Less than a week after New York City announced that people aged 75 years and up could get walk-in vaccinations without an appointment at Bronx High School of Science, located at 75 West 205th Street in Jerome Park, the site has been closed entirely, – a blow to local seniors in the Northwest Bronx.

The former school site has been relocated to Edenwald YMCA, which is over three miles away at 1250 East 229th Street in the Edenwald section of the Bronx, effective Thursday, April 15.

The recently implemented walk-in vaccination program at the school site had allowed any New Yorker who was at least 75 years of age to get vaccinated without an appointment, along with one companion. It was exciting news for many seniors in the Northwest Bronx who had been unable to secure an appointment amid convoluted bureaucratic requirements, and because not all were, or are, adept at using the internet in order to make an appointment.

Dinowitz, who represents A.D. 81, and whose son, Eric Dinowitz, was just elected this week as the new City Council member for City Council District 11 in the Northwest Bronx, expressed his “outrage” with the City’s decision to close the site in a letter to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, dated Monday, April 13, the day the City announced that the site would be ceasing operations as a vaccination location at the school.

A new vaccination site, opened at Lehman College on Wednesday, April 14. However, details about the new site were scant, and it was unclear if the new location would be offering the same weekend, walk-up vaccination options as were available at the Bronx High School of Science vaccination site, a key factor for seniors in the local area. Norwood News reached out to Lehman College for more information. On Saturday, April 17, the City confirmed that walk-up COVID-19 vaccinations for New Yorkers aged 50 years and older are now available at City-run vaccination sites: nyc.gov/vcc.

On the same day, Bronx BP Ruben Diaz Jr. confirmed that the following Bronx sites are vaccinating New Yorkers 50+ without an appointment:

• Bronx Co-Op City Dreiser Community Center
• Northeast Bronx YMCA (Edenwald)
• South Bronx Educational Campus
• West Bronx Gymnasium
• Lehman College – Apex Center
• Bathgate Contract Postal Station

The termination of the use of Bronx High School of Science as a mass vaccine site is not entirely unexpected since New York City Department of Education (DOE) is currently preparing for the impending re-opening of all public-school buildings to in-person student instruction. Representatives for Dinowitz contacted the mayor’s office on March 10 to ask about the future of the vaccination site at Bronx High School of Science, when the former Northwest Bronx mass vaccination site, located at the Walton HS campus in Kingsbridge Heights, was relocated to the Bronx High School of Science in February, as reported at the time by Norwood News. 

According to representatives for Dinowitz, no information was provided at that time about when, and for how long, Bronx Science would be used as a vaccination site, once in-person instruction resumed.

As also reported by Norwood News, following Dinowitz’s announcement regarding the previous change of site from Walton High School campus to the nearby Jerome Park site at Bronx High School of Science, long lines were seen in the days following its opening. At the time of that change, Dinowitz had gone to lengths to explain to seniors who did not drive how to access the then new site by public transport, since it was deemed less convenient in terms of public transport connections than the original Walton school site. The reason for the switch, on that occasion, was because the DOE needed to reclaim the Walton HS campus for middle schoolers who were returning to the classroom for in-person learning.

Regarding the most recent change of site, Dinowitz said in a press release, “I am outraged and disgusted that the City could take such a great idea [walk-in vaccinations] and ruin it within such a short time frame. People who are over the age of 75 years old are the least able to navigate the appointment process, and they are the least likely to be able to keep up-to-date with weekly changes to walk-up locations.”

He added, “The City needs to step up and fix this disaster so that seniors in the Northwest Bronx can make their plans to get vaccinated. We need leaders who will make it as easy as possible for people to get vaccinated, and that means having a dedicated and recurring walk-up vaccine location[s] serving every community.”

Dinowitz said the most disappointing element to the ordeal was that he [and others] saw it coming, though he did not specify who these people were. “The only people who seem to have been caught off-guard are the people in charge of making these decisions.” he said. “We need timely communication, empathetic policies that reflect the demographics we are trying to help, and basic common sense to be used when making decisions.”

Norwood News recently reported how the Bronx has the lowest vaccination rate in the City, at 35 percent. Many of the neighborhoods located within Bronx Community Board 7 (CB7), including but not limited to Bedford Park, Jerome Park and Norwood rely on the local Bronx High School of Science site in order to get vaccinated. We also reported on Bronx Community Board 7 Health committee’s efforts to improve vaccination rates in the community.

