Haywood re-enters orange zone for COVID

Vicki Hyatt, The Mountaineer, Waynesville, N.C.
·2 min read

Apr. 2—As of Friday, the joint effort between the county and Haywood Regional Medical Center has vaccinated at least 15,000 residents with at least their first dose, and, as estimated, 3,000 others have been vaccinated at other locations.

The Haywood stats surpass the national average that shows an estimated 17% of the population is now fully vaccinated.

Becker's April 1 Hospital Review ranks North Carolina 36th in the nation, with 1.8 million of its 10.6 million population fully vaccinated, putting the statewide percentage at 16.7.

The county will not be holding a mass vaccination clinic next week since many will be on spring break, but will resume the effort in two weeks.

When called to receive the vaccine, more and more people are saying they have already received the vaccination elsewhere, Dr. Mark Jaben, the county medical director, said.

That's prompted the county to start talking about other outreach efforts rather than the "mass vax" clinics, including bringing efforts to manufacturing or industrial sites, where employees could be vaccinated during shift changes, or mobile efforts in outlying communities, he said.

Though Haywood was briefly in the yellow zone, the lowest risk of community spread possible, the rising number of cases has put the county back into the orange category.

After the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday surges that started a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving and extended well past New Year's, case numbers went from 1,000 in mid-November to more than 4,000 in April.

The case numbers started going down toward the middle of January and were so low that new cases daily were in the single digits by late March. But by the last week in March, 53 new cases had been recorded, with a high of 20 in a single day.

"We were seeing cases in the same places as before," Jaben said, "families, workplaces and churches. With about a third of the population vaccinated, we are nowhere near reaching herd immunity."

Because the elderly and vulnerable sectors of the county already have been vaccinated, those now getting COVID are in the 25 to 60-year-old range, he said.

County officials are keeping their fingers crossed that the Easter holiday gatherings and spring break won't lead to another surge like the one that occurred after Thanksgiving.