First COVID vaccines arriving next week
Albany and Schenectady county nursing homes are due to receive their first batches of coronavirus vaccine imminently, county officials said Friday.
Albany County Executive Dan McCoy said the county ’s Shaker Place nursing home in Colonie is due to receive its first batch of Pfizer-made vaccines from Walgreens on Dec. 21. Rensselaer County anticipates arrival on the same day. Schenectady County Manager Rory Fluman said he expects the county ’s Glendale nursing home will get its first batch of doses sometime next week and anticipates a second delivery of doses three weeks after that.
Before the vaccines arrive, Mccoy said the county will have to determine which residents and staff want to receive the shots so that by the time they do arrive they can be administered right away.
Each person who wants a vaccine will receive two doses, he said. The vaccine distribution will be carried out in three separate visits from Walgreens health care workers at the county-owned facility. The first will be Dec. 21, then three weeks later that same group will get their second dose. On that same day, a second group will get their first dose. Finally, residents and staff will likely get their second and final doses in the first week of February, he said.
The news about distribution in the Capital Region comes as the Food and Drug Administration authorized use of the Pfizer-biontech vaccination in the U.S. on Friday.
The arrival of the vaccine is sure to be a relief in all three nursing homes where residents have died from coronavirus outbreaks.
“We don’t have an exact delivery date yet, but we’re all very excited to get through the next phase of COVID,” Fluman said. “It’s two deliveries three weeks apart for administration to the patients and there could be another round of doses for staff too because patients will go first and then the staff will go second.”
Mccoy said the state and federal government will be overseeing distribution of the vaccine throughout the Capital Region and other areas of New York, though local officials for years have been planning for mass vaccine distributions as part of emergency planning procedures, he said.
“Sheriff (Craig ) Apple and his team put a great plan together with their EMS and we met,” Mccoy said. “We are — if they need us, if the state needs us or the federal government needs us — we are here to get it out. We have the storage capacities. We worked it out with the sheriff ’s department. We worked it out with local businesses here to identify what we needed. But the federal government is really dictating and Operation Warp Speed is dictating how it’s going out to nursing homes and residents.”
Mccoy said the county may become involved in the rollout by the time the vaccine is available to the general population. Highrisk groups and front-line workers are expected to receive the vaccine first.
“It’s five phases, people have got to realize that,” he said. “This is five phases. So by the time it starts getting to the general population they ’ll come to us. But I have a feeling — and this is just me — I have a feeling they ’re just going to end up using Walgreens and CVS and pharmacists to get the shots out versus mass shots, or you’ll see Ualbany turned into an area where there’ll be a drivethru for shots.”
Mccoy said the county Legislature’s Black Caucus, including founding member Wanda Willingham and chair Bill Clay, met Thursday over Zoom to discuss vaccine concerns, especially as they pertain to the county ’s communities of color.
“They have concerns,” he said. “Wanda Willingham has concerns about how it’s going to get out into the Black community, how it’s being addressed and honestly she wants to make sure that her people aren’t guinea pigs ... so all legit concerns.”
Community activists nationwide have expressed concern that Black and Hispanic communities may be rightfully skeptical of a COVID -19 vaccine, given America’s history of racist medical care and experimentation among these populations. Efforts to gain trust in these communities are needed if the nation wants to achieve a level of herd immunity against the virus, experts have said.
Willingham on Friday said that members of her community have told her they won’t be getting the vaccine, due in part to health concerns and the way they ’ve been treated by the medical community. She said while she will be taking the vaccine, officials have a lot of work ahead to convince Black communities the vaccine is safe.
“There needs to be someone who looks like them, who they feel represents their interests and not just represents their interests but who is exposed to the same things they are,” she said. “And that’s why it’s important that we do have people of color out in the front trying to encourage people to take this vaccine.”