Also opening Sunday: the first vaccine hubs in Brooklyn (Bushwick Educational Campus), Queens (Hillcrest High School) and the Bronx (South Bronx Educational Campus). Those will be open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and require advance appointment scheduling on the city s Department of Health website.
The three new hubs and two 24-hour centers add to the city s library of some 125 sites already providing the vaccine to qualified New Yorkers. The majority of those 125 sites are hospitals, clinics and federally qualified health centers and urgent care.
Opening up new hubs comes as the state expands its eligibility criteria for those allowed to receive their first shots. Beginning Monday, the state welcomes people in group 1B (teachers, police and firefighters, public transit and safety workers, and people over 75) to schedule appointments.
For Claudia Zain, a home healthcare aid in New York City, getting the first shot of the coronavirus vaccine on Sunday felt like being "a little part of history" that left her excited and hopeful for the future as the United States struggles to contain the raging pandemic.
New York found three additional cases of the more transmissible U.K. COVID strain now confirmed in at least six other states, including nearby Pennsylvania and Connecticut, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Saturday. State health officials have confirmed a total of four cases so far, but Cuomo’s team believes that number is likely higher as new cases of the U.K. variant are.
More than 400 people who may have been exposed to the U.K. strain from contact with the Saratoga Springs man and jewelry store were tested, Cuomo said through a press release. The Department of Health s Wadsworth lab has so far tested more than 2,200 samples statewide in the state s search for additional cases.
Two daily testing sites at the University at Albany and Jones Beach will prioritize coronavirus tests for people who have potentially come into contact with the variant. Frightening data indicates the UK strain could overtake the current strain in a matter of weeks, Cuomo warned earlier this week. It s no more lethal than the current strain and no evidence shows it causes worse infections, but the heightened transmissibility alone could lead to a case surge he fears could overwhelm hospitals.