Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) this week announced a new campaign to reduce vaccine hesitancy in the state that would include door-to-door efforts.
The story: Cuomo announced the new campaign during a press briefing on Monday. He said the state would allocate $15 million from the state’s budget to promote vaccinations in an effort that would take a community-based approach and would involve people going door-to-door to talk to New Yorkers who have not been vaccinated, as well as PSAs, and other community conversations.
What he said: “We cannot go through what we went through over the past year,” the governor said. “We can’t, we can’t. You can’t, I can’t, the economy can’t, society can’t. We can’t go through it again.”
Cuomo argued that to combat vaccine hesitancy “we need a different approach and the approach has to be community-based organizations who can have conversations in the community with people who know them culturally, know their issues, their fears.”
They would then “address [their fears and questions] with facts,” he said.
“And we have to get in those communities, and we have to knock on those doors, and we have to convince people, and put them in a car and drive them and get that vaccine in their arm. That is the mission,” the Democrat mayor said during Monday’s press conference.
“This budget funding will help us target outreach efforts in the state’s most vulnerable communities to make sure that everyone is able to get vaccinated,” he added.
The numbers: According to the governor, 25% of the population in New York is unvaccinated. Cuomo claimed that even as the majority of New Yorkers are vaccinated, the remaining number is still high and represents 3.5 million people.
“These numbers can be hard to put into context, but 3.5 million is larger than 21 other states’ total population. We have an unvaccinated population larger than the entire population of 21 states, and then when you put this COVID delta variant — which is transmitted much easier than the normal COVID virus — you put that variant with 3.5 million people, that spells ‘spread of COVID.’ That is what is happening. We know that’s what’s happening, we see it in the numbers, and numbers don’t lie,” he said.
New York reported 1,982 coronavirus cases on Sunday, which is up from 346 new cases the state recorded one month ago.
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