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Those sites are:
Nassau County:
- Lakeview Public Library on Woodfield Road in Rockville Centre on Thursday, March 18.
Suffolk County:
- Congressional Church of Patchogue on East Main Street on Friday, March 19.
They are among 16 new community-based pop-up vaccination sites coming online this week at churches, community centers, public housing complexes, and cultural centers in downstate New York to “bolster the state’s commitment to ensuring fairness and equity in the vaccine distribution process.”
The sites are expected to vaccinate more than 4,500 people this week, with more sites expected to open up in the coming weeks. Since the community-based pop-up sites starting going online last month more than 55,000 New Yorkers have received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at 145 sites.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who received his Johnson & Johnson vaccine this week at a pop-up site in Harlem, said that the sites will be re-established in three weeks to administer the second doses to those who receive the first this week.
"Our strategically placed pop-up sites have been invaluable in helping us reach New Yorkers living in vulnerable communities and to make the vaccine accessible to them," Cuomo said. "We will continue to work with trusted community leaders to address hesitancy around the vaccine and correct the injustice that poor communities suffered when COVID ambushed our state.
"The vaccine works, and we will use every tool at our disposal to make sure Black and Brown New Yorkers are not left behind in the distribution process."
The pop-up sites receive a limited amount of the vaccine, which is earmarked for certain members of the community, officials noted.
"No state is doing a better job at safe, effective, equitable vaccine distribution than New York, and we are working tirelessly every single day to get shots into arms quickly and become the first COVID-free state in the country," Cuomo said.
"We are ramping up our vaccine distribution system to match increases in supply, but a distribution system can't just grow - it has to grow equitably. That's why from the outset we've prioritized the fair and equitable distribution of the vaccine through special efforts like pop-up sites that are being established in the communities that were hit hardest by COVID to help ensure underserved New Yorkers are not left behind in the distribution process."
Vaccination sites are planned for all 33 NYCHA Senior Housing Developments, and at more than 300 churches and cultural centers that volunteered to house the sites.
“COVID brought the ugly truth of inequity and inequality in this country to a tipping point," Cuomo said. "COVID has killed Black and Latino New Yorkers at a higher rate and that is why these community-based sites are one of New York's vaccine priorities.
“The light at the end of the tunnel is bright and getting brighter with each new location and each shot administered."
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