Martin Van Buren High School, located at 230-17 Hillside Ave. (Google Maps)
Feb. 18, 2021 By Allie Griffin
Queens residents will be able to get vaccinated for COVID-19 at two more sites in the borough this weekend.
A state-run pop-up site will open in Jamaica on Saturday and a permanent city-run vaccination site will open in Queens Village on Sunday.
The Queens Village site was expected to open at Martin Van Buren High School today, but its opening has been postponed due to delays in the shipment of the vaccine caused by winter storms across the country.
“Unfortunately, the Martin Van Buren site will now be … delayed ’til Sunday at the earliest,” de Blasio said. The hours for the 230-17 Hillside Ave. site have yet to be announced.
Meanwhile, the state pop-up site in Jamaica will open just for the day as scheduled from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday. It will be located at the Allen Community Senior Center, at 166-01 Linden Blvd.
The site will reopen in three weeks so those who receive their first dose this Saturday can go back for their second dose.
The Jamaica site is one of 13 community-based pop-up sites that will open across the state in coming days. The 13 temporary sites will collectively have the capacity to vaccinate 3,850 people, according to Governor Andrew Cuomo.
The pop-up vaccination sites are part of a program to bring the vaccine directly into community centers, public housing complexes and religious centers to reach communities of color.
“COVID impacted communities of color at much higher rate, and it exposed the inequalities that have existed in our nation’s health care system for decades,” Governor Cuomo said in a statement.
“These pop-up sites allow us to work with the local leaders and trusted voices in those communities that were hit the hardest by COVID, helping to ensure access to and instill confidence in the vaccine.”
In Jamaica, where the Allen Community Senior Center site is located, just 3 percent of adult residents have received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccination — one of the lowest vaccination rates across the the five boroughs, according to city data.
