As COVID-19 creeps back onto Shelter Island, the East End and Suffolk County, the Town Board is resuming a cautious stance that lapsed after the last surge eased.
This follows reports of three new COVID-19 infections here in just the last week, according to Deputy Supervisor Amber Brach-Williams, and rising positivity rates among those being tested around Suffolk County. The working assumption is that variants — including the highly contagious Delta — are the cause of rising numbers.
Going forward, anyone who wants to attend a meeting at Town Hall will have to show proof of vaccination, Supervisor Gerry Siller said at Tuesday’s board work session. Everyone else can join via Zoom, or watch on townhallstreams.com. Recordings of Town Board meetings will continue to air on Channel 22, the town’s public access station.
Siller said he noticed that patrons at the IGA had begun wearing masks again — most of the staff have been masked throughout — and he recommended that Islanders don masks when indoors in public places.
Case count still far lower than neighbors
The COVID-19 count on the Island is 67 cases (that’s cumulative since March of 2020). Shelter Island has — by far — the lowest case count of any Suffolk County community. Southold is next with 1,693; East Hampton with 1,747; Riverhead with 3,700 and Southampton with 5,942.
Importantly, the rate of cases per 1,000 residents here is also much lower than our neighboring East End towns. On Shelter Island the rate is 23.9/1,000; in Southold it’s 76.3/1,000; East Hampton, 79.97/1,000; Riverhead, 109.84/1,000 and Southampton 102.79.
A large number of cases — 7,526 — are reported in Suffolk County as “location unknown”. Some of these cases may be attributable to East End communities where there is heavy reliance on Post Office boxes as mailing addresses. Reporting systems at the state, at least in the early days of the pandemic, may have overlooked these addresses as they do not represent a resident’s physical location.
These cases are included in the overall Suffolk County figures. The positivity rate in Suffolk County is rising; it was 3.9 percent on Monday, August 2 (3.1 percent on a seven-day average), according to the Suffolk County Department of Information Technology. That’s up from 2.8 percent a week earlier (2.4 percent on a seven-day average).
Vaccination rates
The state has been tracking vaccination rates, and lots of East End ZIP codes, including Shelter Island Heights, report that 99 percent of people age 18+ have completed a vaccine series. In Suffolk County, the average is 63 percent. In the 11964 Shelter Island ZIP code, the latest report says 57.6 percent are fully vaccinated.
No matter which ZIP code you’re registered to, it’s important to note there are many caveats in the reporting that NYS health authorities say particularly affect small sample sizes (like those here on Shelter Island).
