Westchester County released vaccination data through May 9 (updating the previous May 2 release). Here's the current status of Greenburgh zip codes (i.e., "Greater Greenburgh" which includes Scarsdale, Sleepy Hollow and parts of White Plains and North Castle):
Notes:
1. I'm leaving out the +18yo numbers for now because teens are now getting vaccinated (16 and 17 yo's have been eligible for more than a month) and I don't see that the underlying totals from the county separate out under-18 year olds to back up the percentages the county presents. I went to the County Center with my 17 yo daughter today for her second Pfizer shot and a lot of teens were there with parents. Until the county clarifies the data, I'm not going to present their claims for 18yo+ vaccination rates.
2. Pretty good progress, right? Fully vaccinated residents went up from 43% to 47% in the week of May 2 to May 9. This included nearly 6000 Greater Greenburgh residents getting a second Pfizer/Moderna shot and a mere 225 getting a Johnson & Johnson shot. For the J&J implications, see below.
3. Keeping pace with Westchester County. According to NY DOH, Westchester's "at least one shot" rate is 56% and fully vaccinated are at 47%. The "at least one shot" is slightly ahead of Greenburgh and fully vaccinated in the same, but these state numbers are dated 5/15, so the County has had extra time. It is plausible that Greenburgh has pulled slightly ahead of the county although slowing "1st shot only" numbers cause doubt that Greenburgh could have passed the county significantly. I stand by my previous claim that Greenburgh and Westchester County vaccination rates are effectively the same, but I'm willing to be disproven.
4. J&J avoidance: Among 40,500 Greater Greenburghers aged sixteen and higher who had not received any shot as May 2, only 225 chose the Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine during the following week - contrasted with 1,651 who got their first Pfizer or Moderna shot. Just twelve percent of people getting their first shot of any kind chose one-shot J&J over two-shot Pfizer/Moderna. The public's now widespread trepidation toward J&J shots may have serious implications and leads to the question of:
5. Have Vaccination Rates Peaked?
While from 5/2 to 5/9, 6,130 (4%) of Greater Greenburgh residents completed their vaccinations, only 1,651 (1.1%) of Greater Greenburghers got their first Pfizer or Moderna shot. It is commendable, however, that we are seeing higher first shot rates in low-rate vax zip codes like Elmsford, WP and Tarrytown (what is going on in Valhalla?). Nevertheless, the slowing first shot rate overall, combined with J&J avoidance, gives rise to concern about our ability to reach herd immunity levels. Maybe expanding vaccinations to 12 to 15 year olds this week and future lowering age thresholds will save us.
6. Is Herd Immunity Possible? Maybe, but it's increasingly questionable
The definition of herd immunity is debated. Now, whether or not Greater Greenburgh reaches the 80% vaccination level is irrelevant: the target has to be achieved regionally to be meaningful. But will Greenburgh (or any place) reach that level? As of 5/9, we were at 47% totally vaccinated, which is primarily but not exclusively, comprised of adults (16 to 18 year olds have been eligible since early April). How will we get to 80%? As of last Thursday, 5/12, 12 to 15 year olds became eligible for vaccinations. With 23% of Greenburgh residents younger than 18, the expanding age ranges should push up numbers.
Yet the fact remains that nearly five months into the vaccination program, Greenburgh stands at about 60% of adults fully vaccinated with wide variations within zip codes. While vaccinations were hard to find early on (hence programs like COVID Angels), now we're at a point when vaccine appointments are easy to obtain, with many facilities allowing walk-ins. Considering the slowing first-shot only number of just 11,113 (7% - which includes 16 and 17 year olds), have the large majority of adults willing to get vaccinated already gotten their shots? It's a plausible fear that vaccinated adults will stall out around 70% townwide. This concern - that we are pushing up against the limits set by vaccine refusal (coincidentally or not, 30% seems to be the refusal number nationwide) - makes it imperative that teens and children get shot at very high rates for Greenburgh to have a chance to reach 80% overall.
7. Am I being unfair to Greenburgh? Our Town Supervisor sent out a mailer this week that centered his campaign for re-election around the Greenburgh "Covid Angel" program that he organized to help schedule vaccination appointments for residents. Now that the town's COVID vaccination "success" is being politicized, I feel that responsibly reporting the data becomes more important, particularly when the data I'm presenting shows that Greenburgh's vaccination rate may be no higher than the rate for Westchester County generally. Unfortunately, the vaccination data from the county website comes organized by zip code which prevents a precise analysis of just the Town of Greenburgh. Maybe Paul Feiner has Greenburgh-only data: I haven't seen it.
As I've written before, the 11 zip codes that cover all of Greenburgh also include much of surrounding communities. Thus, in addition to Greenburgh's 90,991 residents, the data above also includes Scarsdale (33,000 residents), Sleepy Hollow (11,600) and parts of White Plains and Valhalla/North Castle (16,500). Does including 61,000 neighbors along with Greenburgh's 91,000 residents skew the Greenburgh's rates, one way or another? As an experiment I pro-rated the data for the impacted zip codes. I created another spreadsheet reducing all vaccination and population numbers for 10591, 10603, 10607, 10595 by 50% and 10583 by 80% to reflect the % of population that appears to lie within Greenburgh's boundaries (relying on censusreport.org as usual). But still, we are left with unverifiable question: is Scarsdale vaccinating at higher rates than Edgemont? Is Tarrytown vaccinating at different rates than Sleepy Hollow, or are Greenburgh's Fairview neighborhoods vaccinating at different rates than White Plains neighbors sharing the same zip code? Maybe Greenburgh's COVID Angels pulled these neighborhood rates far above the adjacent communities and our neighbors' lower rates are distorting Greenburgh's success?
I doubt there is much variation between the vaccination rates for the 50% of the WP, Tarrytown and Valhalla zip code residents living within Greenburgh and those living outside. How can I say this? Look at 10523 (Elmsford). The Elmsford zip code is entirely within Greenburgh and the 10523 vaccination rate is lower than any adjacent Greenburgh zip code. Elmsford's vaccination ranks among the lowest zip codes in Westchester County outside of the cities of New Rochelle, Mount Vernon and Yonkers. It is lower than any of the White Plains zip codes. Consequently, without more data, it may be just as likely that it is Greenburgh pulling down the averages in cross-border zip codes. It is impossible to tell without more data and, until shown otherwise, I'm not going to adjust zip code total rates to reward or penalize Greenburgh.
So what happens when we pro-rate out these cross-border zip codes based on population estimates? We find that completely vaccinated rates for Greenburgh remain the same at 47% but "at least one shot" people fall from 55% to 53% and current "first shot Pfizer or Moderna only" falls from 7% to 6%. This is not a great sign for Greenburgh's current vaccination success, but these numbers are tenuous and I only tried this adjustment to explore whether my data was distorting Greenburgh rates.
Answer: I don't think I'm being unfair: to the contrary, it may be that rates for Greenburgh cross-border zip code rates are pulled up slightly by adjacent high vaccination zip codes (i.e., Scarsdale). It best not to guess at a Greenburgh adjustment. That said, I'll be very happy to be proven wrong.
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