Throughout the week, the state and county offered incentives for residents to get vaccinated. Youth in Albany County are being offered free tickets to a lacrosse game while youth across the state are being offered a chance to win scholarships to state schools.

SLINGERLANDS — On Saturday evening, May 22, a box truck traveling east on Route 85 struck the underpass of the county’s rail-trail bridge.

“I feel unwelcome here. I feel alienated, I feel attacked, and I feel scared ….,” said Savanna Jiang in a speech that at times sounded like a poem. She concluded, “We must demand change …. It begins right here.”

While Governor Andrew Cuomo was at Jones Beach on Long Island, pushing “a shot in the park” incentive, Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy on Monday offered another sports-related incentive for local youth to get vaccinated.

The county will run a COVID-19 vaccination clinic on May 29 at the Beaver Street entrance of the Times Union Center where anyone can get vaccinated — with the one-shot Johnson & Johnson — and also get a free ticket for a future game. A Vax Block Party will be held on the mezzanine with live entertainment and food and drinks for the fully vaccinated.

Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy said on Thursday that points of dispensing, or PODs, will be set up in Albany on Saturday and in Ravena on Wednesday. “We know bringing small PODs directly to residents in their own neighborhoods is the best way to ensure trust and get to herd immunity, and we’re moving in the right direction,” McCoy said.

New York State’s guidance, just like the CDC guidance, is still requiring masks and social distancing in schools serving pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade students; on public transit, in homeless shelters, in correctional facilities, in nursing homes, and in health-care settings. Unvaccinated individuals, under both CDC and state guidance, must wear masks in all public settings.

Albany County’s vaccination rate has slowed. “It’s now an increase by 2 percent each week. In the beginning, we were literally at 4 percent or more … We’re hitting that wall. We need to get more people vaccinated,” said Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy.

The pandemic has made clear that accurate information can be a matter of life and death.

In a six-way race for four seats on the library’s board of trustees, the two incumbents — Philip Metzger and Herbert Hennings — were ousted while newcomers Vanessa Threatte, Antonio Rivera, Norina Melita, and Michael Hawrylchak were elected.