Older NY inmates begin receiving COVID vaccines, one month after Health officials described prisoner priority
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Assembly Correction Committee Chair David Weprin, a candidate for city comptroller, has urged the state to vaccinate inmates in jails and prisons a month after top state health officials told Democratic lawmakers they would prioritize prisoners. Photo via Weprin campaign
By David Brand
New York prisoners over age 65 began receiving the COVID-19 vaccine Friday, a full month after top state health officials told Democratic lawmakers they were making all inmates a priority in the vaccine rollout plan.
A spokesperson for the Department of Correction and Community Supervision said the state had begun administering the vaccine to 1,075 inmates over 65 across New York on Friday.
But Assemblymember David Weprin, chair of the corrections committee, said that effort is a drop in the bucket with more than 40,000 people behind bars. The state should uphold a commitment to vaccinating all inmates outlined by Health Commissioner Howard Zucker and Larry Schwartz, an aide to Gov. Cuomo, during a closed-door conference last month, he said.
Zucker and Schwartz told Assembly Democrats on Jan. 5 that inmates would receive their vaccines at the same time as corrections staff, according to Weprin and six other lawmakers at the meeting. Zucker and Schwartz later told Republicans the opposite, NY1 reported at the time.
“They made it clear that they were going to vaccinate everyone so I’m a little bit disturbed,” Weprin said. “It should be made a priority because it’s a real dangerous congregate setting where the spread is huge and the potential spread is dangerous.”
While correction officers and other employees have received the vaccines, a tiny percentage of inmates have been made eligible. Even fewer have received their first dose, despite a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation that inmates be prioritized for vaccines.
Weprin, a candidate for city comptroller, said he hoped a lawsuit filed Thursday by the New York Civil Liberties Union, Legal Aid and other public defender groups would spur the state to make every inmate eligible, as per the CDC guidelines.
“I wasn’t behind the lawsuit, but I strongly support the effort to vaccinate every employee, every officer and every incarcerated person in the state,” Weprin said. “If you think it spreads quickly in nursing homes, multiply that in correctional facilities.”
A judge last month ordered the state to administer the COVID-19 vaccine to a 65-year-old inmate with a respiratory illness. Two weeks later, the state began the process for vaccinating all older adults.
Weprin said that initiative alone won’t protect the vast majority of inmates as COVID surges behind bars. He called on the state to go further to protect older detainees.
“That’s not enough. A lot of these inmates over 65, if they’re not dangerous, they should be considering releasing them because they’re older inmates and they’re vulnerable,” Weprin said.
“Just vaccinating inmates over 65 is not going to do it, you have to vaccinate everyone,” he added.
Nearly 5,200 inmates have contracted COVID-19 in New York prisons, with more than 600 currently sick with the illness, according to state reports. At least 31 inmates and seven staff members have died of the coronavirus, the data shows.
Another 4,403 state correction employees have also contracted COVID. Seven have died.
A Manhattan woman named Tessa said her 33-year-old son has asthma and fears for his life in Elmira Correctional Facility, where at least 620 people have tested positive for the coronavirus.
“He’s very stressed. He’s staying in his cell for the majority of the time because that’s his only way to social distance, so he is frustrated and scared,” said Tessa, who asked not to use her unique last name because she feared retaliation against her son.
Her son receives one disposable mask every two weeks and has stopped using the telephone to talk with her because he is concerned about virus particles on the receiver, she said.
“My son was diagnosed with asthma since he was 1 and a lot of people in that situation are more susceptible should they catch the virus,” she said. “It seems like it’s now a death sentence.”
Inside New York City jails, only about 250 inmates have received their first dose of the vaccine, while roughly 250 eligible inmates declined their shots, Correctional Health Services said.
As of Jan. 25, about 500 New York City Department of Correction and more than 500 CHS employees had received the vaccine, the Eagle reported last month.
Queens Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani condemned Zucker and Schwartz for failing to follow through on the vaccine plan they described at the meeting — and for telling Republicans that the state would wait to give inmates their first doses.
“Larry Schwartz sat unmasked alongside Commissioner Zucker and lied to the Assembly Majority Conference,” Mamdani said. “He said that incarcerated New Yorkers would be vaccinated at the same time as corrections officers within the category of 1b.”
“Now, weeks later, we have still yet to hear of a comprehensive vaccination plan for incarcerated New Yorkers,” he added.
