#Cuomo wants his experts to review COVID-19 vaccine before distribution

ALBANY — Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants his own team of in-house experts to review a federally approved COVID-19 vaccine before distributing the drug to millions of New Yorkers, arguing Monday he doesn’t think the FDA and CDC’s recommendations are “safe.”

“You’re going to say to the American people: now here’s a vaccine, it was new, it was done quickly but trust this federal administration and their health administration that it’s safe and we’re not 100 percent sure of the consequences?” said Cuomo during a “Good Morning America” interview to promote his new book “American Crisis.”

“I think it’s going to be a very skeptical American public about taking the vaccine and they should be. We’re going to put together our own group of doctors and medical experts to review the vaccine and the efficacy and the protocol and if they say it’s safe then I’ll go to the people of New York and I’ll say it’s safe with that credibility,” he added.

“You’re going to need someone other than this FDA and this CDC saying it’s safe.”

Cuomo released a vaccine distribution plan over the weekend outlining a network between the state Health Department, hospitals, urgent-care centers, primary-care locations, pharmacies across the Empire State — in anticipation of the release of a coronavirus vaccine in the near future, as promised by the Trump administration.

The state review panel would devise distribution plans and prioritize administering doses to the most vulnerable and health care workers, followed by targeting areas of the state seeing spikes in positive infection rates.

“The day we get the vaccine we then have to prove to the American people that it’s safe. We then have to administer millions of doses,” Cuomo continued.

“That is a massive undertaking that this administration hasn’t even talked about and is going to take months and if it’s not done right will be a debacle like January and February when we made so many mistakes with the COVID virus.”