A COVID vaccine POD at the Shelter Island School on Friday brought relief to 503 Islanders, and a thrill of accomplishment to the many Town officials, employees and volunteers who worked practically around the clock to set it up on 48-hour notice.
The first to be vaccinated was lifelong Islander Esther Simovich, who around 9:30 AM entered a transformed gymnasium abuzz with nurses, pharmacists, technicians, local officials and volunteers — all masked and socially distanced — working together with one goal: getting shots into arms safely.
Over the next eight hours, people arrived at a fairly steady pace for appointments. Two-thirds of them were over age 65, and many were over 75. While most were able-bodied, a few needed help getting from the parking lot into the school.
Fortunately, it was a warm and sunny day. Volunteers wearing neon yellow pinnies and uniformed police officers provided wheelchairs or an elbow to lean on, and the comfort of familiar (if masked) faces.
Many couples — like Abby and Fred Dress — got their shots together; something that’s practically impossible to arrange at the large state-run PODs where online appointment portals restrict users to setting up one at a time.
But it happened here thanks to Islanders who came together to help others in a display of the self-sufficiency and generosity of spirit that have long been hallmarks of life on Shelter Island.
[Editor’s note: Due to medical privacy concerns, we use names and images only of those vaccine recipients who gave us permission to do so. You can see a gallery of images by K.C. Bailey and a short, black and white film here.]
How the POD came to be
For weeks, Town officials had been working behind the scenes with Stony Brook Southampton Hospital (SBSH) to bring a point of distribution (POD) to the community. So when the word came on Wednesday that the state would make 500+ doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine available on Friday, representatives from just about every corner of the community came together, determined to make it happen.
“This is what Shelter Island is all about,” Supervisor Gerry Siller said, surveying the quiet gym before supplies arrived Friday. “Everybody stepped up and worked together and got it done. Nobody’s taking credit, everybody just did it.”
The school district agreed to switch to remote learning for the day (and for the March 19 second dose), freeing up the only facility in Town large enough to accommodate the POD.
The district also devoted critical IT support and other staff to the project, including custodial and maintenance workers (who also cleaned and sanitized afterwards to make it safe for in-person classes to resume on Monday). In the cafeteria, hot coffee, bottled water and food was available through the day.
The Shelter Island Police Department scheduled all of its available officers including Bay Constables and Animal Control Officers, ensuring sufficient workforce to handle onsite logistics; the time was charged against training days so no overtime was incurred.
Every other Town department backed up Senior Services by transferring clerical staff to assist with contacting eligible members of the Island community. These secretaries and clerks made hundreds of confidential telephone calls and sorted through inboxes jammed with email inquiries.
Dozens of volunteers jumped on board, too — individually or through organizations like the Shelter Island Lions Club, the Shelter Island Action Alliance and the Island’s churches, to name a few. The event was so successful that the Town will try to set up another, Siller said.
After all, the reasons for initially pursuing it haven’t yet been fully resolved. Shelter Island, where the pre-pandemic population of about 2,500 skews older than other East End towns, has tallied 45 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began. Two senior senior citizens died from complications of the virus early on in the outbreak.
Given the Island’s low case count, Siller said, seniors are fearful of traveling off-Island for vaccinations to mainland Long Island locales with much higher rates of COVID-19. Some are unable to leave the Island without assistance.
The POD indicated that seniors benefitted tremendously from the guidance given through the registration process by local personnel who know them well, versus using anonymous web portals that can confound even those who are computer savvy.
“We demonstrated that we can do it well,” Siller said. “If we can get the commitment from the state that we can get the vaccine, we’ll do it again.”
The best Island facility for a POD
Shelter Island Police Chief James J. Read, who serves as the Island’s Emergency Management Coordinator, worked with Siller, Deputy Supervisor Amber Brach-Williams and the entire Town Board, as well as School Superintendent Brian Doelger to manage the community side of the POD.
The hospital provided all the necessary medical personnel and managers, including high-level administrators, for what was Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s largest off-site POD to date.
Key to the success of the POD was the close relationship between the Town and School District. Without ready access to the spacious ADA-compliant school building, the POD might never have come to be.
