Health

As the weather grows colder, Covid-19 is once again on the upswing in New York, including in East Hampton Town and across Suffolk County, and health care professionals are pleading with the public to remain vigilant and, yes, get vaccinated if they have not yet done so.

East Hampton Town Hall will be the site of a pop-up Covid-19 vaccination clinic for people 12 and up on Wednesday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Vaccines will be administered in the main meeting room. Town Hall is at 159 Pantigo Road in East Hampton

Now that children 5 to 11 are eligible to receive Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine — the first that has been approved for pediatric administration in the United States — medical professionals and government officials here and across Long Island are quickly putting plans in place to meet families' needs.

Medivolve, the company contracted by East Hampton Town to provide Covid-19 testing at sites in East Hampton and Montauk, will no longer operate those sites.

In my medical career there are few things that I am as grateful for as the fact that I spent several years teaching college writing and literature before going to medical school.

All you parents who wonder if it's just you who needs to cajole, bribe, and beg your children to get them to comply medical advice should take comfort in knowing that even physicians have to contort themselves into a thousand pretzel-like caricatures of parenting in order to get their kids to follow the doctor's orders.

Free P.C.R. saliva testing for Covid-19 is now offered on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the East Hampton Town Center for Humanity, the former Child Development Center of the Hamptons, at 110 Stephen Hand's Path.

The Bay Area Lyme Disease Foundation has honored George Dempsey, the medical director of East Hampton Family Medicine, for his work in assisting with the foundation’s Lyme Disease Biobank.

Sixteen full-time health care workers at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital who had not received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine by Monday have been suspended without pay and will be fired if they don’t get vaccinated within 30 days, hospital officials said on Tuesday.

Despite a high vaccination rate in the town and statewide, the positive infection rate reported by the testing sites at Town Hall and in Montauk more than tripled in August, from 4 to 13 percent of those tested receiving a positive diagnosis. Between Sept. 14 and 19, the positive rate was 12.2 percent among 1,263 tests in East Hampton and 13.5 percent among 370 tests in Montauk.

The big question on everyone's lips this month seems to be whether or not they should receive a third (in the case of the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccines) or second (if they opted for the Johnson and Johnson vaccine) "booster" dose against Covid-19.

Yoga enthusiasts and equestrians alike may find appealing a pair of retreats being organized by a local woman whose professional training and teaching experiences are rooted in both worlds.

Stony Brook Southampton Hospital remains convinced that a 4.5-acre parcel on Pantigo Place in East Hampton is the most appropriate site for its proposed emergency room annex, and it hopes to break ground on the project by the end of the year, according to Robert Chaloner, the hospital's chief administrative officer.

In so many ways, the fact that we are still having to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic feels like a kick to the gut, but here we are. At this juncture in the pandemic, it is worthwhile to once again review some of the current public health guidelines aimed at stopping the spread and protecting yourself and your community.

"We all want this to be over," New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul said on Wednesday as she announced a mask mandate for child care centers, residential health programs, and other state-run health facilities as well as a vaccination initiative that will enable emergency medical technicians to administer Covid-19 shots.

Booster shots of Covid-19 vaccines may be on the horizon, but until the federal Food and Drug Administration determines whether additional doses are safe and effective for the general population, only people with moderately or severely impaired immune systems should seek a third dose, according to health care professionals.

An East Hampton medical practice is participating in a research project aimed at accelerating medical breakthroughs for Lyme disease, the most common vector-borne infectious disease in the United States and one of several illnesses that can be transmitted by an infected tick. 

Kids agreed that wearing masks is a small price to pay for what they hope is a normal school year filled with meaningful classroom activities, academics, field trips, and friendships.

Just a week into the fall sports season, one East Hampton High School football player has tested positive for Covid-19 and is in quarantine, the district announced Sunday morning.

Nurses and other members of the health care workers union at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital picketed on Thursday in an effort to get the hospital to agree to contract demands. The union's current contract ends on Sept. 30.

On her first day in office on Tuesday, New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul directed the state Health Department to institute a universal mask requirement for all children and adults in schools and an expanded testing protocol for all, and said she is also looking into the possibility of mandating vaccines for all school employees with an option to test out weekly.

A recent surge in Covid-19 infections on the East End is predominantly among those who are unvaccinated, and the Delta variant of the virus is the cause of more than 90 percent of cases, according to Dr. Fredric Weinbaum, the chief medical officer at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, who described the variant as a "survival of the fittest" version of Covid-19.

As of Monday, all staff and visitors at East Hampton Town Hall and other town facilities will once again be asked to wear masks, whether vaccinated for Covid-19 or not. 

With Covid-19 infections on the rise again in Suffolk County, South Fork business owners are reinstituting mask mandates and other safety protocols. "We got to a point where we realized we had to take a stand," said one, Eric Lemonides, a co-owner of Almond in Bridgehampton, where patrons 12 and over are being asked to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative Covid test.

The county's guidelines closely mirror those of the federal Centers for Disease Control and the American Academy of Pediatrics. They include universal mask wearing indoors for all, even those students and staff members who have already received vaccines; masks will not be required outdoors.

After a child and a counselor tested positive for Covid-19, the Hayground Camp in Bridgehampton closed this week out of an abundance of caution, Doug Weitz, the camp's director, confirmed Tuesday.

Students and staff in the East Hampton School District — even those who are vaccinated — will begin the new school year with masks on, the school board decided on Tuesday.

Ibogaine's psychedelic nature allows patients to confront the trauma and circumstances which lead them to become opioid users. The trip lasts between 24 and 36 hours. "It's clinical and supernatural at the same time," Spero Alexio said.

As the Delta variant of Covid-19 continues to spread in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control on Tuesday officially recommended that even people already vaccinated against Covid-19 once again wear masks in indoor public settings if they are in a region with "substantial" or "high" levels of community transmission.

The percentage of people testing positive for the virus has slowly but consistently ticked upward, leading to fears of yet another surge, this time almost entirely among the unvaccinated.