Paul Maroun, a Tupper Lake volunteer firefighter, village mayor and Franklin County legislator, gets the first dose of his Moderna vaccination Monday as a member of the Tupper Lake Volunteer Fire Department. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

SARANAC LAKE — Dozens of emergency medical service workers and first responders received their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine at Adirondack Medical Center’s in-house clinic over the weekend.

Select EMS workers, firefighters and police officers are eligible for the vaccine in the first phase of the state’s distribution plan. In Franklin County, all first responders have been deemed eligible for a vaccine even if they don’t have EMS certification. That’s because in this rural county most first responders have direct contact with patients when they respond to calls for help, according to Franklin County Emergency Services Coordinator Ricky Provost.

With recent shipments of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to AMC, Franklin County is sending these workers to get vaccinated. Jennie Frenette, a registered nurse at AMC, said the hospital received several hundred doses of vaccines, with around half set aside for hospital staff and residents, and the rest for other Phase 1 workers.

According to Adirondack Health Spokesperson Matt Scollin, 212 “external stakeholders,” or people outside of hospital staff, have been vaccinated at AMC so far, as of Monday evening.

On Monday, Tupper Lake Mayor Paul Maroun — a member in the Tupper Lake Volunteer Fire Department and a Franklin County legislator — got his shot.

“I’m not doing this as mayor, I’m doing it as a fireman,” Maroun said.

The state’s guidelines show that EMS-certified and direct care first-responders can get the vaccine. In rural counties like Franklin County, firefighters who aren’t EMS-certified often wear two hats, Provost said. Because they can also be performing EMS services, such as carrying injured individuals or driving an ambulance, he said they are eligible for vaccination.

The county has been connecting hospitals with first-responders who register to get the vaccine.

Frenette said the emergency medical service worker vaccine push has been “impossibly smooth.”

Nurse Michaele Dobson injected Maroun’s first dose of the Moderna vaccine on Monday afternoon.

“So far I feel good,” Maroun said after she was done. “I didn’t even know she did it.”

He is scheduled to return on Jan. 25 for his second dose of the vaccine.

“By the way, my arm’s not even sore,” he said two hours later.

The clinical trials for both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine showed that some people experienced mild symptoms after getting vaccinated, such as headaches and body aches.

Maroun said several members of the Tupper Lake Volunteer Fire Department and Tupper Lake Police Department have been vaccinated so far.

As is customary for Maroun, he supplied the nursing staff with ample “Mayor Maroun” branded pens and flashlights.

Though some Americans are wary of receiving vaccines for a number of reasons, one of them being concern that the vaccine might not be safe, despite clinical trials for both vaccines rarely showing medical events among thousands of participants as a result of the vaccines, Maroun said he did not have any second thoughts about getting a shot.

“As soon as they called me I wanted to get it,” he said. “I want people in the Tri-Lakes to get it and be safe so that we can get back to a normal way of living here.”

Getting vaccinated doesn’t necessarily mean a person is safe from potential exposure to the coronavirus, only that they won’t get sick with COVID-19. That means that even after getting vaccinated, social distancing and mask-wearing will still be necessary to help prevent the spread of the virus.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, this country’s top infectious disease expert, told NPR this month that about 50% of Americans would need to get vaccinated before the number of COVID-19 infections would be impacted.

“Nobody really knows for sure, but I think 70 to 85% for herd immunity for COVID-19 is a reasonable estimate,” Fauci told CNN on Sunday.

As of Monday, at least 140,000 New Yorkers had received a first dose of either the Moderna or Pfizer coronavirus vaccine, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The state is expected to receive upward of 259,000 vaccine doses this week, 139,400 from Pfizer and 119,600 from Moderna, according to Cuomo.

Between the new shipment and previous ones received by the state, by the end of this week the North Country region will have been allocated a total of 21,850 vaccine doses so far.

“They will not have been necessarily administered, but they will have been delivered,” Cuomo told reporters during a press conference in Albany on Monday. “‘Well, why does one place get more than the other?’ This is, again, math. This is proportionate to the number of people eligible for the vaccine in that region.”

Under the state’s vaccine distribution plan, essential health care workers, EMS workers and high-risk nursing home residents are the first to be eligible for coronavirus vaccines.

Next to be vaccinated will be other first responders; teachers, school staff and child care providers; public health workers; high-risk people and essential front line workers who have regular contact with the public. Then vaccinations will open up to everyone over the age of 65 and those under the age of 65 with underlying conditions, then all other essential workers, then the general population, according to the state’s COVID vaccination program book.

In New York, the general population likely won’t be eligible for vaccination until late January at the earliest, according to Cuomo.