Tens of thousands of Covid vaccine slots remain open: When will NY expand eligibility? - syracuse.com

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Syracuse, N.Y. -- On Tuesday, Connecticut announced that all adults could sign up for Covid-19 vaccines starting next month. Massachusetts said the same thing Wednesday. In Ohio, all adults will be eligible March 29.

New York, by contrast, nudged open the vaccine window only slightly this week by adding some public and nonprofit workers to the list. Meanwhile, more than 100,000 vaccine appointments within a two-hour drive of Syracuse remained available all day Wednesday.

“Now the state appears to be drawing lines around certain employment categories, and that doesn’t make sense,” said David Larsen, an epidemiologist and public health professor at Syracuse University. “I’d say open it up.”

President Joe Biden said he wants all U.S. adults to be eligible for the vaccine by May 1. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offered guidelines on how the vaccine should be rolled out, but decisions of who will be eligible when are up to each state.

About 10 million people in New York are eligible now, including front-line workers, anyone 60 or older, and residents with underlying health conditions such as obesity and cancer. Gov. Andrew Cuomo hasn’t said when he’ll expand eligibility to all adults, as other states have. In his briefing Wednesday, Cuomo said about 3 million New Yorkers have been fully vaccinated, and opening the shots to all adults would swell that pool to 15 million people.

“You’d have 12 million people eligible who haven’t received a vaccine, and then a tremendous allocation coming in very quickly,” Cuomo said. “So this is a logistical nightmare for the state to perform.”

Yet there are plenty of slots already unfilled. At 5 p.m. Wednesday, at least 100,000 vaccine appointments combined were still open at the five state-run sites within 120 miles of Syracuse: the New York State fairgrounds, SUNY Oneonta, Binghamton University, Rochester Dome Arena and SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Utica. Those appointments run through May 31.

Those are just the Central New York sites run by the state Department of Health. It doesn’t include 10 other sites run by the state across New York that still have openings, or dozens of clinics run by pharmacies and counties.

In Oneida County this morning, more than 1,700 appointments remained open over the next few days, including more than 300 for today. Onondaga County’s clinic this morning still had slots open at every 10-minute interval on Friday, from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Just before noon Wednesday, Larsen noted, appointments were still available at Onondaga County’s clinic for the same afternoon.

“Why is there vaccine still available today?” he asked. “At 12 p.m. I don’t think there should be any slots available.”

When the vaccines started rolling out to the public in February to limited groups, appointments were snapped up as huge demand outstripped limited supply. Now, with the addition of a third approved vaccine and ramped-up production, appointment slots are filling more slowly.

Larsen said the first waves of vaccines were designed to protect those most vulnerable to contracting the novel coronavirus or suffering serious illness: nursing home residents, health care workers and first responders, older people, and those with certain underlying conditions. Now, he said, we need to shift toward preventing transmission of the virus, and that means vaccinating as many people as possible.

Neighboring states are doing that. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker announced Wednesday that by April 19, any resident who is at least 16 will be able to sign up for a vaccine. In Connecticut, all adults will be eligible April 5; in Ohio, residents 16 or older can get shots starting March 29.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines for ages 18 and up. Pfizer has been tested in, and approved for, anyone 16 and older. Clinical trials are underway to see if the vaccines are safe and effective for children.