NYC to Give Away Tickets to Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Cyclones for Covid Shots
NYC to Give Away Tickets to Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Cyclones for Covid Shots
(Bloomberg) -- New York City will give away free tickets to Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Cyclones baseball, botanical gardens and other venues as incentives to get a Covid-19 vaccine in a bid to increase protection in the most populous U.S. city.
“Each person who gets vaccinated helps move everything forward,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio, in a Monday briefing. “We’ve gotten to the point where supply exceeds demand.”
De Blasio said the city has administered more than 7 million shots, but the rate has dropped precipitously since April, when it doled out as many as 115,000 vaccinations in a single day. On Friday, fewer than 60,000 shots were distributed, and fewer than 16,000 were given to residents on Sunday.
While 3 million New Yorkers are fully vaccinated, de Blasio has vowed to reach 5 million fully vaccinated residents by June. The city has started allowing people to walk into sites to get the shot without appointments, and said it would start rolling out more incentives. Elsewhere in the region, New Jersey has a campaign to give free beers for people who get vaccines and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced last week that fans at Citi Field and Yankee Stadium who get the vaccine at the ballpark will be able to receive a free ticket for a future game.
De Blasio said he doesn’t foresee cash incentives or penalties for not getting the vaccine. “The incentives help and the convenience helps,” he said.
Young people are the major laggards: Less than a quarter of New Yorkers age 18 to 24 are fully vaccinated, compared with 65% of people age 65 to 74, according to city data. The coverage also varies greatly by neighborhood: Around 80% of residents in Manhattan’s Financial District are fully vaccinated, for example, compared with 28% in Hunts Point in the Bronx.
De Blasio also said New York has hit a six-month low for the number of Covid cases and that the city re-opened all public libraries as of Monday. The city’s positivity rate has dropped to around 2%, he said.
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