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Date: 2/22/2022
GRANBY – Due to the recent COVID-19 surge fueled by the omicron variant, the Granby Board of Health voted to close Granby Town Hall to the public and unvaccinated employees until Feb. 9. According to Board of Health Chairman Richard Bombardier, Town Hall has now officially reopened.
Bombardier said that this closure came at the request of Town Administrator Christopher Martin.
“His concern as we were starting toward that peak was that he felt like he couldn’t protect the town employees from undo exposure to COVID-19,” said Bombardier. “He wanted to find a way, at least through the short term, to see if we could raise the protection level.”
Both the Selectboard and Board of Health agreed with this idea.
After being closed for four weeks, the Board of Health reassessed COVID-19 data and noted a significant downward trend before reopening.
As of Feb. 11, the town of Granby has reported 57 new COVID-19 cases in the last 14 days. Bombardier said that they are doing better than they were at the recent omicron peak, but that their transmission rate is now at the same level as it was during the holidays of 2020.
“If we think about how good things are, yeah they’re good compared to this horrible surge that we had, but it’s really as bad as the worst was in 2020. So there’s still a huge amount of this around,” he said.
To continue to keep residents safe, Granby has a town-wide mask mandate in place. Bombardier said that letting this mandate expire will be a topic of discussion at the next Board of Health meetings.
“I’m sure it will be discussed. Especially since we’ve seen the governor acting with the mandates recently and DESE [the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education] stopping the mandate in schools, that’s going to be discussed,” he said.
Despite the new recommendations from DESE, Bombardier said that he does not expect the Board of Health to lift the district-wide mask mandate this month due to the February vacation.
“We know the last one had really terrible, terrible transmission right after school vacation. Stopping the mandate at the very time when you have the least data available to you is the incorrect time to do it,” he said.
Out of Granby’s 6,112 residents, 73 percent are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Only 41 percent have received their vaccine booster.
Bombardier reported that they have a low vaccination rate of younger children in the town. Only 38 percent of children ages 5 through 11 are fully vaccinated and 55 percent of those ages 12 through 15 are vaccinated.
He said that Nurse Lead Nancy Jenks has been trying to combat this by offering several vaccination clinics at the schools. “She has been doing an absolutely super job at doing clinics,” said Bombardier.
Granby Community Access & Media has also been spreading the word on vaccination clinics as well as the Police Department through robocalls, according to Bombardier.
Despite these efforts, Bombardier said that many non-vaccinated Granby residents continue to not get vaccinated.
“We’ve suffered the same problems that the rest of the state has suffered if you’re trying to get people to get vaccinated. It’s difficult. It’s, unfortunately, the misinformation the nation is facing and, sadly, the fact that vaccinations have been politicized makes it very, very difficult to try to control a terrible disease that can easily be controlled,” he said.
With spring approaching, Bombardier remains positive. “I think we’ve got better weather coming. We’re definitely still in a good, steep downward trend which is definitely a good thing,” he said.
However, he noted that COVID-19 is not behind them and that they will continue to have to be vigilant as a town against this disease.
“The negative side is that once people say no masks, do anything you want, that’s definitely going to drive infections up and then, on the negative side, we’re starting to hear that even the efficacy of the boosters is dropping down at four months. So we’ve got different forces going in different directions,” said Bombardier.
More information on COVID-19 in Granby can be found at www.granby-ma.gov.