GOSHEN – Coronavirus vaccines are just beginning to roll out with doctors and nurses in the region first in line.
With an initial limited supply, Orange County Executive Steven Neuhaus wants those frontline healthcare workers to be inoculated first and he has issued an executive order saying that if politicians want to get a shot now, they won’t be allowed in his county.
“The nursing homes, at least some of them, are not going to get their first vaccination until after January. So, to have a politician because they are a politician get the vaccination people that it might save their life, to me is unacceptable, so I gave an order out today that they should be denied,” he said. “When we start having such a large quantity of vaccines that they are looking for people, then that is when I will do it and everyone else.”
On Tuesday, Neuhaus met with healthcare workers at Bon Secour Hospital in Port Jervis as they were vaccinated and on Wednesday, me was at Garnet Medical Health Center in the Town of Wallkill with frontline workers there who were inoculated.
A total of 20,100 people have contracted COVID-19 in Orange County since he pandemic started with 177 new cases reported on Tuesday. Two more people died from the virus bringing the number of deaths to 568.
