Food pantry workers need to be made coronavirus vaccine eligible

There are too many people struggling with hunger and food insecurity in our community. At CAPTAIN Community Human Services, we serve hundreds of households — more than 1,000 people — each year, providing enough food for more than 10,000-15,000 meals to children throughout Saratoga County. We know that without our food pantry and emergency meal services many of our neighbors would go hungry. Since the very start of the pandemic, our pantry staff and volunteers on the front lines continue to work directly with many high-risk members of the public. Since March, they have been considered essential workers and remained on-site, selflessly working to safely provide food and assistance for our most vulnerable.

In many ways, pantry staff and volunteers have greater interaction with high-risk members of the public than grocery store workers, including the delivery of food to homebound seniors. Several of the newer clients to our services arrived at our door when they could no longer work due to underlying medical conditions that made them too high-risk to remain at in-person employment.

On behalf of CAPTAIN Community Human Services, our board, staff, volunteers and the hundreds of clients who access our emergency food and hygiene pantry services each month, I urge Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his administration to reinstate their eligibility as essential workers for Phase 1B of the vaccine distribution. Food pantry workers need vaccine eligibility sooner than later to avoid any unnecessary closures of emergency food services and to protect the health of our staff and volunteers.

Andy Gilpin Clifton Park Executive director, CAPTAIN Community Human Services