Harlem Nears 70 Percent Vaccination Rate, But Pace Slows: Data

HARLEM, NY — Hundreds of Harlemites residents continue to get vaccinated each week, data shows, pushing the neighborhood closer to the 70-percent mark — though recent mandates do not appear to have quickened the pace by much.

As of Sunday, about 69 percent of Harlem residents had gotten at least one shot of the coronavirus vaccine, according to a Patch analysis of city data. At the start of June, that number was just 47 percent.

But as the overall rate has continued creeping up, the pace of vaccinations has slowed down in Harlem, the data shows.

Following a late-summer surge where more than 4,000 residents got vaccinated each week, things have slowed down considerably in the weeks since. Between Oct. 13 and Oct. 20, for example, only 2,268 people got a first dose of the vaccine.

In the week between Oct. 27 and Nov. 3, at least 2,595 Harlemites got vaccinated. That seven-day stretch coincided with the Nov. 1 deadline for 378,000 city workers to get vaccinated — a hotly contested mandate that leaders nonetheless insisted had succeeded in persuading thousands of people to get their shots.

"Time and time again we put the mandates in place and they've worked," de Blasio said last week, citing a jump in the city's workforce vaccination rate from 86 to 91 percent.

Overall, Harlem continues to lag behind some other neighborhoods. In a nearby Upper East Side ZIP code, for example, 81 percent of people are at least partly vaccinated, and other neighborhoods like Hell's Kitchen and Chelsea have vaccinated nearly all residents.

All told, at least 241,755 people across Harlem's eight ZIP codes have gotten vaccinated as of Wednesday. East Harlem's 10035 ZIP code has the highest percentage, at 74 percent, while 10030 in Central Harlem has the neighborhood's lowest rate: 63 percent.