Chair of the City Council’s Committee on Health Mark Levine said the city can't afford to take its time figuring out vaccine distribution the way it did to work out testing.

"This will dwarf the complexity of the testing program for example, which itself had nine months to play out. We don't have that kind of time with the vaccine because the first doses start shipping almost immediately. We're gonna need financial help for this,” Levine told NY1.

Speaking on “Mornings On 1,” Levine also discussed equity in distribution and making sure that everyone has access to the vaccine, particularly black and brown communities that have disproportionately been affected by the coronavirus.

The City Council Committees on Health and Hospitals is holding a hearing Friday on the city’s plan to distribute the first round of the COVID-19 vaccine. Officials from Pfizer and the city’s Health and Hospital system are testifying.

The first of the Pfizer vaccines are expected to arrive in the city by Dec. 15, with Moderna's arriving by December 22nd.

More than 465,000 doses of the two vaccines are expected in December, and the city says that 50 hospitals will have access to ultra-cold storage for at least 1.5 million doses.