VACCINE CENTER OPENS
Shots given at first of 2 Ulster County locations; sites in Ellenville, Dutchess follow later this week
Ulster County’s primary COVID-19 vaccination center opened Monday in Kingston, while another one in the county plus three in Dutchess
County are scheduled to open later in the week.
Ulster’s main “point of dispensing,” or POD, site is the Kate Walton Field House at Kingston High School. It’s scheduled to operate from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, but by appointment only.
According to County Executive Pat Ryan, 480 appointments were made for each of the first two days.
The allotment of vaccines being used at the Kingston site is from a Moderna shipment that arrived in the county Jan. 7. They are for county residents in the state- designated Phase 1A and Phase 1B groups. Phase 1A includes hospital staff, direct care providers and emergency responders.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced last week that people eligible for the shots in Phase 1B can begin scheduling appointments with the PODs and in
dividual providers, including pharmacies and hospitals, this week. Phase 1B includes people age 75 and older, first responders, corrections officers, teachers and other school staff, inperson college instructors, child care workers, publicfacing grocery store workers, transit workers and individuals who live or work in homeless shelters.
Since the federal supply of vaccines severely limits distribution, Cuomo has said it could take up to 14
weeks to complete Phases 1A and 1B.
Ulster County’s secondary POD, at Ellenville Regional Hospital, is to open Friday, Jan. 15, a day later than planned.
Dutchess County announced Monday that its POD sites will open Wednesday at Behavioral & Community Health’s Mental Health Campus on North Road in Poughkeepsie, Friday in the former JCPenney store in the Poughkeepsie Galleria, and Saturday at Dover Middle/High School in Dover Plains.
Also, Behavioral & Community Health said Monday that it is partnering
with Northern Dutchess Hospital in Rhinebeck for vaccinations to be made available in the hospital’s Health Annex at 107 Montgomery St.
Vaccinations at all the POD sites in Ulster and Dutchess counties are by appointment only and based on vaccine allocation. For more information, Ulster County residents should go to covid19.ulstercountyny. gov/vaccine-resource- center, and Dutchess residents should go to dutchessny. gov/covidvaccine.
Dutchess County, however, issued a press release Monday afternoon that said there were “no appoint
ments currently available at the points of dispensing established by Dutchess County government due to the limited number of doses made available to the county from New York state.”
By the numbers
Ulster County reported Monday on it s online dashboard of COVID-19 data that there were 88 new cases of the illness out of the most recently received 1,083 test results — a positivity rate of 8.1%. The number of active cases, though, fell from 2,075 on Saturday to 2,015 on Sunday.
Ulster County also re
ported t wo additional deaths related to COVID, bringing the total since last March to 165.
Since testing began 10 months ago, Ulster County has had 7,504 confirmed cases of COVID and 5,324 recoveries.
Dutchess County reported on its COVID dashboard Monday that three more people died from the illness since Friday, bringing the toll to 36 for just the first eight days of 2021 and 273 since last March.
Dutchess also reported 259 newly diagnosed cases of COVID, 186 new recoveries, an active case total of 2,163 and 147 COVID-re
lated hospitalizations.
The county has had 14,471 confirmed cases of COVID since the local outbreak began and 12,035 recoveries.
In the schools
• The Kingston school district reported Monday that three high schoolers and a Robert Graves Elementary School teacher tested positive.
• The Saugerties school district said it was notified that a student and three staff members tested positive.