NEW YORK NOW - New York state will receive a boost in the number of vaccine doses starting next week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo confirmed Tuesday after President Joe Biden announced a national effort to increase deliveries to states.
New York will receive about 16% more doses than it was previously getting from the federal government, Cuomo said.
The state, in recent weeks, has received about 250,000 doses of the vaccine from the federal government. An increase of 16% would put New York’s supply at about 290,000 each week for the next three weeks.
That will help the state plan its distribution of the vaccine, Cuomo said.
"Now, the states will know what they're getting every week for the next three weeks, and we're getting 16-17% more," Cuomo said in an interview on CNN.
It’s unclear if supply levels will continue at a higher rate after the three weeks, though the Biden administration has pledged to use the federal Defense Production Act to boost doses of the injection.
Those efforts could allow 300 million vaccinations by the end of the summer, the Biden administration said Tuesday.
In New York, more than 1.2 million people have received the first dose of the vaccine, with more than 7 million people currently eligible to be inoculated. Of the state’s supply of first vaccine doses, 93% had been administered Tuesday.