More than 1,000 Erie County residents have died of COVID-19 since pandemic started
Currently, 76.7% of the hospital beds in Erie County are occupied, and 21% of those hospitalized are in the ICU. Author: WGRZ Staff Updated: 4:39 PM EST December 17, 2020
BUFFALO, N.Y. More than 1,000 Erie County residents have died as a result of COVID-19 since the pandemic began earlier this year.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz shared the numbers Thursday during a weekly briefing. In total, 1001 residents have died as of December 16.
The seven-day positivity rate is 6.1% for Erie County. Poloncarz says hospitalizations have leveled off, but the number of hospitalizations is still much higher than they were at the highest levels in April.
The other two are operations and logistics teams.
âThis planning coalition needs to be based on data, information, census data, disease prevalence, co-morbidities, those most vulnerable among the population of citizens throughout the five counties,â Mark A. Sullivan, CEO of Catholic Health System, said Wednesday.
âSo the regional planning group will need to be focusing on that, and that group will be underway shortly,â Sullivan said.
The five counties in the Western New York region are Erie, Niagara, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua and Allegany.
âIn order to vaccinate, we need to have an operations team, and, again, this structure has been determined at the state level, and all 10 regions (across the state) or hub leads or coordinators will be using the same structure,â Sullivan said.
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It will be months before vaccine is ready for general public
âAs of right now, I do not have an answer
It will be months before vaccine is ready for general public
and last updated 2020-12-14 20:49:43-05
BUFFALO, NY (WKBW) â The 170,000 of COVID-19 vaccines began arriving across New State Monday. 14,500 of those doses are also being sent to Western New York.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said he expects the first batch of vaccines will be heading straight to the hospitals.
âI was under the impression from my sources, some pretty good sources, they were arriving today or tomorrow,â stated Poloncarz.
WBFO s Ryan Zunner reports
Thousands of doses are expected locally over the next few days, following the initial state rollout of the vaccine in New York City. Tuesday morning, Kaleida Health tweeted that it had administered its first doses to high-risk staff on Monday. Shawn Covell, a critical care nurse in the ICU at Buffalo General Medical Center, was the first Kaleida worker to get the vaccine.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz stressed these first few rounds of vaccine shipments aren’t for the general public just yet.
“I guarantee you there are people in our community that will just hear the name of where it will be received and they will show up there to get vaccinated,” said Poloncarz. “Why? Because it happened in the past with all kinds of other things, including getting tested for COVID-19 in the spring. Vaccines will not be available to the general public for months.”