SUNY Oswego prepared to vaccinate students
COVID-19 signs on SUNY Oswego campus reminding students and faculty to wear a mask
Oswego, N.Y. — After a full year of sorrow and pain from COVID-19, SUNY Oswego is giving us a bit of light. SUNY Oswego is prepared to start vaccinating its students and the greater Oswego community.
SUNY Oswego is prepared to host and facilitate two vaccination pods, one for the university community and the other for the people of Oswego. SUNY Oswego is patterning with the county to provide a site for vaccinating people and the personnel to facilitate the vaccination process. SUNY Oswego would only be a hosting site for the Oswego community, Oswego County Health Department is in charge of administrating the vaccines to those that are eligible.
SUNY Oswego has notified the state and SUNY that it’s ready and prepared to serve as a vaccine distribution site.
“I communicate to SUNY daily that we’re ready to go, but our campus communicates to the New York State Department of Health every week that we are ready to go. So we’re ready,” said Pamela Caraccioli, Deputy to President for External Partnership and Economic Development.
Caraccioli said that SUNY Oswego is the safest place to be in the county.
Eligibility for the vaccination does not include college students but, President Joe Biden announced that he plans to direct states to make all US adults eligible by May 1st. To see if you are eligible and where vaccination sites are located visit the official New York State website.
SUNY Oswego and Oswego County Health Department still emphasize the importance of wearing a mask, health officials said that those that are vaccinated can still carry the virus and spread it to those that are not vaccinated yet.
“My message to students would be, to everyone really is stay focus and be smart. We need to keep doing the right things because it’s working. I get nervous as the weather gets warmer that is going to make people assume that masks are no longer needed. But we have to wear them, we are so close. Just to be careless at this point? It would just really eliminate all the good work and sacrifices all of us have made,” said Wayne Westervelt, Chief Communication Officer at SUNY Oswego.
Oswego State currently has 22 active COVID-19 among students and employees. The campus has conducted over 20,000 on-campus COVID tests since the beginning of the year. For more information on the status of COVID-19 on the SUNY Oswego campus visit the campus’s COVID-19 dashboard.