WATCH: NYPD Commissioner Issues ‘Desperate Plea’ Urging Vaccinations After 8 Unvaxxed Cops Hospitalized

NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea sent a video message to his officers urging them to get the Covid-19 vaccine after eight unvaccinated members of the department were hospitalized, and a significant percentage had yet to get the shot.

“The commissioner said all were perfectly healthy and are now fighting for their lives and he’s now delivering a desperate plea to all serving on the NYPD to get vaccinated,” reported CNN Newsroom host Pamela Brown, noting that one of the hospitalized officers was just 23 years old.

Alison Kosik told Brown that there “seems to be a lot of vaccine hesitancy” among the department’s officers, and that Shea’s two minute video was sent as an internal message.

Sixty-two percent of the NYPD have received at least one dose of the vaccine, said Kosik, but that meant that more than a third remained unvaccinated.

In the video, Shea told the officers that he was speaking to them because he had been having to speak to their family members and partners “when it’s too late, when you’re in the hospital or you’re driving to the hospital and you’re having difficulty breathing.”

“Right now, we have eight members of the NYPD in the hospital,” said Shea. “All eight unvaccinated.” He mentioned one officer who “hadn’t gotten sick in ten years and we recently lost him.”

Out of the 28,000 NYPD officers who have been vaccinated, he added, only 225 have tested positive for Covid-19 afterwards, but none of them have been hospitalized.

Watch the video above, via CNN.