Governor Cuomo: "On their vaccination plan, I think it's deeply flawed because the premise of the plan is what they call a public-private sector partnership, which sounds great. But, the main distribution would be private pharmacies. CVS, Walgreens, et cetera, and private providers. That is a very limited distribution mechanism. They do not provide for a state to organize vaccination with state personnel on any scale. So you have a limited distribution network."
Cuomo: "We know the capacity of the network because we now have it engaged. It could take one year to vaccinate the population using only a private sector network. This country can't afford to take one year to do vaccinations. So, I think their fundamental plan, while simplistic, is deeply flawed."
Earlier today, after receiving a briefing on the federal government's COVID-19 vaccine plan, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo called the plan "deeply flawed".
AUDIO of today's remarks is available here.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Last point, I was on a call today held by the White House Coronavirus Task Force to talk about the vaccine process. Dr. Birx made the point on the call of asking the governors to make sure they're urging masks. It would be nice if that's what the CDC and the White House Coronavirus Task Force is urging if the president was consistent and had a national mask mandate rather than lose 130,000 Americans.
On their vaccination plan, I think it's deeply flawed because the premise of the plan is what they call a public-private sector partnership, which sounds great. But, the main distribution would be private pharmacies. CVS, Walgreens, et cetera, and private providers. That is a very limited distribution mechanism. They do not provide for a state to organize vaccination with state personnel on any scale. So you have a limited distribution network.
That same network they're talking about is the network we currently use to do the COVID testing, right. We've contracted with these pharmacies to do COVID testing. First you now have this same network doing COVID testing and asking them also to do vaccinations on top of it. You'd have to sacrifice one or the other, either the number of COVID tests you're taking or the number of vaccinations they could perform. Secondarily, you do not get the necessary scale to do the vaccinations on an expeditious basis. For example, we've used this network to do the COVID testing. We have done, in New York, 13 million tests over seven months with this network. Nationwide, we've done 130 million COVID tests with this network. In New York, instead of doing 13 million COVID tests we have to do 40 million vaccinations. It's every person twice - two dosages. Nationwide, it wouldn't be 130 million tests, you'd have to do 660 million vaccinations. We know the capacity of the network because we now have it engaged. It could take one year to vaccinate the population using only a private sector network. This country can't afford to take one year to do vaccinations. So, I think their fundamental plan, while simplistic, is deeply flawed.
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