Wicomico County Health Department points to lower vaccination rate as cause of high daily positivity
SALISBURY, Md. – Wicomico County’s daily COVID-19 positivity as of Wednesday sits at 12.64 %, more than double the statewide average in Maryland of 5.45%.
Health officials tell 47ABC that the counties’ lower vaccination rate compared to the rest of the state is responsible for the bump in new infections for COVID-19.
“If you look at the numbers of individuals vaccinated and the percentage of individuals vaccinated Wicomico is on the lower end of that spectrum,” said Lori Brewster of the Wicomico County Health Department.
Brewster told 47ABC the problem for the County is not just that the infection rate is high, but that it is likely to stay that way for weeks at least heading into the fall.
“Minimum of a couple of weeks before we could see that trajectory start back down and decline but that would give all the protective factors were put in place,” she said.
Those protective factors would be a return to the level of mask-wearing we saw during last fall for both the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations, as well as bumping up the county’s vaccination percentage up from its current level at 45.96%.
While those numbers stay high, kids are returning to school, and with them the return of flu and respiratory syncytial virus seasons.
TidalHealth Officials told 47ABC that hospitals may have to handle a surge of all 3 this fall.
“We do have a concern that the flu and RSV illness could overlay the covid illness so the three together result in a tremendous increase in the need for hospitalization and emergency room treatment,” said TidalHealth Chief Nursing Officer Sarah Arnett.
It’s a concern shared by researchers at Johns Hopkins, they say they saw flu cases went down last year but with fewer people wearing masks this year the risks go up.
“Our health care system has limited capacity and in many places, in the winter it can hit that capacity minus covid and flu was a big contributor and if we see covid hitting capacity of health care systems that dual whammy could be a lot,” said Johns Hopkins Epidemiology Ph.D. Dan Salmon.
Now TidalHealth says they are far away from that outcome and point to their large number of unutilized covid beds that could be deployed to handle a newer surge in cases if needed.
They say the issue is how resource-intensive covid surges can be for hospitals.
“We don’t have a whole floor of flu patients even when flu season comes around, we have a whole floor of covid patients right now so it definitely diverts resources that could be focused on others in the community,” Arnett said.
Health officials agree it’s just another reason getting vaccinated is so crucial.
“We have really good vaccines for covid we have a reasonably good vaccine for flu we should use them both as widely as possible and hope that we don’t see co-pandemics that makes things worse,” Salmon said.
