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Rural health stories produced by the WSKG newsroom.
“If you have access to health care right away, in your own community, it’s much better than having to be transported for 45 minutes, an hour or longer to care.”
Women’s Health Services is an abortion clinic in Vestal. Across the parking lot is Women’s Life Services, a crisis pregnancy center, which is opposed to abortion and provides alternatives to the procedure.
With four weeks out before the 2022 midterms, WSKG’s Vaughn Golden and Phoebe Taylor-Vuolo discuss endorsements in the race for Broome County Sheriff and a new poll for the 19th Congressional District.
“We had kids that came to ninth grade who hadn’t been in school for two years. So they didn’t develop the social skills that they needed.”
A month in, The Turning Point recovery and community center in Oneonta is distributing as much naloxone in a day as they used to in a week.
“Everyone takes 911 for granted, but it actually took 10 years to get 911 up and functioning across the United States.”
A school district in Lancaster County is considering a policy to bar transgender students from competing in teams that correspond to their gender.
Some Ithaca residents say not all parents are able to come to the meetings in person. They say that cuts them out of the decision making process.
The DEC maintained its previous position that the facility did not comply with New York’s statutory climate goals.
“[The ruling], especially, is making me not want to go far away from here,” said 11th grader Samantha Kager. “Especially if I can’t have free choice of what I want to do with my own body.”
The city’s Common Council plans to vote next week on an ordinance that would make it more difficult for other states to investigate abortions in Ithaca.
“Your clients are more than your clients, because you probably know them. They’re people in your community, and so they feel more like family.”
Environmental regulator issues violation notice to the Village of Johnson City.
The virus is spread through bird droppings, especially from migratory waterfowl like ducks and geese.
“We had one call, [the dispatcher called] 23 agencies, and no ambulance was available. To the point where the dispatcher called the house back and said, ‘We’ve got nothing. You have to find your own way to the hospital.’”
The Southern Tier region will receive about $4.8 million from the settlement in 2022. The initial payout on Tuesday totaled about $759,000 for the region.
“We are starting to see shortages in especially our rural areas. Positions for school psychologists left open year after year with no one to fill them.”
The jobs come with benefits and pay is higher than what many private home health agencies offer. But the county hasn’t gotten many applicants yet.
Just as the reforms were about to go into effect, Gov. Kathy Hochul put them on hold, citing an ongoing shortage of health care workers.
“This is an emergency. Please, people need to act like it’s an emergency.”
An emergency declaration passed by the sewage board allows it to make purchases and sign contracts outside normal procedures.
The school board at Chenango Forks Central School District voted unanimously to end the district’s mask requirements as soon as the statewide mandate is lifted.
“When everyone in our community is healthy, our state will be healthy, and our nation will be healthy.”
Plant officials say the new facility is still processing sewage and residents should be unaffected.
A federal grant funds the ‘AgriSafe Helpline’ effort.
There have been nearly 50 overdoses since this year began, more than half in the past two weeks.
The Food and Drug Administration recently limited certain monoclonal antibody drugs used to treat COVID patients, because they don’t seem to be effective against the omicron variant.
Broome County is still reporting hundreds of positive COVID-19 cases each week, but numbers have continued to fall.
Governor Kathy Hochul said New York’s health care workforce was short-handed before the pandemic, and now it’s even worse.
Some Ithaca residents say they worry about another potential spike in the county’s COVID-19 positivity rate. So far, that increase hasn’t materialized.
“We’re kind of hoping, and we’re being promised that these test kits — over the counter test kits and antigen test kits — are going to become more readily available.”
Broome County continues to see record numbers of COVID-19 cases, with 3,250 new cases in the past week. But County Executive Jason Garnar says for now, hospitalizations don’t seem to be increasing at the same rate.
Thousands of cars lined the streets leading into Otsiningo Park on Wednesday. County officials had set up a drive-thru site to distribute 10,000 at-home COVID tests.
A New York bill allowing air ambulances to carry blood for emergency transfusion was signed into law last week. Local officials say the measure is a crucial step toward saving lives.
Cayuga Lake has struggled with harmful algal blooms or HABs in recent years, but in 2021 unseasonably warm temperatures and heavy rainfall may have extended their prevalence late into the year.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she’s committed to seeing students return to school next week as planned, as state health officials are pushing for more children to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Even though students are back in person again, school leaders say 18 months of remote learning has taken a toll on students’ social and emotional development.
Given the spike in COVID-19 cases, county officials are advising residents to make sure they stay safe during holiday gatherings.
The governor gave updates on the current mask mandate, hospital capacity and testing, in the midst of a surge in COVID-19 cases across the state.
New York’s bail reform law does not allocate any additional funds for treatment centers and similar programs, which has been a bipartisan critique of the 2019 policy.
The board agreed to look into a plan to provide additional security at the building that houses the health department. Currently, visitors to the building must pass through a metal detector and a security guard.
