Cuomo to Hospitals: Use the COVID-19 Vaccine or Lose It

New York state will fine hospitals and other administrators of the COVID-19 vaccine up to $100,000 if they don’t use their full inventory of the inoculation by the end of this week, and every week thereafter, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday.

The warning came after Cuomo and state health officials faced recent criticism over the speed of the state’s vaccine rollout, which began last month.

“This is a very serious public health issue and the Department of Health is very firm about making sure the hospitals step up and deliver here,” Cuomo said.

If a medical provider doesn’t use its allocation of the COVID-19 vaccine within seven days of receiving it, they could be disqualified from receiving future shipments of the vaccine, Cuomo said. Those doses would instead go to other providers for distribution.

Some hospitals in New York have distributed less than a third of what they were sent by the state to vaccinate the first phase of individuals, Cuomo said.

New York City’s public hospital system has used 31% of its supply of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the state. Some hospitals have used as little as 15% of what they were allocated.

On the flip side, some hospitals have already nearly exhausted their supply of the vaccine.The New York Presbyterian Healthcare System in downstate New York has used 99% of its vaccine supply. Oswego Hospital in Central New York has done the same.

Cuomo called the disparity a “management issue,” and said hospital administrators need to either move their supply of the vaccine faster or face consequences.

“This is a management issue of the hospitals,” Cuomo said. “They have to move the vaccine and they have to move the vaccine faster.”

Nursing home residents who haven’t been vaccinated could also receive their first dose this week, Cuomo said, as the state seeks to target that population. He predicted that 85% of nursing home residents in New York will be vaccinated by the end of this week.

New York had opted into a federal program to vaccinate nursing home residents last month, but Cuomo said it wasn’t moving as fast as he’d like. The state, he said, is going to supplement those efforts.

“The federal program has not worked as quickly as we’d like,” Cuomo said. “We’re going to step in and make it work.”

The state is also beginning to form a network of locations that will serve as pop-up vaccination sites in future phases of the rollout, Cuomo said. Those sites will be at places like churches, community centers, and public housing.