Coronavirus Vaccination Site To Open In Hauppauge: Bellone

HAUPPAUGE, NY — The H. Lee Dennison Building, a Suffolk government office in Hauppauge, opened as the county's fourth coronavirus mass vaccination site, Executive Steve Bellone announced Wednesday morning.

"Here, the seat of our government, the place where the people look to, particularly in moments of crisis, is now a place that is providing help and hope to have our region and our county emerge from this pandemic by being a vaccination site," Bellone told reporters.

The Hauppauge site is expected to vaccinate roughly 600 people on Wednesday and has the capacity to provide 900 shots daily, Bellone said.

More than 400,000 Suffolk residents have received at least their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine as of Wednesday, Bellone said. Residents aged 50 and older are eligible to be vaccinated. Those seeking an appointment were encouraged by Bellone to call Suffolk 311 and pre-register.

The supply of vaccines has not increased significantly yet, but Bellone expects the number of available shots to ramp up "dramatically" over the next few weeks.

The H. Lee Dennison Building joins Suffolk Community College campuses at Brentwood, Selden, and Riverhead as mass vaccination sites in the county. Other vaccine points of distribution are scattered throughout the county as well.

The opening of Suffolk's fourth site comes at a time when the coronavirus positivity rate has plateaued in the county.

The most recent positivity rate clocked in at 4.3 percent, Bellone said. While the number has come down from the more-than-12 percent experienced during the "second wave" of the virus, the positivity rate has been stuck around 4 percent since early February, Bellone said. He said he thought the county would be in the 1 percent-range by mid-March based on the decline from the 12 percent mark.

The county's COVID-19 hospitalization number has also plateaued, Bellone said. A figure of approximately 400 Suffolk residents have been in the hospital with the virus for weeks, Bellone said. That number is down from a high of roughly 850 people.

Hope, Bellone said, could be a factor in the stagnation of the positivity rate and hospitalization numbers.

"The fact that many people are getting vaccinated, the fact that spring is here and warm weather is here, people are rightly feeling optimistic and positive," he said. "That is leading to more people coming out and being together. That is a positive thing, but we do need to remain cognizant of the fact the virus is not gone. It is still here. There are risks from variants potentially developing."

The executive said the county is still in a race against the coronavirus.

"A race to vaccinate as many people as possible as quickly as possible before the virus can change or mutate in a way to evade our efforts to destroy it," Bellone said. "That's what this race is: to get as many shots in the arms as quickly as possible, so we can once and for all say that this virus is behind us. Until we get to that point — until we get to herd immunity and this virus is still lurking out here in our community and can continue to mutate — there remains real risk."