55,000 Vaccinations Later, State Will Close College Vaccination Site

New York State announced on Tuesday, July 20, that it will close the mass vaccination site at the Stony Brook Southampton college campus on July 26 — even as the number of new infections among nonvaccinated people has been climbing this month — after administering 55,074 doses of vaccine.

The facility was opened in late March after weeks of pleading from local officials. The mass vaccination center has been operating seven days a week since then, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Last month, the state shifted the times two days a week to allow the site to remain open until 9:30 p.m., to give those returning from late work hours of the longer summer days an opportunity to stop in.

The facility was staffed and operated by Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. The hospital had administered more than 80,000 vaccine doses on the East End as of the end of June, including the mass vaccination site and other pop-up clinics it had conducted.

Mass vaccination sites statewide have been gradually closing as the pace of new vaccinations has slowed and more doctors offices and drug store outlets have begun offering vaccinations.

Vaccination levels state-wide are thought to be somewhere over 70 percent and could be higher on the East End, though a swollen population of second-home owners may be skewing data that rely on baseline census estimates.

The positivity rate of infections in the state has been climbing slowly but steadily in the last three weeks, with more than 1,000 new cases reported across the state on consecutive days this past weekend. Suffolk County on Monday saw 88 new cases reported and a positivity rate over 2 percent for the first time since the spring.