Northwell Health

With COVID-19 cases rising across the region, Northwell Health has temporarily suspended all visitation at some of its hospitals, including Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead.

The North Fork Spanish Apostolate partnered with National Grid and Northwell Health on Thursday to give food and flu shots to needy families ahead of the holiday season.

Peconic Bay Medical Center will have to terminate about 2% of its total workforce today under a Northwell Health COVID-19 vaccine policy that required all employees to present proof of vaccination by 11:59 p.m. Monday to avoid termination, according to PBMC Executive Director Amy Loeb.

Protesters against the state's vaccine mandate for health care workers took to the street on Route 58 in Riverhead Saturday, lining up around the traffic circle near Peconic Bay Medical Center.

PBMC's four-star rating from CMS, a first for the Riverhead hospital, reflects a turnaround in quality that began more than a decade ago, hospital officials said.

COVID-positive adult patients with mild to moderate symptoms are sought for a virtual, in-home clinical trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of Pepcid for the outpatient treatment of COVID-19.

Front-line health care providers who are not part of hospital systems say they still don't know when and where they'll be able to get vaccinated — even though they are administering COVID-19 tests and are exposed on a daily basis to patients who may be COVID-positive.

Northwell Health announced today it will open a $6.2 million, 11,300-square-foot comprehensive cancer center in Riverhead by the end of the year.

“Manual testing of 75 to 80 samples per day will begin at Northwell immediately, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said, “but we still need automated testing approved so we can perform thousands per day.”

The contractors are finishing up the construction and as soon as the certificate of occupancy is issued, Wellbridge will take occupancy and bring its staff to the facility for about 45 days of training, Wellbridge CEO Andrew Drazan said.