Brooklyn’s Largest Vaccine Site, At Medgar Evers College, Opens Wednesday

A mass vaccination site at Medgar Evers College in Crown Heights will open on Wednesday, February 24rd, at 231 Crown Street between Rogers and Nostrand Avenues. The site will be able to administer up to 3,000 vaccinations per day, making it one of the largest vaccination centers in the state.

“The vaccine is the weapon that will win the war,” Governor Andrew Cuomo said announcing the news. “We know that. The vaccine is coming.”

There will be additional bus service to help residents get to the site, the governor said, particularly along the B49 bus route, which connects Brighton Beach and Bed-Stuy to Medgar Evers.  The state said “more details on the enhanced routes will be released in the coming days as the MTA expects to add more stops and more dedicated service from community centers along select routes.”

The state will also partner with faith leaders to conduct phone banking efforts in nearby communities to encourage more residents to sign up for appointments. The list of participating entities includes churches across central and eastern Brooklyn.

Cuomo said the site was being established through a partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Guard.

The site will operate daily from 8:00am to 8:00pm. Eligible New Yorkers can sign up for vaccinations by visiting the site once it opens, by using New York’s ‘Am I Eligible’ website or by calling the state’s vaccination hotline at 1-833-697-4829.

For the first week of scheduling, appointments at the site are reserved for those living in areas of the borough with low vaccination rates, including the zip codes: 11207, 11212, 11208, 11206, 11233, 11213, 11221, 11226, 11236, 11216, 11225, 11210, 11203, and 11238.

After one week, appointments at each site will be made available to all eligible Brooklyn residents.

Central Brooklyn neighborhoods, many of which are predominantly black, have had some of the lowest vaccination rates in the city. More broadly, vaccination rates among Black and Latino residents have trailed that of the broader population, raising concerns about persistent inequities as the city and state seek to put the worst of the pandemic in the rearview mirror.

The Medgar Evers is part of an effort to rectify those disparities. The state is also working to establish pop-up vaccine sites at all 33 NYCHA Senior Housing Developments, at other public housing complexes across the state, and at more than 300 churches and cultural centers that have volunteered to house vaccine sites through the state’s Vaccine Equity Task Force.

The pandemic “has already taken so much from communities of color, from our NYCHA residents, from our churches, from our families,” said Assembly Member Latrice Walker, who was also at the press conference. “Especially, especially here in Brooklyn. I encourage residents in the qualifying areas for this site to come down and get the vaccine.”