Coronavirus

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.

Springs School District parents wishing to get Pfizer vaccine shots for their children ages 5 to 11 can do so on Saturday, Nov. 20, at the school between 10 a.m. and 1:45 p.m. The vaccine clinic will also be open to children of Springs School staff members.

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

I remember the underscore of terror in the early days of the pandemic, wondering if my working in an I.C.U. and taking care of some of the first patients with Covid-19 in our region was going to endanger my family. Eighteen months later, I can hardly believe that I am watching a friend and colleague deftly vaccinate all four of my children against Covid-19.

While new recommendations released last week on Covid-19 booster shots for at-risk populations are not a broad suggestion that all vaccinated people get a booster, they do extend the recommendation to a great many people.

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.

The New York State Division of Consumer Protection and the State Health Department have warned residents of a text message phishing scheme to try to steal personal information from those attempting to validate their Covid-19 vaccine status. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Citing the highly transmissible Delta variant of Covid-19, East Hampton Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc announced Thursday that the town board will return to virtual meetings as of Tuesday. The variant "is significant within the community at this time. It’s spreading rapidly, and people need to really take this seriously,” he said.

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.

The East Hampton School Board is considering making Covid-19 vaccinations mandatory for students who play sports on district teams or take part in after-school activities, though some questions remain unanswered at this point.

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.

Starting Tuesday, Stony Brook Southampton Hospital's Parrish Memorial Hall will become a vaccine clinic offering Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson shots with no appointment necessary.

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.

There will be a pop-up Pfizer vaccination clinic on Wednesday at the Springs Presbyterian Church, 5 Old Stone Highway, from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Shots will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis.

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.