BUFFALO (WBEN) - The Delavan-Grider Community Center is set to begin providing vaccinations to residents of 10 Buffalo and Cheektowaga zip codes on Wednesday morning.
"The center is very important, especially during this pandemic, as it relates to neighborhoods that have seen for decades, if not a century, health disparities," said Buffalo Common Council President Darius Pridgen, as the Delavan-Grider site was set up as part of the state's vaccine equity program. "To bring this center, to bring this opportunity right to those neighborhoods and target different zip codes is very important because, as this virus spreads, if it spreads to our most vulnerable, it's going to spread everywhere."
As of now, only residents of these 10 zip codes are allowed to make appointments: 14201, 14204, 14208, 14209, 14211, 14212, 14213, 14214, 14215, 14222. On Friday, the New York State Department of Health announced that all eligible Erie County residents will be able to start making appointments at the Delavan-Grider facility Wednesday, the same day vaccinations begin.
More than 10,000 residents have already booked appointments at the site, and the first week of appointments has been completely filled.
Pridgen noted the effort being made by the state to ensure an equitable distribution process for the vaccine.
"In any situation there can be improvement; however, I think the state has worked with what it has," said Pridgen. "The state is getting vaccines from the federal government, and trying to distribute those out to as many people as possible is a daunting task, especially when you've never been through this in modern history before...This is a moving target, so whether it can be better - of course. Do I think that it has been horrible? No."
Despite the state's efforts with the Delavan-Grider site, Councilman Joseph Golombek is frustrated with what he believes to be a glaring omission from the eligible zip code list.
"14207, in particular, at times has been in the top-three and top-four for many of the negative COVID problems in all of Erie County and Western New York, and I think it's unconscionable that they were left out of the original top-10 list for the region," said Golombek, while adding that he's in the process of trying to figure out how this decision was made.
"I have large pockets of poverty; I have large numbers of new immigrants that are living here; I have a lot of population density in different parts of this area, and I think that there was a screw-up somehow," Golombek continued. "My main concern is that I want to get my 14207 residents in to have the opportunity to be vaccinated as quickly and as soon as possible."
As of Monday afternoon, 141,415 Erie County residents had received one dose of the vaccine, with 88,000 people having received both doses. From a statewide perspective, 14.8% of New Yorkers have received one dose, with 8.1% having completed the series.