“We are racing against the clock now. It’s important that when people want to get vaccinated or they want to get boosted, that they can do that immediately.”
Since the statewide mask mandate was announced last week, New York’s counties have grappled with how to implement it. Certain counties have embraced the mandate. Others have refused to carry it out.
Hemp processing licenses are once again moving forward with New York state certification, after some were delayed for months following the overhaul of the state’s cannabis law, earlier this year.
Tompkins County currently has more than 1,100 active COVID-19 cases. The vast majority of them, nearly 900, can be attributed to Cornell University students. But the county only has nine hospitalizations.
The City of Ithaca will soon begin a guaranteed income pilot program. It’s intended for lower and middle-income residents who are primary caregivers.
“The plants literally drowned and died because the roots couldn’t get any oxygen.”
Across the state about one in every seven positive COVID-19 tests is sent to a lab to be screened for variants. But some counties, like Tompkins, are able to screen nearly all of their tests.
The National Guard will be deployed to fill staffing shortages at Willow Point Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Vestal.
Broome County continues to see a spike in COVID-19 cases, with 138 new cases announced on Friday. The county currently has over 900 active cases, and a 7% positivity rate.
“Now every time we see it rain, or flood warning, we get scared and we flee our house.”
“It’s not because the volunteers aren’t trying, they’re doing the very best they can. But the number of volunteers are dwindling.”
County officials attributed the rise in cases to residents socializing over Halloween weekend.
“We want to help offer these necessary health screenings to members of the community so that we can begin to address these various health and social needs, because they’re not separate, they’re actually connected.”
The lower-dose Pfizer vaccine has arrived at health departments and pediatricians’ offices across the region.
The measure would allow students to take a rapid test every day for a week, rather than quarantine, after potential exposure to COVID.
“You could probably assume that we have the same type of vaccination rate that the rest of Broome county does. So about a third of our sixteen to seventeen hundred employees are probably not vaccinated.”
“They’ll have an argument with the parent right in front of you where the parent says no and the child says yes.”
“If you’re disabled, and you don’t get to speak for yourself, then you lose your voice.”
While plans for the new Decker College of Nursing and Health Sciences facility pre-date the pandemic by several years, its opening comes at a time when many hospitals face nursing shortages.
“Your community, your neighbors, are working in those ERs around the clock, and they are tired, and they are getting really taxed.”
The IBEW’s now outspoken support of Greenidge indicates that opponents may face a broader front in their efforts to pass legislation implementing a moratorium on cryptocurrency mining.
“It’s important, again, that we use these funds to provide lifesaving drugs, and lifesaving treatment.”
“All eyes are on what happens with this particular facility.”
“People are tired, and we’ve seen a significant resurgence here. There’s a significant demand in our emergency rooms, in our COVID unit, in our ICU, and so, we need all hands on deck.”
COVID-19 is adding stress to Pennsylvania’s underfunded behavioral health care system.
With two units closed, the nursing home has reduced its capacity from 300 to 216 beds.
“More than 820,000 Americans are on the waitlist to receive care. Families may have to wait as long as five years, to get home care services that they need for their loved ones who are aging or disabled.”
“Our numbers had gotten so low that we did not need to continue the rapid testing site. But the numbers are going up.”
“A lot of our staff is out doing their regulatory jobs, that need to happen, and it leaves us less infrastructure for doing the case investigation.”
“I’d love to be able to [test] our whole school, but you’re talking, you know, 5000 tests a week. We do not have that capacity.”
“Our very important caregivers, our essential caregivers, you called them heroes a year ago, and now you’re expecting them to take cuts to their vital benefits.”
“Last year, when everything really started way way back, there was this myth that kids can’t get it, and kids can’t spread it. And that’s obviously been proven way false.”
“A lot of the older adult care facilities completely shut us out, just for safety purposes, and kind of not bringing outsiders into their communities.”
“Not fixing something that you know needs to be fixed now, because the money just doesn’t allow for it at this moment.”
“It’s going to be very, very difficult to provide the same level of healthcare if we are, all of a sudden, starting to see people walk off the job and leave the healthcare industry.”
“You have to be at a point where you have plans in place where you can adjust accordingly, and still maintain an education for our students.”
“The PCR testing is the gold standard, it is the most sensitive and accurate to run to determine the results. The antigen testing is a little bit less reliable.”
“I believe that the benefit, risk ratio is an order of magnitude better for IM3 than it was for SungEel.”
“I’m sure we stand to lose some staff, and we’d hate to see that happen.”
“People are gonna take a bed or a floor, kind of wherever they can get it. Usually it’s going to be in an unsafe environment.”
“At the current rate, things have the potential to get out of control. And the last thing anybody wants to see is another shutdown.”
“We’re talking about one to two new cases, daily, sometimes zero cases daily, to about 30 new cases per day.”
