BP RICHARDS ON ARRIVAL OF COVID-19 VACCINE IN QUEENS

(December 14, 2020 at 2:10pm)

QUEENS, NY – Queens Borough President Donovan Richards stated the following in response to today’s arrival of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine in New York City, which was administered first to Northwell Health Long Island Jewish Medical Center nurse Sandra Lindsay in Queens.

“More than 95,000 Queens residents have contracted COVID-19 over the past nine months, including more than 6,000 of our friends, neighbors and loved ones whom we’ve lost to this unforgiving virus. Today’s arrival of a COVID-19 vaccine will not lessen our collective pain, but today’s historic feat of science and medicine is the day we permanently altered the course of this pandemic — saving countless lives in the process,” said Borough President RICHARDS. “It is not lost on Queens — the epicenter of the epicenter of this pandemic, where communities of color were hit with starting severity — that a Black female healthcare hero administered New York State’s first dose of the vaccine to another Black female healthcare hero. As vaccines become more widely available, a just recovery from COVID-19 and the inequalities in our society it exposed means routing these life-saving inoculations toward our historically underserved and hardest hit communities. 

Follow the Office of the Queens Borough President via @QnsBPRichards on Twitter and @QueensBPRichards on Facebook and Instagram

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