Health

Nurses and other members of the health care workers union at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital picketed on Thursday in an effort to get the hospital to agree to contract demands. The union's current contract ends on Sept. 30.

On her first day in office on Tuesday, New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul directed the state Health Department to institute a universal mask requirement for all children and adults in schools and an expanded testing protocol for all, and said she is also looking into the possibility of mandating vaccines for all school employees with an option to test out weekly.

A recent surge in Covid-19 infections on the East End is predominantly among those who are unvaccinated, and the Delta variant of the virus is the cause of more than 90 percent of cases, according to Dr. Fredric Weinbaum, the chief medical officer at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, who described the variant as a "survival of the fittest" version of Covid-19.

As of Monday, all staff and visitors at East Hampton Town Hall and other town facilities will once again be asked to wear masks, whether vaccinated for Covid-19 or not. 

With Covid-19 infections on the rise again in Suffolk County, South Fork business owners are reinstituting mask mandates and other safety protocols. "We got to a point where we realized we had to take a stand," said one, Eric Lemonides, a co-owner of Almond in Bridgehampton, where patrons 12 and over are being asked to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative Covid test.

The county's guidelines closely mirror those of the federal Centers for Disease Control and the American Academy of Pediatrics. They include universal mask wearing indoors for all, even those students and staff members who have already received vaccines; masks will not be required outdoors.

After a child and a counselor tested positive for Covid-19, the Hayground Camp in Bridgehampton closed this week out of an abundance of caution, Doug Weitz, the camp's director, confirmed Tuesday.

Students and staff in the East Hampton School District — even those who are vaccinated — will begin the new school year with masks on, the school board decided on Tuesday.

Ibogaine's psychedelic nature allows patients to confront the trauma and circumstances which lead them to become opioid users. The trip lasts between 24 and 36 hours. "It's clinical and supernatural at the same time," Spero Alexio said.

As the Delta variant of Covid-19 continues to spread in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control on Tuesday officially recommended that even people already vaccinated against Covid-19 once again wear masks in indoor public settings if they are in a region with "substantial" or "high" levels of community transmission.

The percentage of people testing positive for the virus has slowly but consistently ticked upward, leading to fears of yet another surge, this time almost entirely among the unvaccinated.

The New York State vaccination site at the Stony Brook Southampton college campus will cease operations as of the end of the day on Monday, July 26. The closure is part of the state's effort to "focus on localized vaccination efforts" in specific communities with lower vaccination rates, according to the governor's office.