Albany Med seeks clinic volunteers
Staffing issue requires help to distribute COVID-19 vaccines to New Yorkers
Albany Medical Center has issued a call for volunteers to help staff COVID -19 vaccination clinics in the coming months as they prepare to vaccinate roughly 1 million New Yorkers across the Capital Region.
The hospital system — one of 10 regional vaccination hubs statewide in charge of coordinating vaccine distribution — launched a website this week, Capitalregionvax.org, where people can find information about the region’s vaccination plan and answers to frequently asked questions, including who can get the vaccine and in what order. It also contains links where interested volunteers can sign up to help.
While many questions remain unanswered about New York’s vaccination plan, such as the exact order, time frame and locations in which people will be vaccinated, Albany Med officials say they plan to update the website as information becomes available.
“That will be where we’ll put out information about where different places to get the vaccine are available in the Capital Region, where people
are on the various tier plans, when they ’re eligible to get it,” Albany Med President and CEO Dennis Mckenna said in a video update Wednesday. “We’ll also share county health department plans. It’ll be a great resource for people to go to in the future.”
A number of buildings and sites across the Capital Region are currently under review as possible Points of Dispensing (PODS), where vaccines will be given out. In Schenectady, for example, officials are considering the downtown library branch, community college, and Boys & Girls Club as possible locations; Thursday, frontline Schenectady County employees received vaccines at the central library. In Albany, a POD has already been established at one of Albany Med’s facilities on Broadway, Mckenna said.
Mckenna said Albany Med is on daily calls with other area hospitals, county health departments and federally qualified health centers to discuss the region’s vaccination plan, which was due to the state Thursday.
Due to the enormous scope of the vaccination effort, volunteers will be needed.
Albany Med is seeking the following medical professionals to help administer vaccines: licensed practical nurses, licensed pharmacists with or without certification to administer immunizations, midwives, dentists, certain dental hygienists, podiatrists, EMTS and advanced EMTS. Students with one year of clinical experience in medical, nursing, physician assistant, pharmacy, dentistry, podiatry and midwifery programs are also eligible to administer vaccines.
“In addition, we’re going to be really working with our community volunteers to help work in these PODS — not just ours, but the health department PODS, the other hospitals will be setting up PODS to vaccinate,” Mckenna said.
“We have to vaccinate almost 1 million people and we have to give every person two shots, so we have a lot of work to do,” he continued. “We’ve already begun to reach out to community businesses and others who will help us in that area and I think next week we’ll be able to announce a couple of really exciting areas where they ’re going to step forward and help us with these vaccination efforts.”
Albany Med is following a tiered distribution plan for vaccination as laid out by the state, and does not decide which categories of people will be prioritized for vaccination first.
According to the state’s plan, first in line for the vaccine are health care workers, first responders in medical roles — such as emergency medical services providers, medical examiners, coroners, funeral workers and ambulatory care providers — and residents and employees of long-term care facilities, including facilities that serve people with addiction, developmental disorders and psychiatric issues.
The next tier, or phase 1b, will include frontline essential workers such as firefighters, police officers, corrections officers, food and agricultural workers, U.S. Postal Service workers, manufacturing workers, grocery store workers, public transit workers, and those who work in the educational sector (teachers, support staff, and day care workers). People over the age of 75 are also in this tier.
Phase 1c will include people between the ages of 65 and 74, people between the ages of 16 and 64 with underlying medical conditions, and other essential workers — such as those who work in transportation and logistics, food service, housing construction and finance, information technology, communications, energy, law, media, public safety and public health.
As of Thursday, the region was still in phase 1a of the plan.
Albany Medical Center workers received the region’s first vaccinations on Dec. 23. Since then, over 4,000 Albany Med workers and nearly 2,000 first responders from around the region have received an initial dose of vaccine, Mckenna said.
“It is an emotional experience for some,” said John DePaola, chief administration officer for system care delivery at Albany Med who has helped oversee vaccine logistics.
“We’ve had some people actually break into tears of happiness and tremendous relief and appreciation. So it’s been an incredible experience.”
Those figures do not include the residents and staff of 44 nursing homes throughout the region that signed up to receive vaccines. Their first doses were administered starting last week, and will continue into the New Year.