“There was no other building on the Island that could facilitate this,” said SIPD Sgt. Terrence LeGrady. “With the elderly population over 65 that we are vaccinating, a drive-through would not have been feasible.”
LeGrady explained how distinct areas were mapped out for:
- COVID-19 screening for those arriving for appointments
- Registration, where paperwork could be managed
- Waiting after registration, with socially-distanced seating and ADA-compliant restrooms nearby
- Vaccination stations with privacy screens
- A post-vaccine space with social-distanced seating where medical personnel could watch for possible adverse reactions
Traffic moved one-way through the building. People entered the ground-level side door on School Street (no steps to impede users of wheelchairs or walkers) and wound their way along the main corridor into the gym, exiting through the rear doors onto an asphalt play area that leads back to the parking lot.
Shelter Island Emergency Medical Services volunteers were on standby, with an ambulance parked just outside the gym in case of an emergency.
Benefits for the school and community
While the vaccine effort was targeted primarily at seniors (about two-thirds of recipients), it also provided benefits for the school and larger Island community, organizers said.
While most first responders had already been vaccinated under state and county programs, Chief Read said a couple of unvaccinated volunteer firefighters and EMS members were able to sign up for Friday’s shots.
Dr. Doelger said about 38 members of the school staff were included in the POD as part of the frontline worker cohort. Many others had already gotten the vaccine elsewhere. After second shots are received on March 19, about 80 to 90 percent of the school staff will be fully vaccinated, he said.
Shelter Island was just one of two Pre-K to 12 schools to open in Suffolk County for full-time in-person learning last fall; widespread staff immunity will improve the odds the school can remain open should the virus flare again.
Chief Read said the POD was also open to those who work on the ferries and in the pharmacy, post offices, grocery stores, delis and restaurants, expanding the capacity of these frontline businesses to stay open, enhancing safety for the workers, their families and the public.
Setting up
Set up began in earnest around 7:30 AM when SBSH Courier Jim Robertson arrived in a pickup truck full of supplies, including the vaccine doses packed in a small blue cooler.
Some members of the SBSH POD team have largely administrative roles at the hospital, having long ago moved from direct patient care or lab work (although it seemed everyone had stories of pitching in at bedsides during the worst days of COVID-19 surges). But they all jumped right in to work, noting that at other PODs, they might also have to set up tables and chairs.
This was the sixth pod for SBSH Director of Ambulatory Care Marie Alessi, who served as the hospital’s POD coordinator. She clambered up the back passenger side tire of Robertson’s truck to oversee the unpacking of supplies.
SBSH Operations Manager Erica Austin, who later would be issuing vaccination record cards, stood in the bed of the truck, pointing out destinations for various sandwich board signs, banners and bins of supplies.
In the hall near the designated POD entrance, Alessi worked with staff, Town clerical workers, and volunteers who were setting up the online COVI9-19 symptom check-in process. Tasks ranged from logging into a temporary network the school created to segregate sensitive data about vaccine recipients from the school’s data, to loading clipboards with vaccine registration forms.
“In health care, a lot of times we’re encountering patients on their worst day,” Alessi said. “It’s nice to encounter them when we’re giving something that causes them relief.”
Nurses and their support staff were led by Althea Mills, the hospital’s Chief Nursing Officer and Vice President of Patient Care. Although the rest of the team has worked together before, Mills said she typically does not go into the field. Given that the Shelter Island POD was the team’s largest yet, she wanted to come along to provide additional support.
Mills pointed out a result of COVID-19 that might not be obvious to vaccine recipients as they move through the POD. Many of those serving as vaccinators have returned to direct patient care because of the pressure on hospital staffing resources caused by the virus.
Pointing to team members gathered at a table in the cafeteria for a quick bite before beginning work she said: “This is a supervisor, another supervisor, a manager, a director.”
This all-hands-on-deck approach is what it takes to fight the virus, she said, and all those participating in the vaccination campaigns were very glad to be arming the community as part of the battle.
“The work we do here means fewer patients coming to us in the hospital already very sick,” she said. “This is key.”
SIPD Detective-Sergeant Jack H. Thilberg also serves as the Town’s EMS Director. He said the expansion of large hospital corporations onto the East End means that community outreach resources are available that previously might not have been. “It’s all good if you can reap the benefit of it.”
