BUFFALO, N.Y. — There is hope that local community health centers will receive the COVID-19 vaccine directly from the federal government starting next week.
This is part of a new push from the Biden administration to get more people vaccinated in underserved communities.
Leaders at the Community Health Center of Buffalo, which also has locations in Niagara Falls, Cheektowaga and Lockport tell us they’re in the running to get the vaccine directly from the federal government.
"Things change rapidly, but we are in constant contact mostly with Congressman [Brian] Higgins with New York State Assembly [Speaker] Crystal Peoples-Stokes as well, on how we can help," said Dr. Kenyani Davis, chief medical officer of Community Health Center of Buffalo. "The logistics of everything is still rolling out so it’s hard to nail down any confirmations, but I can definitely tell you, we’re in the running we have been doing a lot of pop up clinics for the governor’s office."
No decisions have been made.
But, according to Biden administration officials, they want to begin sending doses of the vaccine directly to community health centers across the country beginning next week.
"One of the things that makes me feel that we are qualified and that they are looking at us is the fact that they’re asking us what do we need, we’ve been building this infrastructure for the past several months," Davis said.
If the Community Health Center of Buffalo is chosen, leaders here envision working with community organizations to find people in underserved communities and in eligible groups to be vaccinated.
"These are the conversations that we have to ask ourselves how many doses are you talking about how many people are you talking about because we may need to partner with other community based organizations or community schools to use their gymnasiums to do those," Davis said. "We have roughly about six or seven federally-qualified health centers here in Western New York so it doesn’t mean all six or seven of us will get it."
On vaccine distribution, CVS says beginning Thursday people who are eligible will be able to book appointments to get the vaccine, but we haven’t been told what time or how many will be available. CVS locations in Hamburg and Batavia are expected to receive doses. Walgreens tells us their online scheduler to book an appointment to get the vaccine went live on Wednesday.
Governor Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday announced two mass vaccination sites will open in a couple weeks in Queens and Brooklyn in what the state describes as “socially vulnerable communities.”
These sites will vaccinate 3,000 people a day.
"That's 15,000 per week, that's a massive impact," Cuomo said.
The governor says the state is working on opening four smaller vaccination sites in upstate New York but provided no further details on that.
