As soon as next week, the state is expecting 346,000 additional doses from the drugmaker Moderna, which is still waiting for F.D.A. approval for emergency use of its vaccine.
Those initial batches will begin to cover just over a quarter of the estimated 1.8 million people prioritized to receive the vaccine in the first phase of distribution in the state. Getting through those high-priority vaccinations will also take some time — state officials project to conclude the first phase sometime in January.
Dec. 14, 2020, 9:23 a.m. ET
New York officials expect to receive the Pfizer vaccine in three waves this week from Kalamazoo, Mich., where the drugmaker has its largest manufacturing site. Most of the shipments are anticipated to land in Albany, New York’s capital, and New York City, and they will go to about 90 sites, mostly hospitals, that have the proper cold storage. Some doses will be trucked into the state.
The doses that arrived on Monday landed at Kennedy International Airport at 5:40 a.m. and were trucked to the hospital in Queens earlier than anticipated by Cuomo administration officials, who were tracking the 63-pound box of vials through a U.P.S. phone app.
The second phase of vaccinations will cover so-called essential workers, an expansive category of workers that has yet to be defined, but which may include police officers, firefighters, teachers, pharmacists, grocery store workers, public transit employees and others. This stage would also include individuals in the general population with comorbidities and underlying health conditions that especially put them at risk to contracting the virus.
Across the region, officials have begun preparation for the vaccine’s arrival.
In New Jersey, where nearly 18,000 deaths have been linked to the virus, the first doses of vaccine will be administered to nurses in Newark, the state’s hardest-hit city. Staff members from University Hospital, New Jersey’s only public hospital, will be first in line, beginning at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, state officials said.
Vaccinations will begin soon after at five additional hospitals with subzero freezers in Camden, Atlantic City, Hackensack, New Brunswick and Morristown, the officials said.