At the March 16 CB7 health committee meeting, Michelle Avila, the committee chair said, “The Bronx and CB7 neighborhoods have not been faring well in terms of [COVID-19] caseload,” she said. According to the data, the 7-day COVID test positivity rate as of March 21 in the Bronx was 6.5 percent, compared to 2.9 percent in Manhattan. “I think that it’s pretty obvious that we’ve suffered some major losses because of COVID,” Avila said. “Our hope is to try to think about the factors that are contributing to these higher rates. It’s really concerning.”

Attached is a list of Bronx vaccination sites from April 12 to April 18, 2021.

In addition to Yankee Stadium and the Co-op City mass vaccination sites, the Bronx V.A. Hospital, also known as the James J. Peters Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, vaccinates veterans of all ages. Soldiers from the different branches of service had been invited to the Kingsbridge Road medical center to get inoculated with the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine since Friday, Feb. 12.

Vaccine Appointments

Appointments are required to receive a vaccination. To determine your eligibility, access a list of nearby providers, and schedule a vaccination appointment, use New York State’s Am I Eligible app.

New York State: https://am-i-eligible.covid19vaccine.health.ny.gov/ or call 1-833-NYS-4-VAX (1-833-697-4829)

Prior to receiving a scheduled vaccination, residents must complete the New York State COVID-19 Vaccine Form. Please be patient and continue to monitor these links frequently for available vaccine appointments:

VaccineTogetherNY: https://vaccinetogetherny.org/Pages/default.aspx or call 646-697-VACC

To schedule an appointment, go to: https://vax4nyc.nyc.gov/patient/s/ or call the State’s Vaccination Hotline on 1-833-697–4829. To find a vaccination site, go to: https://vaccinefinder.nyc.gov/locations, or or 877-VAX-4NYC (877-829-4692).

Your physician or local pharmacy may also have information on scheduling vaccine appointments.

If you need transportation to get your vaccine appointment, click this link for a list of options: https://forms.ny.gov/s3/vaccine.

To schedule an appointment at Yankee Stadium, you can also call 1-833-SomosNY.  The mass vaccination site opened at Co-Op City on Thursday, March 4, is open to all eligible applicants.

For trustworthy information on the vaccines and the research behind them, go to: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-vaccine-facts.page.

The MTA announced that it has launched a new vaccination site locator on its live subway map. See the map here:

https://map.mta.info/#@40.70949,-73.97853,14z

More Help with Scheduling Vaccine Appointments

Epicenter-NYC is a vetted, volunteer group, assisting New Yorkers to find and schedule vaccine appointments, particularly the elderly, and anyone not adept at using the internet. More details can be found here: https://epicenter-nyc.com/epicenters-vaccine-resources/ or my emailing hello@epicenter-nyc.com.

The turbovax site scans the websites of all providers offering the vaccine throughout the city and lists their available appointments.

Another volunteer group who go by the Twitter handle @VaccineschedNYC and Instagram handle @VaccineSchedulerNYC are also helping vulnerable populations like seniors and non-native English speakers to book vaccine appointments. For questions, contact VaccineSchedulerNYC@gmail.com or phone/text: 646-494-7029.

The administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is currently paused pending an investigation, following reports of blood clots in six American women. On Wednesday, April 14, NBC News reported that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and head of the White House coronavirus task force, said the Johnson & Johnson vaccine pause will last days, not months. Almost 7 million Americans have received the Johnson & Johnson shot so far.

On Friday, April 23, a CDC vaccine advisory committee recommended that the nationwide pause on the use of Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine should be lifted following the completion of the investigation, as reported by The Hill.

The CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 10-4 with one abstention, that the vaccine’s benefits outweigh the risks, and that it will save lives, according to The Hill report.

The report added that the panel did not specifically ask for a warning label, but recommended that the FDA add a label intended to make providers aware of the risk of a rare complication involving blood clots in women under the age of 50.

In accordance with the updated FDA fact sheet, if you receive the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine, and within three weeks, you experience any of the following symptoms, you should contact your health care provider:

• Severe headache
• Chest or abdominal pain
• Leg pain or swelling
• Shortness of breath
• Easy bruising or tiny blood spots under the skin at the site of injection

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.