Recovery of addicts in residential rehabilitation facilities will be one of the people vaccinated against coronavirus this week, government spokesman Andrew Cuomo doubly revealed on Monday.
During a virtual press conference in Albany, Cuomo said the state expects to receive a combined 259,000 doses of Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.
In addition to employees of the urgent care center and “people who administer COVID-19 vaccines, for obvious reasons,” Cuomo said residents would be shot at “OASAS,” the state office of services and supports for to addictions.
The agency manages 12 treatment centers statewide, with five located in or around New York City, and also certifies and controls “hundreds” of private facilities, according to its website.
“They are congregated facilities. Congregated facilities are problematic. That’s where you have a lot of concentrated people, “said Cuomo.
“Nursing homes are obviously the most problematic, as they are congregated in addition to elderly and vulnerable people. The OASAS facilities, what we call O facilities, are congregated, not necessarily older, but congregated ”.
Residents and employees will be vaccinated in both state-run and private rehabilitation centers, as well as in facilities managed or authorized by the Office of Persons with Developmental Disabilities and the Office of Mental Health. , according to the State Department of Health.
Emergency medical services personnel, forensic and forensic doctors and some funeral workers are also being shot, a DOH spokeswoman said.
Luke Nasta, director of the New York Association of Substance Abuse Providers, said the nonprofit group had lobbied for rehabilitated patients to receive vaccines.
Nasta, CEO of the Camelot Family Foundation – which runs two residential treatment centers on Staten Island – said it made sense to give vaccines to drug users because they are more likely to “get the disease and spread it”.
“It simply came to our notice then. We caught the attention of Governor and Governor Cuomo acted appropriately, ”he said.
Meanwhile, the percentage of New Yorkers who tested positive for coronavirus rose from 5.8% to 8.3% over the three-day Christmas weekend, Cuomo said.
The rise could show that a post-Thanksgiving increase in cases is gaining strength or is simply an aberration caused by the number of fewer people being tested because of the holidays, he said.
More certain were the hospitalizations related to COVID-19 which rose to 7,559 across the state (up to 376) and the 114 fatalities attributed to respiratory disease, which caused the number of deaths from State out of 29,629.