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Date: 3/9/2022
WESTERN MASS. – Two years since COVID-19 thrust Massachusetts into a state of emergency, case counts are again declining but the numbers don’t tell the whole story, Agawam and West Springfield health officials said last week.
Of the 1,540,735 positive cases reported in Massachusetts since the virus was declared a pandemic in March 2020, 7,177 were in West Springfield and 6,766 in Agawam. But those numbers don’t included “probable” cases and positive results from at-home tests, noted Jeanne Galloway, director of public health in West Springfield.
She added that it’s “tough to quantify” how many town residents have died because of COVID-19, because if they died in another town, they would be counted in that community’s statistics. Across Massachusetts, the two-year cumulative coronavirus death toll is up to 22,748, according to the state’s website, including 52 in the past two weeks in Hampden County.
Michael Theroux, health agent of the Agawam Health Department, said the average weekly reported cases have dropped down in the teens – a significant decrease from what officials were seeing a little over a month ago.
“During the omicron surge in December and January, the town of Agawam reported 2,813 cases of COVID-19,” said Theroux.
The health impact of COVID-19 is about more than infections and deaths, however, Galloway said. The past two years have disrupted social life with mask mandates, social distancing, travel bans, restrictions on group gatherings, school cancellations and remote working. Galloway said she is seeing a “fairly significant increase” in mental health struggles.
Though the surge of omicron infections is subsiding, Galloway said, “We are not far enough away to see any improvements” in mental health. She believes it will take some time to see the true impacts.
Theroux said, “I have seen added stress due to a number of reasons. People are uncertain if their jobs would be affected due to COVID-19. People have had their finances disrupted during the pandemic.”
He continued, “I would say the level of stress in the last two years for people has definitely grown, which in turn is causing some mental anguish for people.”
Health staffing
“When COVID hit and the schools shut down, we got use of school nurses through the summer,” said Galloway. The nurses, along with additional hires, assisted the Health Department in contract tracing – the practice of interviewing confirmed carriers of COVID-19, tracking down people they were close to while contagious, and calling those people to have them tested.
Theroux said Agawam also used school nurses to assist with contact tracing and running vaccination clinics.
Once students started returning to in-person learning in fall 2020, Galloway said the town had to hire even more people for contact tracing, to take over the roles of the school nurses. These individuals were hired through grants.
When the highly contagious omicron variant emerged at the end of December 2021, Galloway said the public health staff couldn’t keep track of it all.
“We don’t have as many contact tracers on contract. The amount of cases that need to be done has decreased,” said Galloway.
West Springfield now has one contact tracer on contract and two that are grant funded. The nurses who assisted in contract tracing over the summer were paid by the schools. Galloway said the Health Department’s current staffing and budget haven’t changed since before the pandemic. This includes herself, a public health nurse administrator, the code enforcement officer, an environmental health specialist and an administrative assistant.
In Agawam, Theroux said when the pandemic first began, the Health Department was fully staffed every day. In January 2021, the director retired.
“This left us down a person with just a local inspector, our public health nurse and our administrative assistant running the department during the 2021 calendar year,” he explained.
In late January 2021, Theroux assumed the role of acting director.
“The working hours for all staff were extended during the pandemic, as we all had to do work outside of our scheduled hours to keep up with our increasing workload,” said Theroux. “The department is fully staffed now, versus during the majority of the pandemic, when we were short-staffed.”
Theroux said the budget has essentially remained the same, although he would like to see an increase.
“We are hopeful now that the public has seen how much public health does for their communities [and] that we will be able to gain a larger budget to do more for the people of our communities, and stay ready for the next obstacles that come our way.”
Pandemic future
With the hopes of seeing a continuous decrease in COVID-19 positivity rates, Galloway encourages people to stay vigilant and get vaccinated.
The West Springfield Council on Aging hosted a vaccine clinic March 5, and will offer another on March 26. All three COVID-19 vaccines will be offered, Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, along with the influenza vaccine.
Despite these trying times, Galloway said, “I think there may be good things coming out of the pandemic,” such as the increased use of electronic means for remote meetings, online services and town communications to residents.
Although there has been “a lot of things to adjust to” over the past two years, Galloway said the town has made it work.
At press time, Agawam does not have any plans to offer vaccination clinics, though information on where to obtain a vaccine can be found at www.agawam.ma.us/241/Health-Department.
For the latest statewide statistics and information about COVID-19, visit www.mass.gov/covid-19-updates-and-information.