500 New Doses Arrive in Oneida County

It's not the amount that local officials were hoping for, but Oneida County Health received 500 new doses of the COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday.

County health officials will again begin booking appointments this evening (at ocgov.net) and administering those doses tomorrow at the Griffiss Airport location and at the MVCC Utica campus. Officials say once those 500 appointments are booked, they will again be out and won't book any new appointments until the state delivers more. They also noted they still have 430 doses on hand from a previous delivery from the state.

An exact time for when Oneida County will begin booking those appointments online tonight was not announced, but it will undoubtedly set off a virtual race local residents scramble to snag one of those appointments.

Meanwhile, Mohawk Valley Health System hasn't had any vaccines to administer in over a week, and hospital officials tell WIBX they haven't received word from the state as to when they will receive a new shipment, or how many to expect.

While Oneida County plans to exhaust all of the doses they have on hand, officials said, MVHS has taken a different approach. While the hospital system hasn't received delivery of any new vaccines in over a week, they do have a stock of vaccines set aside to fulfill the second dose requirement for those they've already been inoculated once.

The slow rollout of the vaccine in New York has left local governments and providers without answers or enough doses. Both Oneida County and MVHS have been booking appointments based on the supply they have on hand. Thus far, that has virtually amounted to one-week-on, one-week-off system which has prompted some area residents to travel to other counties to receive their first shot.

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Another local site administering the vaccine is run by New York State, at the SUNY Poly campus in Marcy. It is unclear how many doses of the vaccine are available through that site, however, WKTV reports that appointments to get to one there are already booked through April.

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