The New York National Guard is being deployed to bolster some long-term care facilities in New York, it confirmed on Dec. 9.
According to the Guard statement, the facilities are located “from Long Island to Buffalo and north to the Canadian border.”
Service members are being sent to facilities in Goshen, Syracuse, Rochester, Albany, Buffalo, Utica, Plattsburgh, Uniondale, Liberty, Vestal, Olean, and Lyons, the Guard confirmed in a statement.
“In selecting Soldiers and Airmen for the mission, New York National Guard planners looked for trained medics or medical technicians who were not also working in the health care field in their civilian life,” the statement reads.
“This is how we can help, in the short term, the hospital systems to again turn on that pipeline from hospitals to nursing homes and residents who do not need an acute care bed, who would be better off in a nursing home setting,” said Bello.
“Combined with the previous vaccine mandate deadline in November, approximately 200 personnel have now been separated from the organization,” the hospital stated.
In addition, Maine Gov. Janet Mills, also a Democrat, said she activated her state’s National Guard to deal with staffing shortages caused by her office’s vaccine mandate for health care staff.
Hundreds of workers quit or were fired due to Mills’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, which the Supreme Court declined to block, Maine hospital systems have told news outlets.
Meanwhile, New Hampshire Gov. Christopher Sununu asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Guard to help the state deal with a COVID-19 winter surge.
“They did indicate to us that they'd be sending a few dozen individuals to New Hampshire to help out, with the first 24-person team arriving as early as this weekend,” the governor said on Dec. 8.