Saranac Lake Middle School social studies teacher Dwight Stevenson is among the first group of people to be vaccinated against COVID-19 at a state Department of Health-run vaccine clinic in Plattsburgh on Monday, Jan. 18. (Photo provided by Dwight Stevenson)

The North Country region has been allotted 25,925 coronavirus vaccine doses since mid-December. Most of those doses — about 81% — had already been administered as of Monday.

That places this seven-county region ahead of all but one other region, the Southern Tier, for the highest percentage of its vaccine allotment administered. The North Country region has also been allocated the fewest number of doses, based on its population.

The state Department of Health unveiled the statistic in a new online COVID-19 vaccine dashboard on Sunday. The dashboard shows the number of vaccine doses delivered to each region so far, and how many of those doses have been given to people. The unveiling of this dashboard was significant in part, for the North Country region, because it provided the first publicly available, region-specific data on the state’s vaccine rollout. The dashboard can be found at covid19vaccine.health.ny.gov/covid-19-vaccine-tracker.

The data in this dashboard comes from the New York State Immunization Information System, or NYSIIS, a statewide database used to store immunization records. This system has been used for some time by local health care providers as well as some county health departments, such as the Essex County Health Department.

Although about 81% of the North Country region’s vaccine doses have been administered, that doesn’t mean a high number of people eligible for the vaccine have been vaccinated. Asked how many people in the North Country region are eligible, the DOH said that information was not available.

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Clinics open

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A vaccine clinic run by the DOH opened at the Plattsburgh International Airport on Monday. It was still accepting appointments as of that afternoon, as was the state’s distribution site at SUNY Potsdam, though some residents of the Tri-Lakes have told the Enterprise they’ve had some difficulty scheduling an appointment due to website errors or apparent appointment unavailability. The Plattsburgh vaccine clinic is expected to administer about 500 doses of the Pfizer vaccine each day, state Department of Transportation Executive Deputy Commissioner Ron Epstein told the Plattsburgh Press-Republican on Monday. The clinic will be open everyday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

There were no state-run vaccine distribution sites set up in Essex or Franklin counties as of Monday. Many residents here who now are eligible to get vaccinated have been directed to travel to either Plattsburgh or Potsdam to get a shot. Each place is roughly an hour’s drive from the Tri-Lakes area.

That’s not including nursing home residents, who are largely receiving vaccinations from pharmacies; or health care workers, who are receiving shots at hospitals.

People can find out if they’re eligible and schedule an appointment by visiting am-i-eligible.covid19vaccine.health.ny.gov or by calling 1-833-697-4829 any day between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. After receiving the vaccine, which should take a few minutes, staff at the vaccine clinic will likely ask you to wait for 15 minutes before leaving the site.

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Vaccine rollout

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The state has received heavy criticism over its sluggish vaccine rollout. Some public health officials have criticized the state for the slow pace while other officials, many of them Republicans, have criticized Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, for his management of the state’s vaccine distribution.

Cuomo has attributed the problem to a lack of supply coming from the federal government and slow vaccine administration at hospitals.

The federal government determines each state’s vaccine allotment, and New York has been receiving about 200,000 to 300,000 doses each week — for a total of 1,190,150 vaccine doses as of Monday, according to the DOH.

Cuomo has said that’s not enough, and on Monday he asked Pfizer to let the state purchase vaccines directly.

Late last month and earlier this month, health care providers across the state were forced to throw away some of the doses they’d received — which have to be used within a certain time frame — because they struggled to find people to vaccinate that fit within the state’s vaccination guidelines, the New York Times reported last week.

The federal government then broadened eligibility requirements, and the state followed suit. Even as the number of doses delivered to New York state falls short of what Cuomo has said the state needs, last week, the number of people eligible expanded further from about 2 million people to 7 million people.

Cuomo has criticized the Trump administration for further expanding that eligibility too quickly, without enough supply to meet the increased demand.

Now eligible are people ages 65 and older, police officers and other first responders, teachers and school staff, corrections officers and others in various professions, including grocery store employees. Health care workers and nursing home residents have been eligible for a few weeks now.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that officials leading President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed waited more than two months before authorizing a plan to distribute COVID-19 vaccines in August, leaving less time for states to piece together their plans.

That’s despite the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pushing to help states prepare for vaccine distribution in June. A spokesman for Operation Warp Speed told the Journal that it was doing its due diligence in vetting the CDC’s distribution plan.