NORWICH – On Tuesday morning the first person in Chenango County is scheduled to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

Frontline health care workers at Chenango Memorial Hospital will be the first people in the county to be vaccinated. It is not known when or how the vaccine will be locally available to the public.

Chenango Memorial Hospital and county health department officials said they have limited input on the the process, which is heavily regulated by New York State and the federal government.

Local officials were either unaware or seemed surprised Tuesday morning that a number of vaccine doses had been so quickly scheduled to arrive; they had been predicting the first to come later this week or next week.