PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A winter storm that could drop more than a foot of snow on some areas of Rhode Island is forcing changes to the state’s coronavirus testing and vaccination efforts.
All state-operated COVID-19 testing sites were closed on Monday, the state Department of Health said.
Regional vaccination clinics in Bristol, Providence, and East Greenwich were also closed for the day.
People who had appointments for Monday at any one of these three locations will be contacted directly about rescheduling. Most of the appointments were for first responders and health care providers, with some limited vaccinations for people 75 and older at Bristol and East Greenwich.
Regional vaccination clinics in Smithfield and Narragansett were not scheduled to operate on Monday.
Almost 75,000 Rhode Islanders have received their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine and nearly 26,000 have received their second dose, the state Department of Health reported Monday.
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HEALTH DEPARTMENT UPDATES
The state Department of Health on Monday reported more than 1,500 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 19 more virus-related deaths over the past three days.
The state has now had nearly 116,000 known cases and 2,173 fatalities. The department does not update on weekends.
The number of hospitalizations had fallen to 316 as of Saturday, the latest day for which the information is available and the lowest level since early November.
The latest seven-day average positivity rate in Rhode Island is 3.42%, down from 5.1% two weeks ago. State health departments are calculating positivity rate differently across the country, but for Rhode Island the AP calculates the rate by dividing new cases by test encounters using data from The COVID Tracking Project.
The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Rhode Island also declined, from about 884 on Jan. 17 to 426 on Sunday, according to The COVID Tracking Project.
This story has been updated
