New York wants to purchase vaccines directly from manufacturer Pfizer as the supply from the federal government has not kept pace with the demand, Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday said. 

It's not yet clear how many doses the state is requesting to buy or how much it would cost. The first step would be to get permission to do so.

"My job as governor of New York is to pursue every avenue," Cuomo said on Monday at a news conference. "If Pfizer agrees to sell, then we'll have that conversation."

There are now more than 7 million New Yorkers -- including people over age 65, people with compromised immune systems, health care workers and essential government workers -- who qualify to receive the vaccine based on state and federal guidance. 

But vaccinations and the vaccines themselves have lagged. The distribution has ramped up in recent weeks, but would still take seven months to vaccinate the people who are currently eligible, let alone the remainder of New York's 19 million or so residents. 

Last week, New York received 50,000 fewer doses from federal suppliers. Meanwhile, federal guidance expanded vaccine eligibility to include more people. 

In a letter released Monday morning, Cuomo blasted Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar for pledging to release more doses of the vaccine that were, in reality, not available.

"Despite every opportunity to reflect on and fix past errors, last week you created even more damage, anxiety and confusion among the American public when you told reporters on January 12, 2021 that the federal government would increase the supply of vaccines by shipping 'all of the doses that had been held in physical reserve' when in reality, according to news reports, the federal government had already distributed all of those doses and supply would not be increasing," Cuomo wrote in the letter.