Vaccination demand runs high
600 Dutchess appointments fill ‘within minutes’; Ulster hopes to get new shipment Wednesday
Ulster and Dutchess counties expect to receive new shipments of COVID-19 vaccine this week, and Dutchess said 600 inoculation appointments it made available Monday were booked almost immediately.
The Dutchess appointments were snapped up just hours before the county reported another six deaths from COVID.
County Executive Marc Molinaro said Dutchess made appointments available to local residents in New York’s Phase 1A and Phase 1B vaccination groups based on an anticipated shipment of 600 doses of the
Moderna vaccine from the state, and “all appointments filled within minutes.”
“Both sites are now booked,” an email from the county said, referring to the Dutchess vaccination centers at the former JCPenney store in the Poughkeepsie Galleria and Dover Middle/High School.
“We will continue to send notifications of new appointment availability as we receive supply,” the county said.
The people in Phases 1A and 1B include health care workers and their staffs, first responders, law enforcement, people 65 and older, and school, grocery, pharmacy and public transit employees, among others.
Ulster County used up its initial allotment of vaccine last Thursday and hoped to receive more by Tuesday. The new shipment now is expected Wednesday, according to Assistant Deputy County Executive Daniel Torres.
“We expect to receive vaccines on Wednesday, and we are in the process of scheduling individuals who had their appointments previously canceled,” Torres wrote in an email.
Ulster County, like Dutchess, has two “Point of Dispensing,” or POD, sites — one in the Kate Walton Field House at Kingston High School, the other at Ellenville Regional Hospital. Both opened last week but had to suspend operations when the vaccine supply ran out.
Molinaro said the vaccine availability “remains extremely limited.”
“Although we have the capacity to vaccinate thousands of residents each week, we can only vaccinate as many people as we receive vaccine doses for,” the Dutchess executive said. “We will continue to push for more vaccine, but in the meantime, we are dispensing every dose we get to eligible residents quickly and efficiently at our POD vaccination centers.”
In the schools
The Kingston and Saugerties school districts will switch from remote-only classes to hybrid models starting Tuesday.
Kingston will have hybrid learning on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, while all Friday classes will be taught online.
For details about Kingston’s schedule, go to bit.ly/ kgn-hybrid. For Saugerties, go to saugerties.k12.ny.us.
By the numbers
Ulster County on Monday reported 114 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19, though the number of active cases rose by just two — to 2,308.
Ulster also reported one additional death related to COVID, bringing the county’s total since the local outbreak began last March to 175.
New York state on Monday reported an additional COVID-related death at the Golden Hill Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Kingston, bringing the total there to 17. It was not clear, though, whether that death was the same one added to the county’s total on Monday.
The 114 new COVID diagnoses in Ulster County were out of the most recent 1,757 test results received — a rate of 6.5%. That’s a oneday increase of 1.2 percentage points but still markedly better than the recent peaks of 13.6% on Dec. 29 and 11.9% on Jan. 8.
Ulster County has had 8,293 confirmed cases of COVID since the start of the pandemic and 5,810 recoveries.
Dutchess County on Monday reported 16,327 confirmed cases of COVID, a jump of 212 from the previous day; and 2,576 active cases, 206 more than a day earlier.
The county said 153 COVID patients were hospitalized, a drop of seven from a day earlier, but also that there were six additional COVID-related deaths, bringing the Dutchess total for the pandemic to 304.