New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks at a news conference on September 08, 2020 in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is proposing a law to make it a crime to sell or administer coronavirus vaccine shots to people who are trying to skip ahead in line.
“This vaccine can be like gold to some people,” Cuomo said at a press briefing Monday. “If there’s any fraud in the distribution — you’re letting people get ahead of other people, or friends or family, or they’re selling the vaccine — you’ll lose your license, but I do believe it should be criminal and I’m going to propose a law to that effect.”
Cuomo said providers can lose their license if they fraudulently administer vaccines, though the law would add criminal penalties if approved by the state legislature. So far, health-care workers and people living in nursing homes and assisted living facilities are eligible for Covid-19 vaccines.
New York has already started administering Covid-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, though the rollout has been slower than planned. Cuomo pushed the state’s hospitals to administer the vaccine faster. He said hospitals are facing fines of up to $100,000 if they don’t administer their allocations of coronavirus vaccines by the end of this week.
The state has received more than 774,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses but has administered just 237,000 as of Saturday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Hospitals that have received Covid-19 vaccines over the last three weeks have only used roughly 46% of the doses on average, according to a slide Cuomo presented at the briefing. While some hospitals have administered nearly all of their doses, others have used as little as 15%, according to the governor.
“This is a management issue of the hospitals. They have to move the vaccine, and they have to move the vaccine faster,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo said the New York State Department of Health sent a letter on Sunday to all hospitals saying if they don’t use their vaccine allocations by the end of this week, they’ll be fined up to $100,000 and they won’t receive any further allocations.
Moving forward, the state’s hospitals will be required to use their doses within a week of receiving them. Providers who fall seriously behind could be issued further sanctions, he said.
“You have the allocation, we want it in people’s arms as soon as possible,” Cuomo said. “We’ll use other hospitals who can administer it better.”
This is a developing story. Please check back later for updates.
