SHARE:
Soon after prisoners in New York correctional facilities sued Gov. Andrew Cuomo and won, they began receiving hard-won COVID-19 vaccinations.
The Department of Corrections and Community Supervision wrote in a statement to City & State that it began offering the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to all incarcerated individuals on April 6. As of mid-April, 894 incarcerated individuals and 23 staff members had been vaccinated through this effort.
But then those vaccinations stopped, as the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was put on pause by the federal government on April 13. The department had been using the Moderna vaccine since February.
Getting shots in the arms of inmates to begin with, however, has been a battle. On March 30, a judge ordered the state to administer COVID-19 vaccines to prisoners after a lawsuit from a coalition of advocates argued that Cuomo and state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker had unfairly denied prisoners access to the vaccine.