Museums & Zoos to 50% – Westchester PR Rate Below State Ave. – New Vax Finder

Museums & Zoos to 50% – Westchester PR Rate Below State Ave. – New Vax Finder: Governor Andrew Cuomo announced today that Museums and Zoo capacity will be raised from 33% to 50% beginning Monday, April 26. Movie theater capacity will be raised from 25% to 33% on the same date. Finally sports arenas capacity will be set at 25% beginning on May 19 to coincide with the beginning of the NBA playoffs.

His announcements came amid continuing decreases in the state’s seven day average COVID Positivity Test Rate, which dropped from 2.99% to 2.85% on Sunday. The lowest since November 13 before the holiday surge that began on Thanksgiving. The state’s Western Region which includes Buffalo remains the most elevated region with a positivity rate of 4.97%. New York’s Mid-Hudson Region, which includes Westchester County, had the second highest rate at 3.37. Westchester’s rate dropped from 3.16% to 2.74%, the first time it has been below the state average in recent memory.

The Governor’s announcements on Museums and Zoos were also accompanied by dramatic increases in the number of New Yorkers who have received the coronavirus vaccines. Over 41% of all New Yorkers (8,326,432) have now received at least the first dose of the vaccine. And 28.7% (5,659,417) have received their full series of doses.

NWH Appointments at Chappaqua Crossing

Northern Westchester Hospital announced this morning that they have 1,700 first dose appointments available at their Chappaqua Crossing location. Here’s some additional handy tools we have published recently to help you find a vaccine appointment. We particularly like  Vaccine Finder:

ADDITIONAL COVID VACCINE LINKS

• New York State book online here or call 1-833-NYS-4-VAX
• New York City book online here or call 877-VAX-4NYC
• Track NYC vaccinations by zip code
• Nassau County more info here
• Suffolk County more info here
• Westchester County more info here
• New Jersey book online here or call 1-855-568-0545
• Connecticut book online here

On a Final Note

In his Monday press conference, the governor offered no insight to questions from a Syracuse reporter about capacity limits for the New York State Fair, an eighteen day food, agriculture, and entertainment event that draws over a million people and is an economic boon to the area, which is scheduled to open on August 20. This despite, as we have calculated before, based on New York’s weekly vaccine allocation of the past six weeks, the state can vaccinate every New Yorker over sixteen by mid-August.

While last week’s allocation dropped to 763,825 doses from over one million the previous week due to the pause in releasing the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that number is consistent with 741,750 weekly doses the state received in the four week period from March 8 to April 4. That’s the number we used to calculate our mid-August date outlined above. And if supplies increase New York state has the current capacity to administer vaccines at a much higher rate. In fact, last week New York administered almost 1.4 million doses of the vaccine.