A Shot In The Arm

A pop-up vaccination clinic run by East Hampton Town officials, in conjunction with Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, was meant to operate from 8:15 a.m. to 7:45 p.m. on Friday. Yet, there were East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc and Town Councilman David Lys standing side by side with Robert Chaloner, the hospital’s chief operating officer, and a small army of his staff, still there well past midnight and into the early morning hours on Saturday, doling out vaccines to a final trickle of willing takers 18 hours after they gave their first shot in the arm. Virtually none of the supply was wasted.

The effort continued a few hours later into the day on Saturday, as the town eased its requirements from those 65 and over to also allow people with co-morbidities, conditions that include chronic heart, kidney or liver disease, cancer, pregnancy, and obesity, among others.

At the end of two days, the newly named East Hampton Town Center for Humanities, located at the former Child Development Center of the Hamptons on Stephens Hand Path, had distributed more than 2,000 vaccines, which represents nearly 10 percent of East Hampton’s total population. Again — in two days.

The bulk of the appointments over the weekend came from the lists of senior citizens that East Hampton Town has been compiling through its senior services programs. East Hampton Town seniors still can go to the town’s new online vaccination portal to register their eligibility at ehtownvaccine.org, with more doses expected to become available locally in the weeks ahead.

It’s been a mad scramble for vaccines in most parts of New York, and especially on the East End, where the rollout early on was compared by one official to the ill-fated voyage of the Titanic. It’s a joy to note that much has changed since those early days: Today, the vaccine supply is flowing much faster, from the federal level, to the states, to local governments and to health care facilities across our region.

The 2,000 or so East Hampton residents who were vaccinated over the weekend should take note that it was local officials like Mr. Van Scoyoc and Mr. Lys who anticipated the current increase in supply and set up infrastructure well in advance of its arrival. The pride that showed on their faces in the early morning hours on Saturday proved their hard work had paid off in an incredibly gratifying way.

So many people at the local level — elected officials, but also volunteers and clergy, and officials at Stony Brook Medicine and Suffolk County — have stepped in to build an efficient system that really didn’t exist. They shouldn’t have had to do that, but the region’s residents should be grateful they were able to provide a shot in the arm, figuratively and literally, when it was needed most.