Joining the Southampton staff were another few nurses from Stony Brook’s Eastern Long Island Hospital, School Nurse Mary Kanarvogel and a some retired nurse volunteers.
The team set up the vaccination stations, supplying each with alcohol prep pads, spare KN95 safety masks, surgical masks, gloves, bandages, and two types of trash pails, as well as a chair for the person receiving the vaccine and wipes to clean the seat and other surfaces between users.
At a separate table, two pharmacists immediately set to work reconstituting the thawed, freeze-dried vaccine, drawing the liquid into syringes that they labeled with the specific lot and vial number. That way, state health officials can track any dose to all those who received it in the event of problems.
Establishing the flow
Once the stations were ready, the hospital’s pharmacy director, Jerry West, gathered together the hospital personnel, along with Island Physician Joshua Potter (affiliated with Stony Brook Meetinghouse Lane Medical Practice), the Island EMS workers and volunteers — everyone who would be working the vaccination stations and watching recipients for adverse reactions.
West talked through the process they would follow so that each team member understood their role in “keeping the flow going.”
Backups in any part of the POD system aren’t just an inconvenience; they can put at risk the supply of vaccine, which has a “use by” deadline measured in hours once the vaccine is drawn into a syringe. Timing is critical, West said.
After the first dose was administered, the POD quickly settled into a good rhythm. There were a few points in the morning when the line backed up outside onto the sidewalk.
The chokepoint appeared to be the layout of the sole entry — the requisite sidewalk level access point was beside a stairway leading to the school’s upper story. Those entering had to first have their temperatures checked and then provide a few details so their registration could be checked against a master list.
Squeezing these functions into the relatively narrow corridor — while allowing for safe social distancing — meant a line sometimes formed outside the door. While it was too late to rearrange the entryway, Supervisor Siller said they would rejigger the layout for the second dose POD on March 19.
For the most part, registrants didn’t have to wait long to get their vaccines, and no doses were wasted.
A vaccine jamboree
The post-vaccine area — monitored by Dr. Potter, nurses and local EMS — offered grateful vaccine recipients a chance to catch up in person (masked and socially distanced) with Island friends and neighbors, if only for 15 minutes.
As they emerged from behind the screened vaccination stations, some recipients celebrated with fist pumps or a little victory jig. Palpable in the gym was a sense of relief. People said it was as if a great weight had been lifted.
Father Peter DeSanctis, pastor of Our Lady of the Isle Roman Catholic Church, a volunteer in the post-vaccination area, called out happily: “They said it couldn’t be done!”
Old friends greeted one another, trading elbow bumps and sharing stories.
“My kids wouldn’t come because they were afraid they’d bring the virus and it would kill me,” one man said.
“This is the biggest outing I’ve had since the pandemic started,” said former Councilwoman Chris Lewis, a retired nurse who has been advocating for a local POD as president of the Seniors Citizens Foundation of Shelter Island.
Islander William Johnston III operates excavators and other heavy earth-moving equipment, outdoor work that by its nature hasn’t been much affected by the pandemic.
“But I stopped going to church, I stopped doing a lot of things because I didn’t want to be around crowds,” he said, instead keeping to a small social circle of trusted friends. Was he feeling relieved? “100 percent,” he said. “This is fantastic.”
Others reminisced about past vaccination efforts.
“When I got my shots from the Navy it hurt like hell,” a WWII vet said. “Today it didn’t hurt a bit.”
But no one could recall an event like this on Shelter Island. Long-time Town Clerk Dottie Ogar said there might’ve been local large-scale distributions associated with polio vaccinations in the 1950s, but she couldn’t think of any other similar effort in the Town’s recent history.
“I think it’s incredible,” said Nanette Lawrensen, Executive Director of the Shelter Island Historical Society. “I congratulate the Town for pulling this together so quickly. Look at this, it’s amazing. Hundreds of shots are going to be provided.”
“Other towns don’t have this,” said Debbie Brewer, who was on volunteer duty with the EMS squad. “But we have a unique situation here. We have a lot of elderly people who can’t get off the Island, so this is really special.”
Also on EMS duty, Town Receiver of Taxes Annmarie Seddio, said she volunteered to help make calls and was moved by “how grateful and appreciative people are. Last night people were texting me, sending little hearts and saying thank you for all you do.”