Tompkins and Chenango Counties had “substantial” levels of transmission.
Only some of the region’s private colleges have implemented vaccine requirements for both employees and students.
“The fires aren’t going to go away, and the jet stream isn’t going to change, so we could even see days like this in August, or in October.”
Testing has shown some homes in Elmira Heights to have indoor air concentrations as high as 37 micrograms per cubic meter, over seventeen times the EPA’s maximum for homes.
“Especially with that surge of the overdose numbers, it’s not going away, so why not just try it?”
“Our numbers in person dwindled down to zero because we weren’t even in the building. But the reach that we made tripled.”
“Our impression is that probably, you can find five percent, maybe even up to ten percent in areas, it definitely seems to be increasing.”
“It’s important that these companies pay up, it’s also important that the money go to where it was intended.”
Broome County’s declaration will expire at 3:30 p.m., after 457 days in effect.
The comments, drafted by the Tompkins County Office of Planning and Sustainability staff, ask the DEC to provide more specifics about implementation.
“In my view, the county taxpayers shouldn’t foot a bill for a crisis that we didn’t create.”
“It was a cycle that individuals were kind of in the hamster wheel on, and some of them are just getting back to comfortable being in the stores now.”
“Crisis is a very relative term, right,” she said. “What is a crisis to one person may not be a crisis to another.”
“We saw drugmakers raising already exorbitant prices on hundreds of drugs while families faced unprecedented health challenges and financial insecurity.”
Gillibrand, a member of Congress’s Special Committee on Aging, said making long-term care more accessible and affordable is among her top priorities.
Several other schools across New York are also requiring immunizations.
“Obviously people not coming for prevention or care doesn’t help the situation, but I wouldn’t say the pandemic is fully to blame for the increase.”
“It’s the communities and the connectedness that we have within those communities. It’s the jobs that we have access to. It’s the type of income we have.”
Binghamton is “still moving forward” with the audit.
“That’s a personal decision, but it’s my job as a teacher to provide you with the information so you can look up the specifics, or we can look them up together.”
The draft plan focuses on a broad array of areas that largely focus on limiting the amount of phosphorus running into the lakes
“I’m surprised they’re not sending vans to weigh stations or rest areas and putting up signs to say, ‘Truck drivers, stop here and get your one-shot vaccine. One-shot and go.’”
“You get the ten people, we’ll come with the vaccines.”
The governor was also asked about allegations of sexual misconduct and the state losing a congressional seat
“This early in the process of vaccine administration, to have difficulty filling appointments is concerning.”
“We don’t have the availability of doses like the state does that we can swap what we had today with a different type of vaccine.”
“Why house us with somebody we can constantly contract it [from] every time a new intake person comes in.”
The council plans to reconvene Monday, April 12 at 6 p.m. to resume consideration of agreement.
Wednesday’s meeting will be conducted over Zoom and will begin at 6 p.m..
“Why is it state-sentenced inmates are being punished by not getting the same treatment as every other state inmate all because we’re housed in county jails?”
“Freedom from torture is the most basic of human rights, and yet every year tens of thousands of New Yorkers are subjected to it in the form of solitary confinement.”
“It really, truly, is a Norman Rockwell experience.”
The company cited what it called a “divisive local political climate.”
“I feel much more comfortable about that scenario than I would around rushed budget negotiations that would be based off of the Governor’s position.”
The mass vaccination sites are an addition to those already in operation across New York, including in Johnson City.
“They feel very vulnerable because they are homebound and obviously have health issues and they feel like they would be at high risk.”
Jason Garnar said on Facebook he is feeling fine and does not have any symptoms
“We really hope that we’ll begin receiving additional allotments so that we can become a larger player in that group of vaccinators.”
“A month ago we were struggling to get people into appointments, but that’s not the case anymore.”
Gov. Cuomo announced 10 new sites across the state on Monday.
“They know the people in the church, and when you pick a location like that, it helps put more people at ease.”
“We’re just bringing the vaccinations to them in a very low-threshold manner.”
“It’s through those outreach calls and those tele-dental visits that we are finding a lot of kids that are having acute issues because they’ve gone without regular preventative care for so long.”
“We need to have Narcan in everybody’s hands.”
“We said at the beginning that we will put these shots into arms as quickly as we get the doses, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
“Not everyone’s going to have that primary care person to go to for any of their health care needs.”
Cases of the variant were reported in Tompkins County in January and earlier this month.
“If we can make it easy instead of more difficult, we might be able to address what’s happening with the overdose rate.”
“Transportation’s a huge problem for them to get here. The winter’s been harder.”
“We speak with our healthcare partners weekly and we all are seeing a decrease in demand for testing, which is a really good sign.”
“The sooner we get this investigation started, the sooner we can get justice and the sooner we can get information to make sure that this never happens again.”