Kristin Sommer is a new breed of traveler.
She is one of a growing number of anxious New Yorkers combing the state, and its 55,000 square miles, in search of a lifesaving shot in the arm.
Sommer has never been to Potsdam in the – very far – North Country of New York. And she certainly never envisioned going in the winter to an area that can make places like Buffalo seem balmy by comparison.
Nevertheless, she’s getting up very, very early on Feb. 27 to be able to make it in time for a 9 a.m. appointment in the Saint Lawrence County village to seek the holy grail that millions of New Yorkers are after: a Covid-19 vaccine.
Sommer, a librarian at Cloverbank Elementary School in Hamburg in the Frontier Central School District, is joining the ranks of New York Covid vaccine long-distance pilgrims.
They are young and old, seeking to make vaccine appointment reservations. Sometimes, they are doing so in the dead of night when rumors surface about vaccine openings. During the day, they are the ones, by the millions, getting frustrated as they attempt to sign up via a state government telephone hotline or, alternatively, a state health department website that lists availability – or, almost always not – for vaccine appointments.
Except, it seems, for two places in the northernmost reaches of the Empire State: Potsdam and Plattsburgh.
Of the 13 state-run vaccine sites, those two locations, according to spot checks over the last two weeks, more regularly offer vaccine appointments than anywhere else. Other places, from Buffalo to the state fairgrounds in Syracuse to a racetrack in Queens to a state beach park on Long Island, offer a singular response to desperate vaccine seekers: “No appointments available currently.”
Enter the caravans of vaccine hopefuls to Potsdam and Plattsburgh where vaccine appointments have been available, if not plentiful.
The explanations range from the far-flung locations’ relatively low populations to people turned off by venturing out during the harsh winter months, especially elderly residents. There are, as with the Covid Era, any number of other ideas, both rational and conspiracy-related, like rural areas getting an overabundance of vaccines – a theory people living in rural areas would dispute.
State officials also are concerned about people taking up slots by booking more than one vaccine reservation, which they discourage New Yorkers from doing.
State health department spokeswoman Jill Montag said that vaccine doses are distributed based on a region’s population. The goal of these sites “is to vaccinate the region they are in, and of the nearly 800,000 (vaccine appointments) that have been made at state-run sites, roughly 75% are for New Yorkers from the site’s region.”
To put it another way, that means one-quarter of people seeking vaccines are traveling from their home region to another area of the state to get an appointment.
The Cuomo administration sought to put the blame on former President Trump, who Cuomo has criticized for not supplying states with adequate Covid vaccine doses. President Biden has increased vaccine supplies to states since taking office.
“At the end of the day, however, our goal is to get shots in arms as quickly and efficiently as possible. If New Yorkers in one area are not booking all available appointments, and someone is willing to travel to get a shot, that only reflects the woefully inadequate supply of vaccines we received from the (former) Trump administration," Montag said.
In Sommer’s case, she heard that CVS, the national pharmacy chain, was updating its vaccine appointment schedule at midnight every night. So, she would go to bed, wake back up during the night and try for an appointment. But CVS, it turned out, had age restrictions at the time, vaccinating people only over the age of 65, she said, if at all.
“So that was a bust," she said in an interview.
Then, like other New Yorkers, she found out that the state-run vaccine sites at SUNY Potsdam and an airport outside the city of Plattsburgh had appointments. “I jumped on it," she said when she saw the Potsdam availability.
Sommer plans to get vaccinated – unless the appointment is canceled by the state because of supply problems – on the last Saturday of the month. She plans on having her mother, who is over 65 and who also works in a school, vaccinated in Potsdam. But their dates aren’t together, so it will mean a return trip the following weekend for her mother.
Then, for the required second dose, it’s back to Potsdam again sometime in March for the two of them.
The trip from Buffalo to Potsdam is early 600 miles, round trip.
“It’s going to be a long day, but it’s so worth it to just protect my health and to protect the people around me,’’ she said of her students and colleagues and family.
Potsdam is a college town far closer to the federal capital of Canada than to the New York State Capitol in Albany. Plattsburgh, along Lake Champlain with a picturesque view of Vermont, is a half hour from French-speaking Quebec.
Vaccine seekers across New York have wondered how have these two North Country sites been able to more regularly offer appointments for the arm jab than elsewhere.
“I don’t think the Plattsburgh area is being given any more advantages than any other area,’’ said Plattsburgh Town Supervisor Michael Cashman.
Officials in Potsdam and Plattsburgh said their sites – intended to serve a massive area of the North Country – are doing about 500 vaccinations a day. With some exceptions, New York largely has no restrictions on people traveling to other areas of the state to obtain a vaccine dose.
So if there are available appointments in Potsdam and Plattsburgh and so many other sites have only rare appointments, is there a basic problem with New York’s vaccination system? Should people have to crisscross the state to try to get a vaccine? And are places like Potsdam and Plattsburgh perhaps oversupplied?
“We all have to be in this together and understand that, like so many things in, it can’t be the North Country versus downstate or Western New York. We cannot play against one other. There are people in the North Country that need to be vaccinated," Cashman said.
In fact, the North Country, according to state figures, recently had the highest vaccination rate of any of New York’s regions. About 97% of first and second doses sent to the North Country facilities have been administered, far higher than some other regions.
How much that has to do with intrastate vaccine seekers traveling to Potsdam and Plattsburgh is unclear.
Cashman said it’s a good thing that people are actively seeking ways to get vaccinated. However, he added, he would not encourage people to travel great distances to get a vaccination, in part, because it means people are putting themselves at risk being on the road – and making stops along the way – for so long.
“But I empathize with anyone seeking the vaccine," he said.
Sommer, the Frontier school district librarian, says the state “bungled” the vaccine rollout and is compounding matters by offering the vaccine to more and more groups of people before being able to serve the initial round of residents – from health care workers to first responders to teachers.
As a result, she said, more and more New Yorkers are having to “fight for it” in order to get the vaccine.
“I think they just messed it up from the start," Sommer said.
Potsdam Mayor Ronald Tischler said officials hope the local SUNY college will soon be able to vaccinate 1,000 people per day. He believes the appointments have been regularly available because of the North Country’s light population density that is, quite simply, making more doses available.
When asked if too many vaccine doses were being sent to the North Country, he said: “I don’t think that’s the case at all. What we’re getting is being used.”