One lifelong under age 65 resident who was accompanying an older relative said a defining feature of Shelter Islanders is a sense of collective responsibility.
“One of the unique things about us is that we always find a way to take care of ourselves and be self-reliant.”
With children’s drawings and a giant hand-colored THANK YOU message hanging on the room dividers and music playing through a portable PA system, the POD had a celebratory atmosphere that prompted more than one attendee to dub it a vaccine jamboree.
During a lull about halfway through the day, a catchy number came up on the playlist and someone turned up the volume. A couple of nurses and a few volunteers began an impromptu dance line — even the Chief of Police jumped in for a shimmy or two.
Thirsty for more
At the end of the day, Nursing Director Mills said the one word that summed up her Shelter Island experience was “amazing.”
“It has renewed my hope that we are turning a corner,” she said, beaming alongside locals as if they were all family reunited after a disaster.
“We are happy that people have accepted the vaccine. We’ve gone places where people are fearful because they don’t understand it.”
“But this group took it like they were thirsty for it, and this is what drives us. We want to feel that we are meeting the needs of people, and that is what happened here today.”
Prioritizing local eligibility
Like people everywhere in this pandemic, Islanders are thirsty for vaccines. And while 500+ is a great place to start, the team knew it would not be enough to satisfy demand.
“We would love to be able to give everybody the shot,” Chief Read said. But knowing that wasn’t possible, the leadership team put systems in place to prioritize eligibility and ensure impartiality.
Appointments would go first to people over 75, then to people over 65 (covering NYS’s Phase 1-A of eligibility — see the guidelines on the state website here), and after that to first responders and front line workers (Phase 1-B).
A separate waitlist would be created for individuals age 16 and up with qualifying health conditions (Phase 1-C) — this list was closed as of Thursday.
At the Senior Center, Director Laurie Fanelli and Sara Mundy — who runs the Town’s popular flu/pneumonia/shingles vaccination program — had been gathering names for months just in case COVID vaccines became available.
On Tuesday, when it first seemed a POD might be likely, the Town notified residents and encouraged all those eligible to sign up ASAP — phones rang off the hook and emails flooded inboxes. Part-time Senior Center workers suddenly faced a 24-hour workload.
When Stony Brook confirmed on Wednesday that the vaccine would be available Friday, the Town deputized clerical staff from various departments to help Senior Services work through the rapidly growing list of potential recipients.
Shelter Island School IT Director Walter Brigham created a digital form they could use when registering potential recipients by phone.
Read said that Town workers and volunteers made hundreds of calls on Thursday, working until after midnight to schedule appointments. From the beginning, Islanders over 65 by far comprised the largest group, he said.
Most first responders had already received shots, Read said. And while some frontline workers had not, “this was not a huge group,” he said.
Even after the POD opened Friday morning, Mundy and Brach-Williams (along with Debbie Speeches from the Highway Department and Kim Reilly from the Town Clerk’s office) continued efforts to reach Island seniors from a command center set up in a classroom. Together with staff working from Town offices, they managed to add another 49 individuals — more than half of them seniors.
That reduced from 86 to 37 the number of spots available for those on the waitlist. Given that New York State provides no guidance for prioritization of those eligible in the Phase 1-C group, the leadership team decided a random drawing was needed to ensure impartiality.
Walter Brigham provided a method to automatically randomize names on the digital spreadsheet. Then, to “double” the randomization, the team flipped a coin with heads for reading the list in ascending order and tails for descending order.
Island POD deemed a success
Many people who’d sought appointments but did not get them had to be disappointed, but Mundy, Brach-Williams and Read agreed with Siller’s assessment that the resounding success of Friday’s POD probably improves the odds of bringing more vaccines to the Island.
And SBSH officials were full of praise of the Shelter Island POD.
Mark Strecker, SBSH Director of Patient Experience and Education, said the layout was ideal. “The key to success is the facility. If you have it set up like this, it goes fast and smooth.”
West, the pharmacy director agreed. “The three components for a successful operation came together — the facility size, the flow of patients and working together as a team.”
Having the support of law enforcement and a large cadre of volunteers also contributed significantly to the success, West said.
