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Date: 3/10/2021
SOUTHWICK – During the Southwick Board of Health’s March 4 meeting, Health Director Tammy Spencer gave updates on COVID-19 vaccinations and the state’s Public Health Emergency Preparedness budget.
After plans for a potential Big E vaccination site fell through, Spencer said she was hopeful a site could be set up on the western side of the Connecticut River.
“We are hopeful that if we approach it with another plan that maybe we would be able to have a regional clinic this side of the river, we are just holding our breath. They have tidied the last one and now Baystate Health is a part of it. I hear about it pretty much as soon as everyone else does on the news,” she said.
With vaccines beginning to roll out to teachers and other school staff beginning on March 11, Spencer said she hopes there are enough vaccines for everyone.
“I know that things are going pretty well but there is still quite a big percentage of the 65 and older category who have not been vaccinated. I still hear that people in that category are still having a hard time, and with adding this larger group of over 400,000 individuals to it I hope we can make more of a dent,” she said.
After explaining the state was not using its Public Health Emergency Preparedness program at the last meeting, Spencer said she and other members of the Hampden County Health Coalition voted against the budget for that program.
“We decided to vote non-concurrence for that money because the deliverable requirements for that are to continue to support the old emergency dispensing site plan model when in all actuality, we are not utilizing that model. We are sending that back to the state in the hopes that they will come back with another plan,” she said.
During her regular COVID-19 numbers update, Public Health Nurse Kate Johnson said the town was in the yellow for the second straight week.
“We are actually in the yellow again which is amazing. We are at 3.05 percent positivity over the past 14 days and Hampden County is at 4.02 so we are just a point off from that, but the cases have drastically dropped. For example, so far in March we have only had 5 cases as of today, so in terms of cases and contact tracing it has been much more manageable,” she said.
Johnson added that at least 4 of the new cases came from transmission in households.
The Southwick Board of Health next meets on March 18.