It took just over an hour Thursday for all 3,500 appointments for the state’s mass vaccination clinic at the Jamestown Community College in Olean to be snapped up.
All five days of appointments were taken on the New York COVID-19 Vaccine Website shortly after 9:30 a.m., said Dr. Kevin Watkins, Cattaraugus County public health director.
Unfortunately, the state’s mass vaccination sites are open for residents from across the state, Watkins said.
“We thought it would be a more regional approach for Cattaraugus, Allegany and Chautauqua counties,” he said. “We already have an equity problem in distributing the vaccine in Western New York.”
Watkins said the breakdown in residence for those who got appointments for the Olean mass vaccination site over the five days has not been shared with the counties.
“We would love to have more vaccine for our residents,” Watkins told the Times Herald.
While he was thankful for the shots in arms the state mass vaccination site would provide, Watkins said the health department has had plans for mass vaccinations of county residents for years.
“We can vaccinate our own residents,” he said, while again expressing frustration at the lack of doses in the county.
Next week, the county has plans to vaccinate people in group 1B who are on the county health department COVID-19 vaccine wait list in two sessions at the Seneca Allegany Events Center in Salamanca, Wednesday and Thursday. The county health department’s COVID-19 Vaccine Call Center can be reached at (716) 701-3777.
Watkins noted that health department staff from Cattaraugus, Allegany and Chautauqua counties were assisting the state at the JCC mass vaccination site.
“I’m happy to know we have a large number of people scheduled at this mass vaccination clinic,” Watkins said. For those from outside Olean, he recommended checking out the city’s shops and restaurants while in town.
State Sen. George Borrello, R-Sunset Bay, said he was concerned that the mass vaccination site was not restricted to the three Southern Tier counties by zip code, as has been the case at some Buffalo-area mass vaccination sites.
“The 3,500 doses that were allocated were intended to serve a three-county region,” Borrello said. “Yet, there were no restrictions on the residency of those who booked appointments. I am told that several people from Erie County and elsewhere were able to get appointments in Olean.”
Borello said the Delevan Grider Community Center mass vaccination site set up by FEMA and the state Department of Health in Buffalo had restricted its doses for people in certain zip codes.
“The disparity is significant,” Borrello said. “The city of Buffalo population is about equivalent to the three-county region, yet we received only 3,500 doses to their 14,000, and with no restrictions for the Olean vaccine clinic.”
The senator, who represents all three Southern Tier counties, said he planned to ask the state Department of Health to extend the mass vaccination clinic in Olean and provide additional doses of vaccine restricted to people in zip codes from this region.
Meanwhile, there were 11 new COVID-19 cases reported by the county health department on Thursday. The total is now 4,418 residents who have been diagnosed with COVID-19.
The daily positivity rate continued downward to 1.6%. The seven-day rolling average was 2.6% and the 14-day average is 2.8%.
Eighty-six residents have died of COVID-19 in the past 12 months.
Nine of the new COVID-19 cases involved residents of the southeast corner of the county, where 57.3% of the cases have occurred. There are now a total of 2,532 cases in the southeast part of the county.
There was one new case in the northwest part of the county, which now totals 478. The southwest part of the county also posted one new COVID-19 case for a total; of 679. There were no new cases reported in the northeast, where the total is 729 residents.
Six of the new cases were women, who now represent 2,381 of the total cases and five were men, who total 2,037 cases.
