When Money Can't Buy Shots: New York City's Vaccine Holdouts
Far Rockaway and Bedford-Stuyvesant are the least inoculated neighborhoods
A worker waits for patients outside a city-operated mobile pharmacy in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesNew York City, once the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic, is hitting a plateau in vaccinating enough of its population against the virus. In the ZIP codes with the lowest participation rates, reasons for resisting the shot range from mistrust and misinformation to inaccessibility and indifference.
In Far Rockaway, Queens, only 34% of residents are vaccinated, according to data from the city’s health department. Dmitriy Gelfand, who owns the Smartshop Pharmacy on Beach Channel Drive, says demand for shots has dissipated since March and he now has 200 Moderna vaccines he’s struggling to give away.