The surge of COVID infections throughout the area has many reconsidering their plans for New Year's Eve. One expert is offering some advice.
"Thinking about the Ball Drop here. I would say if you're going to the Ball Drop in Buffalo, I hope you're vaccinated," said Dr. Nancy Nielsen, senior associate dean for Health Policy at the University at Buffalo's Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
"If you're not vaccinated, please stay home. But if you're fully vaccinated, I would wear a mask," she said.
As part of her regular conversations with WBFO, Nielsen also offered some perspective on the increasing levels of COVID infections among children.
"Locally, at Children's (John R. Oishei Children's Hospital), they've had a number of admissions and it's interesting that all but one them, I believe, was over five, so those are the kids that are eligible for vaccination, but in our area we don't have a lot of kids in the five to 18-year-old range that have been vaccinated, unfortunately," Nielsen said.
Children, she added, for the most part, have not been impacted by COVID on the same level as older adults.
"It's unusual for a child to die of COVID, although it certainly has happened across the country," Nielsen said. "We just can't be sanguine about our kids and say it's going to be a cold or nothing."
She said there is an additional concern unique to children.
"In children there is this additional condition called MIS-C--Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children--that affects all the organ systems. It can affect the brain, heart, lungs, respiratory tract, skin."
