BUFFALO, N.Y. (WBEN) – Erie County Health Commissioner Dr.
Gale Burstein was pressed Thursday by county legislators about the vaccine rollout locally.
Erie County currently receives 1.700 vaccines from the state each week. Because of the limited supply, the county was forced to cancel first-dose appointments. The cancellations have caused confusion among the general public about when they can get a vaccine.
"We are going to reschedule all the appointments we had to cancel in January for some time in February," Burstein said. "We calculate it's going to take pretty much all of February at the current rate to get through all those cancelled appointments. We know some people may have made another plan and got vaccinated at another site. Some people, I've heard, have even gone outside our county to get vaccinated. Hopefully the list won't be as long as the 9,300 appointments we've had to cancelled."
Erie County plans to notify those who had their appointments cancelled about available slots either by phone or email.
"We're hiring people (for our vaccine call center) this week," Burstein said. "We've already hired some people…Hopefully we'll bring people in next week to train them and open that up. Remember, the state health department is very prescriptive about who vaccinates whom. The state has directed pharmacies to vaccinate seniors. They've told us specifically we are not allowed to vaccinate anybody 65 and up. We will suffer consequences if we do."
There have been 1,455 COVID-19 deaths in Erie County.
Burstein said people age 70 and older account for 12.5% of the county's population, yet represent 80% of deaths in the county.
Erie County Minority Leader Joe Lorigo asked Burstein about the county's testing capabilities and wondered if more advocacy for vaccine supply was needed.
"We could probably do, on a good day if we had all our POD sites open and fully staffed, probably 2,200 a day," Burstein said. "…There is a national vaccine shortage. I know that the federal government has been taking steps to try and increase the supply of vaccine across the United States. That will go to states and the states will have more to give out to counties…It's up to the state how they distribute that to each of the counties."
