More COVID-19 vaccines are coming to Hudson County with Jersey City opening FEMA-run sites next week, as well as receiving 1,500 Johnson & Johnson vaccines, the majority of which will be distributed in North Hudson.
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
“As we have said for weeks, Hudson County has succeeded in building out our vaccine distribution capacity but we need more doses to ramp up our program to the level required to make sure our residents are safe,” Hudson County Executive DeGise said in a statement.
“While we still need more vaccine supply, these latest developments will allow our county site and our municipal partners to expand our operations and give more of our residents these critical, life saving vaccines.”
In partnership with Gov. Phil Murphy and Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, the county is helping to launch a new FEMA-run community vaccine distribution program in Jersey City next week that will operate out of local churches in the Bergen/Lafayette and Heights sections of the city.
The program will begin on March 8th and will provide 3,000 first and second doses that will be targeted at underserved communities within Jersey City.
“Jersey City’s vaccination program is expanding week by week with our second distribution site recently opening at Ferris High School, and this new FEMA site will be a great help in scaling our distribution up further,” added Mayor Steven Fulop.
“I would like to thank Governor Murphy and County Executive DeGise for their continuing assistance in protecting Jersey City residents.”
Additionally, Hudson County has received 1,500 doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, which requires just one shot as opposed to two, to be distributed this week after it was recently granted emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration.
With the opening of the new FEMA site in Jersey City, a majority of those doses will be allocated to North Hudson to continue efforts in vaccinating the hardest to reach communities in Hudson County.
This will be welcome news in West New York, where officials were pleading for more doses yesterday in light of less than three percent of their population receiving vaccinations.
Furthermore, the Palisade Medical Center has received 1,100 doses of the Pfizer vaccine to help vaccinate any Hudson County resident who is 75 years or older – the same parameters the county-run vaccination site in Kearny is using this week.
To that end, the county has already notified each town’s health officer of this vaccination opportunity and Palisades Medical Center has already been in contact with North Bergen and West New York.
Other towns are currently working to assist their senior residents with scheduling an appointment to be vaccinated at the hospital.
Hudson County has also shared a list of 2,600 seniors over 75 with the hospital who have registered online to be vaccinated but have not yet received a vaccine.
Last week, Hudson faced scrutiny as data showed they had the lowest vaccination rate per population out of New Jersey’s 21 counties, with County Commissioner Bill O’Dea noting that in would take two years to inoculate eligible residents with only 5,500 total doses per week available.
