Coronavirus

The Covid-19 and influenza testing center on Stephen Hand's Path has been closed by East Hampton Town "due to lack of demand," the town has announced.

Starting this week, East Hampton Town’s Covid-19 testing site at 110 Stephen Hand’s Path in Wainscott, operated by CareONE Concierge, will only be open on Fridays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The new Covid-19 boosters, which add protection against the Omicron variant, will be available by appointment only at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital on Monday between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. at Parrish Memorial Hall.

The updated Covid-19 booster shots — which protect against both the original strain of the virus and the now-dominant Omicron subvariants — are already becoming available at pharmacies, physicians’ offices, and other sites.

New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul on Monday updated the official Covid-19 policies for schools, aligning the state with recommendations from the federal Centers for Disease Control. Notable among the changes is a relaxing of quarantine rules and testing requirements.

Amid the New York City Health Department’s recommendation that face masks should once again be worn in public indoor settings and crowded outdoor settings due to high transmission levels of Covid-19, the number of new infections and hospitalizations on the South Fork is of growing concern, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby told the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee on Saturday.

In the three and a half weeks since Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, signed off on Covid-19 vaccines for children under 5, there has not been a huge demand, according to Dr. Gail Schonfeld of East End Pediatrics in East Hampton.

Despite a high rate of vaccination, Covid-19 has proven an unrelenting and evolving threat to public health across New York and the country, and highly contagious subvariants of the Omicron variant mean a growing number of people have endured, or will experience, multiple infections, according to an associate professor of public health at Stony Brook University.

Despite a significant uptick in Covid-19 cases, including the designation of Suffolk and Nassau Counties as a region now at high risk of virus transmission by the federal Centers for Disease Control, the number of patients admitted at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital has remained in the single digits over the last few weeks — very much manageable, the hospital's chief medical officer has said. "We're going to have to learn how to live with it when community spread goes up like it is now."

“We are going to continue to be open for the foreseeable future,” said Dr. Jason Cavolina of CareONE Concierge, which provides Covid-19 testing for East Hampton Town at the former Child Development Center of the Hamptons. The decision reflects yet another uptick in transmission of the virus.

East Hampton Town's senior citizens center, on Springs-Fireplace Road in East Hampton, has been temporarily shuttered following several cases of Covid-19 among program attendees and staff.

Despite the feeling of calm that has settled in after mask mandates were lifted, despite the significantly lower case numbers and deaths across the United States, Covid is not finished with us — or we with it.