Cuomo to expand community vaccination kit program, includes one new Albany site

ALBANY, N.Y. (WSYR-TV/NEWS10) — On Saturday, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that New York will be expanding its deployment of community vaccination kits and Albany will be one of those locations. The new location, Sweet Pilgrim Baptist Church on Albany’s Ten Broeck Street, will open at 10 a.m. Monday morning.

Last week, New York successfully piloted the deployment kits to five NYCHA senior housing developments and eight churches and cultural centers where nearly 4,200 seniors and eligible New Yorkers received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Kits are now being redeployed to four additional NYCHA sites and eight other churches to further build on that progress. In total, this initiative is expected to provide the first doses of the vaccine to an additional 3,000 seniors and eligible New Yorkers by Tuesday. As with the pop-up sites established last weekend, these sites will be re-established in three weeks to administer second doses.

Following this weekend’s deployments and as the federal vaccine supply increases, New York will continue to be deploy these kits until pop-up sites have been established at all 33 NYCHA Senior Housing Developments which house more than 7,600 seniors. Pop-up locations will also be established at other public housing complexes statewide, as well as at more than 300 churches and cultural centers which have volunteered to house these sites through Governor Cuomo’s Vaccine Equity Task Force.

“COVID has created a different dynamic in this country — I call it low tide in America,” Governor Cuomo said. “If you go to the amazing Shirley Chisholm Park and look at the bay during high tide, it looks beautiful, but if you go at low tide, you can see all the ugliness on the bottom. That’s what we’ve seen over this past year during America’s low tide – the racism, the discrimination, the inequality – and COVID has only exacerbated that problem. The undeniable fact is that COVID has killed the Black and Latino communities at a higher rate than the white community. There is no getting around that and it’s why New York has made ensuring fairness and equity in the vaccine distribution such a priority. I understand there is a level of skepticism about the vaccine given how it was managed by the previous administration, but that’s why New York did its own review. It’s safe, it’s effective, and it’s the weapon that will win the war, but we will only be successful if everyone is on board.”

The establishment of these four NYCHA sites was made possible through a partnership with SOMOS Community Care which runs the scheduling process and provides health care workers to administer the vaccine to eligible New Yorkers with appointments.

The sites opening this weekend are as follows:

Bronx
Randall Avenue-Balcom Avenue Housing
2705 Schley Avenue
Bronx, NY 10465

Union Avenue-East 163 Street Housing
950 Union Avenue
Bronx, NY 10459

Brooklyn
William Reid Apartments
720 East New York Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11203

Vandalia Avenue Housing
17 Vandalia Avenue
Brooklyn, NY, 11239

Eight church-based sites are also opening this weekend at the following locations:

Albany
Sweet Pilgrim Baptist Church
24 Ten Broeck St.
Albany NY 12210

Hours: Monday, January 25th 10am-6pm
Medical Partnership: Whitney M. Young Jr. Health Center

Syracuse
People’s AME Zion Church
2306 S Salina St.
Syracuse, NY 13205

Hours: Monday, January 25th 1-4pm
Medical Partnership: Onondaga County

Rochester
Mt. Olivet Baptist Church
141 Adams St
Rochester, NY 14606

Hours: Monday, January 25th 10am-6pm
Medical Partnership: Monroe County