Letter to the Editor: Your Help Wanted – So We Can Help Seniors Get Vaccination Appointments

Paul Feiner

Our Greenburgh Covid Angels was featured on Les Holt’s National Nightly News broadcast on NBC on Wed night. We’re so appreciative of our 180+ hard working volunteers who care about their neighbors and are helping Greenburgh seniors obtain hard to find vaccination appointments. If you know anyone in Greenburgh who is a senior who needs our help please e mail me their names and phone numbers so we can assign a volunteer to help them.

The volunteers are working extremely hard, have made hundreds of calls and are checking up on 3,000 Greenburgh seniors.  We are also receiving e mails and calls from residents who live in every section of the country asking how they can start a similar program in their communities and state.  Please continue to e mail me at pfeiner@greenburghny.com if you need our help!

https://www.nbc.com/nightly-news/video/volunteers-help-americans-in-need-make-covid-vaccine-appointments/4310500

Our Covid Angels are doing amazing work. It’s so nice to live in a community that cares. Join our team of volunteers helping your neighbors get the vaccine. And – read some of the beautiful testimonials from grateful residents who now have the vaccine.

WANT TO BE A COVID ANGEL AND HELP YOUR NEIGHBORS GET A VACCINE?  Volunteer form below

Would you like to become a Covid Angel and help seniors who are not computer savvy get their vaccine? Please complete the following form and provide our committee with your information. We’ll be in touch with team assignments and training!  We can definitely use your help!!  And we’re looking for people to help manage the data and work on the back end, if you know anyone who may not want to make calls but might have other skills to lend to the effort.

https://forms.gle/V9ELhPEkair7bGPU9 

Our Covid angels have been making hundreds of calls and have had some successes helping some of your neighbors get the vaccines.  Please be mindful that there is still more demand for the vaccine than supplies. But, we promise to help everyone until you get your vaccine. So – don’t worry! We won’t forget you.   From the time a senior contacts us asking for help it could take our volunteers 2-3 days to process the request and then another 2-3 days before the volunteer team leaders assign the senior to one of the volunteers. If the volunteer is working on other cases – trying to help a senior, he/she may not immediately get to you because they are still working on getting the vaccine for the seniors the previously were assigned to help.

We can’t promise immediate appointments since we are competing with everyone else in NYS. However – the committee has been successful in helping some seniors.

THOSE WHO HAVE COMORBIDITES AND UNDERLYING CONDITIONS CAN BEGIN TO SCHEDULE APPOINTMENTS SUNDAY MORNING

Based on the e mails I have received from residents – I know that more people are getting the vaccine. The supply is going up. I think that every week it will get easier so don’t get discouraged. 

SOME COMMENTS FROM RESIDENTS ABOUT VOLUNTEERS WHO HELPED THEM GET THE VACCINE

“I don’t know how to thank you for getting me the vaccine appointment. You worked so hard and you don’t even know me! Now I can sleep without anxiety for the first time in months all thanks to you. You are a miracle worker. Perhaps you have even saved some lives. How many of us can say that? I hope to meet you when this is all over. With great appreciation. 

“Thanks for organizing your COVID Angel team. I did receive a phone call and I had my first shot.” 

“My mother in law is scheduled for a vaccination this afternoon! Really great and very much appreciated.” 

“I just wanted to update you, my mother and I were able to get our covid vaccine yesterday at Rite Aid. I would like to thank you for all your assistance.” 

“Thank you for arranging for the COVID Angels”…we received two calls and the ladies could not have been more pleasant and helpful (guess we’re all in this together)!!!

“She was very nice, real thorough. Good job to all of you! Great program to help those with no way to navigate the systems to get appointments.”

“Thank you so much. I have an appointment for 2/11. Amy was amazing.”

“I can’t thank you enough for referring me to one of your volunteers. Helen reached out to me just two days ago and last night, she found a spot for me at a private pharmacy in Elmsford for 2/16. I am overjoyed. As I am a widower I texted Helen this morning and told her that she was officially my valentine.”

” I was skeptical about the possibility of receiving one so soon…We were unsuccessful for weeks…then the call came and it did seem like an “Angel just came from nowhere…I received my 1st dose on 2-9 and I am truly grateful for your program “Vaccine Angels….I hope that other Greenburgh seniors can be as lucky as I am. Thank you and God Bless.”

“Yesterday morning we did get Moderna Vaccine shots at a building near the Sprain Pharmacy on Tuckahoe Road. Can’t thank you and the volunteers who helped us, enough. We came to a very special country with very special citizens indeed.”

Paul Feiner
Greenburgh Town Supervisor

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About the Author: Paul Feiner