ALBANY — County Executive Dan McCoy is not opening the vaccination program up to restaurant workers and livery drivers and is instead going to focus on those with who are the most vulnerable to the virus.
“We still have people in 1B category and 1A category who have not got the shots, we still have a lot of seniors older than 75 and 65 who have not got the shots,” said County Executive Dan McCoy during a press briefing on Wednesday. “It’s a hard decision, who gets the shot, who doesn’t get the shot. It’s hard. But this disease has crippled more people with underlying health issues.”
Earlier this week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced he would leave it up to the individual counties to decide on whether or not to modify the vaccination lineup to include restaurant workers, delivery people and taxi, Uber and Lyft drivers.
McCoy read off a long list of just county workers, including himself, who are not eligible for a vaccine as of yet and it includes the majority of county workers in most county departments.
Those in 1A are health care workers and nursing home residents. Phase IB roughly includes first responders, like police and fire, teachers and those older than 65. Hospitals are distributing to those in 1A and counties are in charge of 1B.
Meanwhile, there were two more deaths from Wednesday to Thursday — two women in their 80s — bringing the death toll to 324.
There were 155 new cases overnight bringing the total to 18,716 since the pandemic took hold in March, 2020.
As of Thursday, there were 1,220 active cases in Albany County, down from 1,246 a day before. Of the 54,341 who completed quarantine, 17,496 had tested positive and recovered, an increase of 174 since Wednesday.
There were 12 new hospitalizations from Wednesday to Thursday for a net decrease of four. As of Thursday, there were 126 county residents hospitalized with 16 in the ICU.
