that they ve been vaccinated and they re doing their part. provincetown is one of the highest vaccinated populations in the country, and i know the doctor before said it was surprising to see the outbreak here in provincetown, amongst the sort of highly vaccinated population. i would say it s not so surprising when you see an influx of tens of thousands of visitors from all around the world just highlighting the importance of vaccinations worldwide. definitely in the country. but if you re planning to travel and you re not vaccinated, please, please don t come to provincetown. we really take our health seriously, and for our local businesses to survive, we need to stay operational. and to stay operational, we need to stay healthy. that s really important message, ken. so, what s the mood like in provincetown right now? i mean, i know it s always so celebratory, but right now, are people approaching with caution?
test positivity here in provincetown in mid-july, and has now dropped to below 5%, about 4.6% as of last check, and it s a number that continues to decline, so that s certainly a good number that businesses here want to see, especially with a busy summe just close up during the height of the pandemic last year and just the last few weeks, reopened again, and now, he s prepared to have to shut down again should that be necessary. but it s certainly a topic of conversation as you see people still out and about enjoying this friday without masks outside but largely putting those masks back on when they go back indoors now that they know what happened here just a few weeks ago certainly got the cdc s attention. we will speak to a business owner there in just moments. polo sandoval, thank you very much. let s bring in dr. megan ranney, an emergency physician at brown university, also the associate dean of public health there. dr. ranney, it sounds like the
look at how quickly it spreads. you can see the models on your screen. this is compared to the original strain. and then there s that cluster in provincetown, massachusetts. 469 residents there got infected with covid in a july 4th outbreak. and of those, 74%, meaning 346 people, had been vaccinated. most of them did show covid symptoms, although no one died and only four people had to be hospitalized. well, so, what does this say about vaccines? the vaccines still are very effective against severe disease, hospitalization, and death, according to the cdc. and that s critical. as covid cases are surging again across the country, largely fueled, of course, by this delta variant, all of that red you re seeing, those are the viral hot spots right now. so while vaccinations are inching up, infections, hospitalizations, and deaths are rising, too.
considered as it revisited that mask guidance and found that 469 massachusetts residents were infected during this fourth of july outbreak. that s generally in barnstable county, and that includes here in provincetown, 74% of those, and this is what is concerning, were fully vaccinated.79% of th symptomatic but this is also a very telling number, which is zero. that is, so far, according to local officials, nobody has actually died because of that infection, and researchers here, they found here essentially that it s still important to obviously get vaccinated here. we should also mention that since that sampling was taken and considered by the cdc, this particular cluster in this part of massachusetts continue to grow and at one point even made it up to close to 900 infections over the last several weeks. now, some good news and what was described as a silver lining by the local town manager here in provincetown is that the infection rate, which is obviously a very telling number, wen
earlier, i think, alisyn, you used the word, sobering. we had a very sobering experience shortly after the fourth of july week, which is a huge celebration here in provincetown. we started to get the initial reports of some strange infections rates among vaccinated individuals, and then as time went on, we saw more and more cases. until we eventually saw a number that was large enough to make a lot of us kind of scratch our heads and say, wait a minute, is this something? we were under the impression i personally was under the impression that would be difficult to contract, as all of us thought, 90% something effective. i thought that meant 90% effective from not getting the virus, but i was educated quickly as all of us were here. getting vaccinated does not give you the ability to engage in high-risk activities or otherwise assume that you don t have to take any precautions. so, i think that once that happens here in provincetown,