NYS governor criticizes federal gov't vaccination plan

NEW YORK - New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo on Monday once again criticized the federal government's COVID-19 vaccination plan as "flawed" and expressed concern that some disadvantaged communities might be deprived of the opportunity to be vaccinated in time.

"They're going to take this vaccine and they're going to go through the private mechanism: through hospitals, through drug market chains, et cetera. That's going to be slow and that's going to bypass the communities that we call health care deserts," he said.

"Why do we have such a disparity in the infection rate and the mortality rate in COVID? Because some communities don't have the same access to health care," the governor told Good Morning America on national television network ABC.

"The Trump administration denied COVID so they were never ready for it. There was no mobilization of the government," he added.

Cuomo said that he has been talking to other governors across the nation on how to shape the Trump administration's vaccine plan "to fix it or stop it before it does damage."

During the past months, Cuomo has repeatedly slammed the federal government's vaccination endeavor and said that it has flaws. The National Governors Association, which he chairs, has sent letters to the Trump administration to press for explanation or improvement of its plan.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Department of Defense (DoD) in mid-September released two documents outlining detailed strategy of the U.S. government to deliver COVID-19 vaccine doses to the American people.

The documents, developed by the HHS in coordination with the DoD and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), provide a strategic distribution overview along with an interim playbook for state, tribal, territorial, and local public health programs and their partners on how to plan and operationalize a vaccination response to COVID-19.

Vaccinations would start gradually among some segments of the population -- such as health workers, other essential workers, and the more vulnerable -- before eventually ramping up for distribution to all who want it, according to a Fox News report.