NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. — A major milestone has been reached in New York State's efforts in getting people vaccinated against the coronavirus.
On Tuesday, the state reached universal vaccine eligibility – meaning everyone old enough to get the vaccine – 16 years old and older has become eligible.
In the words of Governor Andrew Cuomo, on Tuesday he said, there are no excuses in not getting the COVID-19 vaccine.
2 On Your Side has been looking to see where new appointments can be found.
If you’re 16 or 17 years old, you can only get the Pfizer vaccine. If you’re 18 years old or older, you can get either Pfizer, Moderna or the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. This is all based on FDA approval.
On Tuesday afternoon, Wegmans released several thousand vaccine appointments for Wegmans locations in the Buffalo-area, Rochester, Syracuse and the Southern Tier portion of the state. People who are 18 years old or older and are interested in getting vaccinated can either go to the Wegmans' website here or by calling: 1-800-207-6099
"I think that appointments will book quickly," said Frank Pietrantoni, the pharmacy operations manager for Wegmans.
And the appointments sure did fill fast. By Tuesday evening, many appointments in WNY were all gone.
According to the state’s vaccine tracker, vaccine supply has steady increased statewide in recent weeks, from more than 600,000 first doses the second week of March to more than 800,000 first doses this week.
"I think the supply is still strained, but the situation continues to improve each week and I think that’s evident in the fact that the state has expanded eligibility, so I'm very optimistic in the direction that we’re heading in," Pietrantoni said.
We also heard from Dr. Kevin Ban, the chief medical officer for Walgreens.
"Just to give you an idea for it, last week we received about a million doses of vaccine for that week and we expect as much as 2.2 million for next week," Ban said. "So in a very short period of time, we’ve doubled the amount of vaccine."
Earlier on Tuesday, 2 On Your Side found appointments at UB South were available, but since then, all those appointments are gone. We found many vaccine appointments throughout the day for Thursday at the Transit Drive In in Lockport. These appointments can be found by going through the Niagara County Health Department. And at Jamestown Community College - these appointments can be found by going through the Chautauqua County Health Department.
Hundreds of appointments can be found by going through the Orleans County Health Department for vaccinations at the Ridgeway Volunteer Fire Department in Medina next week.
Kathleen Sautter, a spokesperson for Tops sent us this response in an email:
"Appointments are always available on topsmarkets.com/covid19 for those that meet the current NYS requirements, which for Tops Markets are 18+ as we have either the Moderna and Janssen COVID -19 (J&J) vaccine. Our allotment continues to remain steady week over week as we receive doses from the State. We are hoping once Federal allocations become available that our allotment will increase so that we can serve more people. We were not impacted by the J&J recall as doses currently being distributed and used nationwide weren’t affected."
Kara Kane, a spokesperson for the Erie County Health Department sent us this email response:
"ECDOH is receiving 6,700 Moderna doses and 1,300 J&J doses from NYS for this week. We are making new appointments available as we schedule our PODs/clinics. This allocation was about the same as what we received last week (8,050 last week, 8,000 this week). We’re continuing to have a strong demand for our PODs. Aside from demand being more than the available supply, we aren’t experiencing any major issues. ECDOH can’t speak to any impact from the unusable batch of J&J vaccine."
As for Rite Aid, a spokesperson for the company says Rite Aid is getting more than 450,000 doses per week from the federal government and that this supply is spread over 1,900 stores. Rite Aid is still allowing people 30 and older to book appointments and has says they have not received guidance from the CDC to further expand age eligibility.