Nassau Creating Program To Vaccinate Home-Bound Residents

NASSAU COUNTY, NY — Nassau County Executive Laura Curran announced that the county would begin a program to help vaccinate the home-bound as inoculation efforts ramp up around the country.

With all residents age 16 and older now eligible to be vaccinated, Curran said that 40 percent of the county's entire population has been vaccinated, which is 54 percent of eligible adults. Curran claimed Nassau has the highest percentage of vaccinated residents among New York counties with populations of 400,000 or more.

In order to keep those numbers strong, Curran said the county will begin a dedicated program for vaccinating home-bound seniors and other citizens next week. The shots will be administered to the home-bound by Nassau County Police Department medics, who will receive special training on inoculating residents.

"NCPD medics have been true heroes through this pandemic, through the most difficult days," said Curran. "And now they're going to be called to help us with the home-bound as well."

Despite the growing number of vaccinations, Nassau County is still seeing large numbers of new cases confirmed every day. There were 19,015 confirmed cases in February and 19,557 for March. That's a daily average of 679 cases for February. March was an improvement, with a daily average of 631 cases. So far, the county has recorded 170,690 cases of the coronavirus since the pandemic began last March.

Deaths have slowed, but have still climbed. Nassau surpassed 3,000 lives lost to the virus in mid-March. The death toll among Nassau County residents now stands at 3,066.

Officials are encouraging all residents who are eligible to get vaccinated. It can save their lives and the lives of their loved ones, and also let life get back to normal.

"If we can keep up this high vaccination rate, I'm confident we can fully reopen our economy sooner rather than later," said Curran.