Vaccine required for in-person learning at SUNY, Hofstra

Cuomo: 'Everybody should be doing everything they can' on vaccinations

Hofstra's move covers all students except those who are in fully online or remote programs. There will be a process for those who want to seek a medical or religious exemption, university officials said.

Adelphi University said Monday it will begin offering incentives to its faculty, staff and students who receive the COVID-19 vaccine ahead of the fall semester. But university officials said there is no plan at this time to make vaccinations mandatory for students in the fall.

Incentives will also be available to people who get vaccinated at Penn Station and the Hempstead LIRR station, as well as select New York City subway locations this Wednesday through Sunday. Up to 300 walk-ins per day at each location will get the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine and will receive free round-trip LIRR rides at the railroad stations, and MetroCards at the subway stations.

Vaccinations will be available at the Hempstead LIRR station and the Penn Station 34th Street corridor from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. each day.

"Everybody should be doing everything they can to get people vaccinated," Cuomo said during a briefing in his Manhattan office.

While the rate of new positive COVID-19 cases in the state continues to drop, the number of people getting vaccinated has also dropped, he said, mirroring a trend across the nation.

The number of new positives reported today: 88 in Nassau, 107 in Suffolk, 668 in New York City and 1,580 statewide.

The chart below shows what percentage of coronavirus tests were positive for the virus on average each day over a seven-day period in Nassau and Suffolk counties.

Search a map of new cases and view charts showing the latest local trends in testing, hospitalizations, deaths and more.

From Stony Brook to the world: Prep school thinking big

The Stony Brook School had to move its curriculum online last year like most schools amid the pandemic, but for the private prep school, the shift is proving to be a silver lining to the crisis.

The school is taking its online education program global — and its leaders say their goal is to expand the Long Island-based program to 100 countries in 10 years, Newsday's Bart Jones reports.

Stony Brook has signed contracts with two elite schools in China in Beijing and Shanghai, and is close to another with a center in Seoul, South Korea.

"Our reputation is opening doors for us," said Joshua Crane, head of the Stony Brook School, which includes local day students and boarders from around the world. "The desire to reach more people is burning in our hearts. We can only serve so many kids here, 425, and we’re full."

It is all happening because the pandemic prompted the seventh-12th-grade school to accelerate its online educational program.

Crane said the global program, called "Gravitas," has "enormous potential for us, and we really see it as a big part of our future."

COVID-19 Disparity Study in Nassau

Nassau County is launching a $450,000 study to examine the impact the pandemic has had on minority communities, taking aim at what residents experienced while trying to access COVID-19 testing and vaccination appointments.

The COVID-19 Disparity Study, financed through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Community Development Block Grant program, also will delve into broader health care issues, the county said.

The signs of COVID-19's disparate impact on Blacks, Latinos and other communities — with statistics showing higher death rates and lower vaccination rates — have reverberated across the country, Newsday's Olivia Winslow writes. Nassau officials thought more could be learned about what local barriers emerged, with an eye toward new approaches, according to Andrea Ault-Brutus, health equity director for the county's health department.

"First of all, we understood that COVID-19 was disproportionately impacting communities of color, not only in Nassau County but across the country," Ault-Brutus said. "And while there's so much literature on the reasons why we have these health inequities, we wanted to get more context as to what are the issues in Nassau County."

Mother-daughter nurses share in glory after pandemic duty

Carolyn Brady followed her mother, Lori Brady, into nursing, and together the two have battled the coronavirus at Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital in Oceanside, helping each other through the heart-wrenching, exhausting and ultimately uplifting work.

On Friday, in one of those Mother's Day blowouts people dream of, the mother and daughter from Bellmore were featured on the "Today" show. And Molloy College in Rockville Centre, where both had graduated, announced the Brady Legacy Grant in their honor that will provide $3,000 each year to a student who is a child of a nursing alumnus.

"I have the greatest mother in the world. Sorry everyone," Carolyn Brady, 26, said into the camera. "I have the greatest mother in the world!"

Throughout the pandemic, Lori and Carolyn have leaned on each other to get through the long hours, the stress and, during the most frantic months, the many deaths that passed before them, Newsday's Craig Schneider reports. Fearful that they would bring the virus home with them, the two slept in the same bedroom.

"Sometimes, we just looked at each other and cried," Lori Brady said.

Hamptons courier service toting bigger loads

What do you do when you lose 70% of your business in the blink of an eye? As soon as the U.S. travel ban to and from China was put in place in March 2020, Danielle Candela, CEO and founder of Tote Taxi, noticed a change in her business.

Since 2016, the luxury courier service specifically for people traveling to and from the Hamptons serviced all three major airports and offered same-day, door-to-door service for luggage, golf clubs and more.

"When the pandemic hit and the flying stopped, we felt it," Candela says.

She didn't panic. She listened to clients. And began doing "mini moves" to the Hamptons. That strategy and other tweaks will keep her going until the air travel business is again robust. In this Q&A, Candela tells her tale of transition to Sheryl Nance-Nash for Newsday.

More to know

Nassau Coliseum will be able to accommodate more fans for the playoffs than it did in the regular season.

The United States is "turning the corner" in preventing coronavirus transmission and is unlikely to see significant outbreaks in the fall and winter, so long as enough Americans are vaccinated, White House officials said Sunday.

States asked the federal government last week to withhold staggering amounts of COVID-19 vaccine amid plummeting demand for the shots, contributing to a growing U.S. stockpile of doses.

Broadway's return is gaining steam, with "Come From Away" headlining the latest news.

The Global Citizen "Vax Live" concert exceeded its fundraising goal.

News for you

Parents conflicted over whether to get kids 12 to 15 inoculated. With federal authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for kids 12 to 15 expected within days, Long Island doctors are getting a barrage of questions from anxious parents who are mulling whether to get their kids inoculated, Newsday's David Olson and Lisa L. Colangelo report. Phapha Bol of Elmont said she wants her son, 12, inoculated so he can lead a more normal life. But a Kaiser Family Foundation survey released Thursday found that only 30% of U.S. parents of kids 12 to 15 would "get them vaccinated right away," 26% would "wait a while to see how it is working" and 23% would "definitely not get them vaccinated."

The Newsday Live Music Series. Nancy Wilson of Heart joins us Tuesday at 8 p.m. for music and conversation. She'll discuss her life, career and first solo album, "You and Me." Sign up here.

Plus: We've got our annual lists of the top 100 baseball and softball players across Long Island high schools.

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Commentary

How the Zoom era has ruined conversation. When Rabbi Hannah Goldstein would talk to families before a funeral in pre-pandemic times, she remembers how they would share information about a loved one with her, Rachel Kurzius writes for The Washington Post.

Everyone tended to "jump in, and someone corrects a detail and then someone adds another piece of it," recalls Goldstein, who works at Temple Sinai in Washington, D.C. "It's collaborative. It's like everyone's sort of telling that story together. Oftentimes, I think when you're remembering a loved one, it's like you're telling these beloved stories that everyone's told a million times, so everyone has their little detail that they love to share."

That style of conversation — a freewheeling ebb and flow where people interrupt one another — is much harder to pull off in the video communications necessitated by the pandemic. Suppose someone is speaking and another person, eager to express agreement, chimes in at the end of their sentence. Over Zoom, this tends to derail the discussion or narrative. Keep reading.