Emergency responders are seeing hours-long wait times at emergency rooms and lines out of the doors of urgent care.
“We’re all correlated here as the pandemic has had pressure on our medical infrastructure 19 months in,” Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon said Monday.
McMahon said the county would extend testing hours at the OnCenter to alleviate pressure applied to ERs and urgent cares.
“We can build up testing infrastructure, but we don’t have nurses here that we can send to hospitals, but this is something that we can do,” McMahon said.
The county is also preparing for approval from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to vaccinate kids between the ages 5 and 11.
“Certainly, if there is enough demand in a district where we can fill a clinic, they’ll get their own clinic,” McMahon said. “If there isn’t a demand, we will likely pair districts.”
The county is working with local school districts to survey parents to gauge vaccine demand.
The county plans to set up clinics within the schools, or nearby.
Part of planning the clinics is to ensure they are at accessible times for parents.
“I think we’ll get 30 to 40% participation right away and then I think you’ll probably see it slowly get over 50 and that’s a lot of people so,” McMahon said. “That brings a lot of new immunity to the county.”
McMahon said the county will consider any pediatrician officer that would like to administer the vaccine.
For county clinics, children between ages 5 and 11 will need to be accompanied by an adult.
