Even though state and national health officials have agreed that fully vaccinated people can stop wearing masks in many situations, Mary Chamberlin doesnât plan to part with hers anytime soon.
Sheâs the public relations specialist with the Rappahannock Area Health Districtâand is fully vaccinatedâbut will continue to cover her face while grocery shopping or around large groups of people she doesnât know.
âI didnât come all this way and work in one corner of my house for a year and not see my grandchildren, have my son whoâs in the Army stay with a friend when he was in town . I didnât go through all this to throw caution to the wind now,â Chamberlin said. âI canât imagine Iâm not speaking for a lot of people.â
Earlier restrictions regarding how and when people could get into vaccination clinics have changed dramatically as the supply of COVID-19 vaccines has increasedâand demand has decreased.
Early on, appointments were such a must that most clinics had police nearby to make sure nobody showed up unannounced and demanded to be inoculated. That happened once in the Rappahannock Area Health District, forcing health officials to add security details to each event.
But appointments havenât been needed since the calendar flipped from April to May. Anyone can walk into any clinic offered by health districts throughout the stateâas well as some pharmacies and grocery storesâand roll up their sleeves for a free vaccine. Places that do require appointments usually have slots open the same or next day.
Thereâs some good news in terms of decreasing numbers of new COVID-19 cases in the Fredericksburg area, and bad news regarding highly contagious variants of the virus and younger people getting sick and dying.
First, the good news, because everyone needs some after 14 months of dealing with this pandemic. New cases have continued to fall for two weeks, signifying a downward trend. The average for the last seven days has been 55 new cases a day compared with 62 the week before and 111 the week before that, according to the Virginia Department of Health.
The bad news is new infections are plateauing higher than health officials would like, said Mary Chamberlin, public relations specialist with the Rappahannock Area Health District. It includes Fredericksburg and the counties of Caroline, King George, Spotsylvania and Stafford.
When Dr. Kurt Graham realized the âperilously lowâ vaccination rate at his facility, he implored his co-workers to take a shot.
Heâs the medical director at Encompass Health Rehabilitation Hospital of Fredericksburg, which deals with patients recovering from strokes or physical deterioration after long hospital stays.
He learned on Monday that only about 42 percent of Encompass staff had been vaccinated, a rate comparable to what heâs heard anecdotally for health care workers at hospitals and nursing homes in the Fredericksburg area. He immediately penned a letter to staff, saying he was reluctant to ask them to step outside their comfort zone, but even more worried about seeing them or patients hospitalized with COVID-19.