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Date: 12/29/2021
LUDLOW – With COVID-19 cases rising across the town and state, the Ludlow Board of Health discussed vaccination clinics and rapid testing during its Dec. 14 meeting.
To start her COVID-19 report, public health nurse Angela Kramer said the town was seeing a spike in cases over the first two weeks in December.
“I did run the COVID[-19] numbers and from Dec. 1 to Dec. 14 we now have 203 cases, so there is a surge going on across the board. Yesterday, I had over 12 kids, so it is really beneficial to parents to rethink about vaccinating kids 5 and up because they are not immune to this and the omicron variant is out,” she said.
Kramer also discussed the successes of the COVID-19 vaccination clinic the department ran with Big Y on Dec. 14.
“We had 132 people come, Big Y was great to work with and they had enough vaccine to allow people to walk in, we also had children under 12 getting their first vaccine, which was great, and we also had other people getting their first vaccine, which was encouraging,” she said.
Kramer said she is hoping the department can put together more vaccination clinics.
“We really had very few no shows and people were calling so my theory is let’s do it again because it is what we need right now. The phones were off the hook today, this is our first time doing it and we did not want to overtax the pharmacists and thought we could probably schedule more people for the Pfizer shots,” she said.
For a future clinic, Kramer said she may try to schedule it between 3 and 6 p.m. to allow for students to receive the vaccine after school.
“This is a really great example of collaboration between a public health nurse and a local institution. Recognizing that we do not have capacity to initiate some of the services but in partnership it turned out to be very successful,” she said. “People in town were very happy.”
After discussing cases and vaccines clinic, Lamas said Ludlow was one of the towns selected to participate in the state’s at home rapid COVID-19 testing program.
“The governor announced there is millions of dollars of funding for at home rapid COVID[-19] tests. One hundred two municipalities are on that list and Ludlow is one of them and they looked at in terms of how COVID[-19] has impacted these communities disproportionately,” she said.
Lamas said the testing is specifically for the communities hardest hit by the virus.
“We want to think about creating a strategy for the dissemination plan and who are the priority communities in town for these at home tests. So is it people living in housing complexes because those are really tight spaces and COVID[-19] spreads quickly in housing complexes or is it the Senior Center for the elderly population who are more at risk,” she said.
Health Agent Andrea Crete said it may make sense to keep the test kits at the Board of Health’s office for residents to pick up.
“Depending on how much we get it is going to be hard to prioritize, so it may just be showing proof of residency, first come first serve, one per household and we would be creating a spreadsheet with the addresses that we know we have already delegated it to,” she said.
In response, Lamas said the board would have the data to specifically target the people and communities most in need of the tests.
“If we are talking about priority communities, we are looking at the data at how COVID [-19] has impacted communities, which we know is at housing sites, we know it is elderly and we know it is people with chronic conditions. I would start with the housing sites, seniors and building out from there,” she said.
The board ultimately did not make a final decision on the administration of the COVID-19 at home rapid tests.