally is now the highest in the world, eclipsing Italy’s toll on Saturday, despite experts calling the U.S. figure “an underestimation.”

The U.S. toll is now 19,424, with nearly half a million confirmed cases, surpassing Italy’s total of 18,849. Italy has 147,577 infected with the virus.

Despite the country’s large elderly population, experts had previously forecast that Italy’s staggering toll was not an outlier so much as a preview of what other countries could expect. The steady climb of cases has slowed, and the Mediterranean country is now preparing to reopen.

Friday marked the highest single-day total yet with at least 2,056 people reported dead from complications related to covid-19 in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to a Washington Post tally. The virus claimed about 1,900 lives in the United States each of the past three days.

Prisoners wearing Hazmat suits bury caskets in huge trenches on New York's Hart Island amid speculation it's become a burial site for coronavirus victims as city's death roll rises to 4,260 

A refrigerated truck has been spotted on New York's Hart Island while prisoners wearing hazmat suits and other protective gear continued to dig mass graves - sparking speculation coronavirus patients may be being buried there.   About a dozen prisoners were seen digging the graves on Thursday as at least one refrigerated truck was brought onto the island. Prisoners from Rikers Island are regularly brought over to dig graves on Hart Island but they are normally dressed in their prison uniforms. The majority of those digging on Thursday were dressed in white, head-to-toe hazmat suits amid the coronavirus pandemic.  The refrigerated truck that was brought onto the island is the same as those currently parked outside hospitals across Manhattan as part of makeshift morgues set up to deal with the number of people dying from the coronavirus outbreak. Authorities have not officially confirmed if coronavirus patients are currently being buried on Hart Island despite morgues overflowing across the city and the death toll continuing to rise.