ERIE COUNTY, N.Y. (WKBW) — The Erie County Department of Health says it has canceled all COVID-19 vaccination appointments at ECC North and ECC South from January 23rd to 27th due to a short supply.
The health department initially canceled COVID-19 vaccination appointments from January 18th to 20th at ECC North and ECC South due to a short supply.
According to the health department this does not impact appointments scheduled for January 21st and 22nd.
"New York State asked us to schedule ours in advance for the rest of the month. We did. It was incumbent on New York State to then deliver the vaccines to us so then we could meet that demand. The problem is the federal government cut the amount of vaccines NYS received and so NYS cut everyone's supply," Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said.
While County Executive Poloncarz said the state told counties to schedule appointments through the end of the month, Governor Andrew Cuomo told distributors to do the opposite.
"We want to make sure distributors don't schedule any appointments for which they don't have a definitive allocation because we don't know what we're going to get next week," Governor Cuomo said.
The health department says the cancellations will impact over 4,300 people who have appointments scheduled for next week.
According to health officials, all future appointments with ECDOH should be considered tentative until the health department receives more COVID-19 vaccines, and this does not impact appointments at other sites such as appointments at the University at Buffalo South Campus.
So far since January 4th over 14,000 people have been vaccinated by the Erie County Department of Health.
Governor Cuomo and County Executive Poloncarz said the federal government is to blame for the lack of supply, creating a situation where there are more distributors than doses.
"I'd rather be in the situation where we have more distribution waiting on supply than supply waiting on distribution," Governor Cuomo said.
"So we just want to get the vaccines. We have the staff, we have the technology we have the locations, we just don't have the vaccines," Poloncarz said.
Both Governor Cuomo and County Executive Poloncarz hope the Biden administration will help get more shots into American's arms quickly.
