New York State Team
Dozens of COVID-19 vaccine clinics run by county officials are opening up across New York state as part of the dire push to expand access to shots following a slow rollout inside hospitals and nursing homes last month.
So far, 46 local health departments have received doses of COVID-19 vaccines and plan to begin inoculating health care workers and other groups on the pandemic front lines in coming days and weeks, according to the governor s office and county officials.
The county health departments are part of 636 sites statewide that have been activated thus far in order to get COVID-19 vaccine shots into arms, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday. The other sites include 244 federally qualified health centers, 213 hospital-related locales and 133 urgent care facilities.
WBFO Albany Correspondent Karen Dewitt reports
The county executives, in a news conference on Zoom, said their health departments are required by state law to have mass vaccination plans, and they have been updating them regularly with test runs of their systems and investment in staff training.
But they said Cuomo and the state health department are not providing data that they need and are leaving them out of key meetings. They said that makes it more difficult to coordinate the distribution of the vaccines in their communities when the doses arrive.
Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, the head of the bipartisan New York State County Executives Association, said if the state uses the counties’ expertise, it will greatly speed up vaccinations.
A small plane crashed late Sunday afternoon, Dec. 27 in the Hudson Valley.
The plane went down just short of a runway in Dutchess County at Sky Acres Airport in LaGrange just before 3:30 p.m.
The pilot and single occupant of the Cessna aircraft was able to remove herself from the plane with no injuries, according to authorities.
Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro issued a statement after the crash. We are grateful to all of the first responders assisting this evening in the Town of LaGrange at the site of a small plane crash on Gidley Road, he said, including the New York State Police and the LaGrange Fire Department, who are the lead agencies at the site, as well as mutual aid agencies.
POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. â Three Dutchess County families were presented with used vehicles on Friday, Dec. 18, as part of the âWay to Workâ program administered by the countyâs Department of Community & Family Services and Workforce Investment Board.
The program, formerly known as âWheels to Work,â started in 2001. It is designed to help low-income residents get and keep a job by providing them with reliable transportation to and from work.
Qualified participants were required to be recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) or have a family income less than 200% of the federal poverty level.
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For every family that receives a car, uses it to keep or gain employment, and avoids temporary assistance, Dutchess County saves $1,614 a month. Within a year, that savings equals the cost of a new car.
Northeasterners woke up to more than a foot of snow Thursday.
States of emergency are in effect in several counties including Albany, Dutchess, Saratoga and Ulster as plows battle snow and officials urge people to stay home off the roadways so they can be cleared.
Hudson Valley Weather CEO Alex Marra says Mother Nature got us good this time.
You can imagine there s some folks out there who were only supposed to get six, eight inches and now have 40 inches. ~ Alex Marra
Credit Hudson Valley Weather What s serendipitous about this particular storm is most forecasters knew this storm was coming about seven days ago. So when you talk about the advances in technology, seven days out, we knew this storm was coming. But six hours out, we didn t know Albany would get over two feet of snow.