As hospitalizations near Monroe County’s peak, county officials addressed the ongoing vaccine rollout across the county, where they are ready to vaccinate more than 500 people per day in Bloomington, as supplies allow.
Monroe County, along with the rest of the state and country, witnessed an increase in COVID-19 cases. This increase was perhaps initiated by the travel associated with the Thanksgiving holiday, according to Brian Shockney, IU Health president for the south central region of Indiana.
“We’ve seen a higher number of deaths and positivity as well in the last couple months than we had seen in all previous months,” Shockney said. “We just want to recognize this virus is still very virulent.”
Shockney said hospitalizations have been increasing in the past weeks despite a climb in discharges, suggesting there are more patients which have tested positive for COVID-19 being hospitalized. Monroe County is near its peak of hospitalizations.
He did, however, suggest the new vaccines could be a light at the end of the tunnel.
“As we enter the new year, something I want us to enter with is what I call ‘tempered hope,’” Shockney said. “We have two very effective and proven vaccines to fight this virus.”
The vaccine is being rolled out in Monroe County in a similar fashion to most of the country. Medical personnel are being prioritized in its first wave.
“We will share information as we have it,” Penny Caudill, Monroe County Health Department administrator said. “Right now, we don’t know who that next group specifically is going to be. As vaccines [are] limited, those decisions will be made primarily at the state level. They will let us know who is next and utilize a lot of different resources to get that information out there.”
Some of the resources Caudill mentioned specifically included social media and the state and county website, as well as communication from health care providers.
In the past few weeks, three Indiana State senators have authored and pre-filed bills ahead of the upcoming legislative session that would aim to shorten the duration of COVID-19 orders put in place by localities. Senate Bill 48 restricts the duration of local COVID-19 prevention efforts, such as mask mandates or crowd limits, to 14 days, unless the county executive gives approval. Officials on the press call took issue with that legislation.
“As we’ve come into a place where we know we need masking, that’s not changing for a while,” Caudill said. “To need to have to reissue those things every two weeks could be very problematic for some health departments, just from a staffing and time perspective.”
Caudill said the bill would not cause an issue in Monroe County, where health officials and elected officials are typically in agreement. Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton took a stronger tone against the legislators’ bill.
“This looks to me like a group of people that are looking to say no when we need to be saying yes,” he said. “I am not aware of major problems where our governments move too fast. In fact, it’s just the opposite, that we didn’t move fast enough at the state level. This legislature doesn’t need to slow things down or make things more difficult.”
Hamilton suggested it wasn’t the place of state legislators to meddle in local health decisions.
“Here’s something they could do,” he said. “They could fund our public health system appropriately. That would be a good thing for the legislature to do. Legislatures don’t need to micromanage the response, but they absolutely should and could step in and say ‘what did we learn and let’s fund our public health system decently instead of being at the bottom per capita in the country.’”
