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The Berkshire Vaccine Collaborative is a coalition of county healthcare leaders, including Berkshire Health Systems, the county Boards of Health Association, Community Health Programs, Northern Berkshire EMS, the city of Pittsfield and more. For months, the collaborative has worked to distribute COVID-19 vaccines throughout the westernmost county in Massachusetts. This week, the collaborative said it’s beginning to scale down its larger clinics with almost half the county vaccinated. Collaborative spokesperson Jennifer Vrabel, Executive Director of Communications for Berkshire Health Systems, spoke with WAMC Josh Landes.
VRABEL: The most recent data released by the state shows that about 60% of county residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine and 43% have been fully vaccinated. An enormous number of those folks have been vaccinated by our large clinics in Pittsfield, North Adams amd Great Barrington. And we ve been able to serve so many people by collaborating
Large-scale public vaccine clinics to close for first doses by end of May berkshireeagle.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from berkshireeagle.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Walk-in and scheduled vaccinations will soon be available at the 505 East St. testing site in Pittsfield.
Starting Tuesday, vaccinations will be offered from 8:30 a.m.-7:30 p.m. seven days a week, and appointments can be scheduled at maimmunizations.org, Berkshire Health Systems said in a news release. The North Adams and Great Barrington testing centers will not yet offer walk-in vaccinations, but BHS will work with the Berkshire Vaccine Collaborative to expand vaccine access in the near future, the release said.
More information on vaccinations can be found by calling the BHS COVID-19 hotline at 855-262-5465 or by visiting getvaccinatedberkshires.org.
NORTH ADAMS â Daniel McGrory, 15, is ready to hang out with his friends again.
They used to go for runs together and hang out at each otherâs houses, but now they mostly chat online, often while they play games like Destiny 2.
âIâm excited to not only have to play video games in order to talk to my friends,â said McGrory, as he waited in a short line inside St. Elizabeth of Hungary Parish Center in North Adams. âThatâll be nice.â
On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention formally recommended the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in children ages 12 to 15, paving the way for families to get their kids into pharmacies and public clinics late in the week and over the weekend.
The mayor of Pittsfield, Massachusetts gave a COVID-19 update at Tuesday’s city council meeting.
At the bimonthly virtual meeting, Mayor Linda Tyer said Pittsfield remains in the state’s “yellow” designation for COVID-19 transmission.
“Our case trend can be best described as stagnant over the most of the last couple of weeks, with a pronounced drop of case trends over the last five days, said Tyer. The case rate is now 16.9% for 100,000. That is a drop of 29% in 14 days. Most of the drop, approximately 25% of that, has happened in the last five days, while 4% happened in the first 12 days of this 14 day period.”