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 "There's so many emotions wrapped up in what's happening right now
and I'd like to be an inspiration for people who are wondering, 'Can
I do this? Should I do this?'," said Zain, 47 after getting the shot
at Brooklyn Army Terminal on a frigid Sunday afternoon. "You should
do it because this is the way to move forward."
The Brooklyn site is one of two mass vaccination locations that
opened in New York City on Sunday. The second one is located at
Bathgate Contract Postal Station in the borough of the Bronx.
The mass sites were open for part of the day on Sunday before they
start operating round the clock, seven days a week on Monday as part
of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's push to set up 250
vaccination locations to meet the ambitious goal of inoculating 1
million New Yorkers by the end of the month.
Three other smaller sites also opened on Sunday in Brooklyn, the
Bronx and in Queens.
In New York, like in much of the United States, efforts to get the
two vaccines that have so far been authorized into the arms of
Americans have moved slower than hoped due to a slew of issues. They
included strict rules controlling who should get inoculated first,
with some healthcare workers at the front of the line declining the
shots, and a lack of planning or direction on the federal level.
As of early Sunday, New York City had administered 203,181 doses of
the vaccines to its residents out of more than 524,000 doses that
have been delivered, data from the city's health department showed.
On Friday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who previously said all
healthcare workers should be inoculated before the state moved on to
other categories, changed course, saying people aged 75 and over
could receive the shot starting on Monday.
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 The U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) has said healthcare
workers and nursing home residents and staff
should have priority for the limited supply of
vaccines. The agency softened that guidance on
Friday, recommending that states move to those
next on the list - people over age 75 and so
called "essential" workers - to accelerate
lagging vaccination programs.
The United States is now averaging 3,000 deaths and 245,000 new
cases a day, according to a Reuters tally of public health data.
Surging hospitalizations and overflowing intensive care units are
stretching healthcare systems to the breaking point.
North Carolina and Virginia both set one-day records for new cases
on Saturday. They are among 22 states that have set records for
daily infections this month, and health experts warn new variants of
the virus may lead to an even greater surge in infections.
A highly transmissible variant of the novel coronavirus first
detected in the United Kingdom in December has now been found in at
least nine U.S. states.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former head of the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration who sits on the board of Pfizer Inc which makes one
of the U.S. authorized vaccines, warned of the need for a better
system to detect and combat new COVID-19 variants from the UK and
South Africa.
"We're going to have to update our vaccines and our antibody drugs
and other therapeutics regularly to keep up with these new variants
as they emerge," Gottlieb said in an interview with CBS' 'Face the
Nation' on Sunday.
(Reporting by Andrew Kelly and Maria Caspani in New York, Additional
reporting by Lisa Shumaker in Chicago; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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