District 11 City Council Member Eric Dinowitz has called on the City’s health commissioner, Dr. Dave A. Chokshi, and on the commissioner for the Department for the Aging, Lorraine Cortes-Vazquez, to immediately move to reopen the city’s senior centers. In his letter, the council member said the centers have long been the only place where many older adults receive food, interact with others, and maintain some level of routine in their lives.

 

“While these centers have remained closed since the onset of the pandemic, we have seen many other facilities across
NYC start to open in a safe and calculated way,” he wrote.

 

Senior centers have been closed since the COVID-19 outbreak in the city in March 2020, although many have been permitted to provide some services remotely, like wellness checks and food distribution. A recent order to partially open the centers has facilitated the provision of “grab and go meals.”

“The partial reopening that provides grab and go meals has been a good start, but there are other needs that our neighbors are losing out on,” said Dinowitz. “The in-person interactions that have been missing for over a year have certainly taken its toll on our older adult residents, many who have been homebound and isolated,” he said.

 

The COVID-19 vaccination rate in The Bronx, as of May 27, stands at 33 percent, according to the City’s health department data, meaning just 33 percent of Bronx residents are fully vaccinated. This remains the lowest of all five boroughs. Meanwhile, 41 percent of Bronx residents have received one COVID-19 vaccination dose.

 

The citywide vaccination rate is 42 percent. In Manhattan, the rate is 54 percent, in Brooklyn, 37 percent, in Queens, 46 percent and on Staten Island, the rate is 40 percent. To achieve herd immunity,

As reported by The New York Times, earlier in the pandemic, the target herd immunity threshold was estimated to be about 60 to 70 percent of the population. Most experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical advisor to U.S. President Joe Biden, expected that the United States would be able to reach that, once vaccines were available, the Times reported.

 

However, the report stated that daily vaccination rates are slipping, and there is a broad consensus now among scientists and public health experts that the 60 to 70 percent herd immunity threshold is not attainable — at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever.

 

Although vaccination rates in the 65 and older age-group in the Bronx are higher than in the general population, as we have learned from experience and from contact tracing, it only takes one person (potentially a younger worker at a center) to cause a potentially large outbreak, since not all seniors are vaccinated.

Meanwhile, with the heat that Gov. Andrew Cuomo is facing following the recent report published by the Office of the Attorney General, Laetitia James, in terms of the State’s handling of the coronavirus crisis vis-à-vis State nursing homes, in the earlier stages of the pandemic, it is likely that the governor may want to proceed very cautiously when it comes to the reopening of any facilities involving seniors.

 

To date, 4,548 Bronxites have died from COVID-19, and of all of those who died across the state from the illness (42,653), the majority were over 60 years of age, many likely living in senior homes. The Bronx was disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 crisis, both in terms of mortality and of positive cases, according to State and City data.

 

The full text of Dinowitz’s letter is attached.