Giving credit where its due
Siller and Read credited Assemblyman Fred Thiele, who helped with calls to state officials, and Robert S. Chaloner, Chief Administrative Officer at SBSH, for recognizing the needs of the Island’s disproportionately elderly population and working to bring the POD to the community.
“You have a nice community here; my staff are loving it and everyone is really happy to be here,” said Chaloner, who stopped in near the end of the day. He noted that Shelter Island was the first POD to provide food for the vaccination team.
He said the space was ideal and that the support of the school district and Town made the process more efficient. As vaccine supplies become more reliable, Chaloner said he expects the hospital will create more pop-up PODs. “I do see the supply starting to open up and then we can start doing more like this more often.”
Sara Mundy had this to say at the end of a very long day: “We hope that we will be able to turn a corner and start to seem some of our congregate and social group activities come back. It will still be a little while, but this will be a huge help in getting us there.”
She highlighted the contributions of Senior Center Director Laurie Fanelli and staff members Karin Bennett, David Binder and Marissa Fanelli, who fielded hundreds of telephone calls and sorted out details for seniors. Binder also connected volunteer drivers with seniors who needed rides to the appointments.
Other work did not stop at the Senior Center, she noted. “We still had responsibilities to our seniors who needed things from the store or needed to get to doctors appointments,” she said.
Giovanna Ketcham and Donna King continued their work, putting together and delivering care packages “to bring smiles to our seniors faces and that has been an amazing part of this year as well,” Mundy said.
Many hands
In addition to thanking the visiting medical personnel, local officials were also eager to express gratitude to the many Town and school district employees, who fit new, demanding obligations into their schedules, and the numerous volunteers who contributed to the success of the POD.
Participating on behalf of the EMS were Deborah Brewer, Jillian Calabro, Kate Davidson, Chris Doyle, Evan Guillemin, Peter Humphrey, Mark Kanarvogel, Phil Power, Annmarie Seddio, Nicole DeSanctis Strauss and Mariana Torrealba.
Cat Brigham, an art teacher at the school, volunteer to coordinate volunteers for the event. They included: Darrin Binder, Janice Buckley, Linda Cass, Jim Colligan, Lynne Colligan, Margaret Colligan, Michelle Corbett, Jasmine Frasco, Elizabeth Galle, Ellen Gove, Dawn Hedberg, Fred Hyatt, Emily Kraus, Kathleen Lynch, Janine Mahoney, Mary Ellen McGayhey, Peter Mediema, Bethany Ortmann, Natalie Regan, Kim Reilly, Debbie Speeches, Leith Surerus, Jimbo Theinert, and Gwen Waddington.
The Shelter Island Action Alliance coordinated meals for the POD workers — Stars Café provided breakfast, The Islander delivered lunch, and Shelter Island SLICE served up pizza and salads for dinner. In the school cafeteria, Helene Starzee and Stephanie Tybaert made sure there was plenty of hot coffee, and cold bottled water and juice for all.
Kelly Surerus
Among the POD nurses was Shelter Island’s own Kelly Surerus, who usually works in the cardiac intensive care unit at SBSH. This was her first time working a vaccination POD. She had eagerly traded shifts with another nurse so she could participate, but her service to Shelter Island didn’t end there.
When she heard the Town needed help registering potential recipients, she volunteered Thursday night to work the phones.
“I got to call all of these people and it’s like the best phone call they’ve ever gotten,” she said. “People are bursting into tears and so happy. It was the best volunteer thing I’ve ever done.”
Along with everyone else working in the hospital, Surerus has witnessed the terrible toll of COVID-19.
“This is really nice to see,” she said of the POD. “It’s not full circle, yet and it’s not closing the loop on it. But it’s definitely a start.”
“And only on Shelter Island could you have 48-hour notice and pull this off.”
From the Editor: We thank photographer K. C. Bailey, who volunteered to make a visual record of the event for the Gazette, arriving in the early morning hours and working throughout the day to help us tell the story visually without violating the privacy of the Islanders taking part. She specializes in images for film and television. Her personal work centers around animals. She was born in New York City, is a product of the New York City school system and is a graduate of New York University. K.C. lives on Shelter Island in Eeltown with her shelter dog, Addie, and her husband, cinematographer Stephen Kazmierski.
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