Recently, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the FDA, said parts of the U.S. could experience "very dense outbreaks" of COVID-19 due to the Delta variant. He said those outbreaks would be hyper-regionalized, affecting areas with low vaccination rates. Rural communities in parts of New York have low vaccination rates, compared to neighboring counties. In Allegany County, for instance, just 35 percent of the population is fully vaccinated.
This hour, we're joined by the co-leaders of the Finger Lakes Vaccine Task Force to discuss vaccination rates in the region, and we hear from Dr. AnnMarie Zimmermann, medical director of Universal Primary Care in the Southern Tier. Our guests:
- Nancy Bennett, M.D., co-leader of the Finger Lakes Vaccine Task Force, professor of medicine and public health sciences at the University of Rochester Medical Center, founder and director of the Center for Community Health & Prevention, and co-director of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute
- Wade Norwood, co-leader of the Finger Lakes Vaccine Task Force, and CEO of Common Ground Health
- AnnMarie Zimmermann, M.D., medical director of Universal Primary Care, a Federally Qualified Health Center in the Southern Tier
