Why is it only now – after two county employees have died from COVID and others have become sickened amid concerns that they ve contracted the highly contagious, fast-spreading Delta variant of the virus – that Manatee officials have shown a high sense of urgency to encourage workers to become vaccinated?
How much has the generally lax attitude of the Manatee County commissioners toward universally accepted safety protocols like mask-wearing played a role in creating the COVID-susceptible environment that obviously existed inside the administration building?
On these questions and plenty others, the citizens of Manatee County deserve real answers.
Actions should be demanded, acted on
Not so fast, non-believers, the virus has gone nowhere. In fact, a variant has surfaced that may even be stronger, so you might want to remove the voodoo pins from your Fauci dolls and pay close attention.
Because what happened last week in Manatee County should be alarming to everyone, not only in terms of the situation s severity, but also in the apparent indifference people are having to it.
To recap, there were five people working in the Manatee County Information Technology Department who were hospitalized with COVID-19, and two of those people died. These were not elderly people with pre-existing conditions either. Alphonso Cox was 53. Mary Knight was 58. She went to the doctor last Wednesday, and her husband found her in bed the next afternoon. He thought she was taking a nap. Turned out she wasn t.
Vaccinated IT worker slowed COVID outbreak in Manatee, Hopes says heraldtribune.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from heraldtribune.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Two more Manatee County residents die from COVID-19 as Florida death toll surpasses 24,000 Mark Young, The Bradenton Herald
Jan. 16 MANATEE Two Manatee County residents are among Florida s 205 latest fatalities from COVID-19, as the state death toll climbed to 24,004 residents, health officials reported Saturday. That does not include the 376 nonresidents who have died.
The local number of deaths climbed to 456.
Both of the local deaths occurred in the age group between 65 and 74 years of age.
Manatee County added another 138 cases of the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus, bringing the total number of cases since the outbreak in March to 25,881. Florida added another 12,119 new cases to reach 1,560,186 infections since the outbreak.