Almost 80 percent of students fully vaccinated
By Evan Triantafilidis
Maspeth High School held an all-day COVID-19 clinic, offering vaccines, boosters, and both rapid and PCR tests for students and community members.
The mobile vaccine van, operated by the New York City Department of Health, was parked outside the school last Thursday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., with students voluntarily lining up after school to receive their first, second, or booster shot of the Pfizer vaccine.
Recently released data from the health department shows that 82.5 percent of students at Maspeth High have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and 78 percent are considered fully vaccinated.
The school reported only six cases of COVID-19 during the month of February, which is a 97 percent reduction in cases compared to January.
Justin Spiro, a social worker at Maspeth High, said that the vaccine clinic was an opportunity to increase accessibility to the free shots.
“It’s not just about servicing the school, but the community as well,” Spiro said.
For Jakub Sulinski, a senior at Maspeth High, nearly half of his high school experience has been during the pandemic. He says that his school has done an adequate job of providing students with resources, even when remote learning was the only option.
“A lot of people didn’t like Zoom and stuff like that, but I feel like people would have gone mad if it wasn’t for it,” Sulinski said. “The socializing keeps us sane.”
He said that the cancellation of the Regents exam in January added to the craziness of his last year of high school.
“Two years just disappeared,” Spiro said. “But we have to do what we have to do to help society as a whole.”
