Terra Uhing and Brett Richmond hope area residents continue to be vigilant in the fight against COVID-19.
“I know individuals are done with COVID-19. They have COVID-19 fatigue, but we are so close,” said Uhing, who is the executive director of the Three Rivers Public Health Department. “We can see that light at the end of the tunnel. We just need folks to stick in there with us a little bit longer.”
Richmond, the president and CEO of Methodist Fremont Health, said progress continues to be made. He points to declining numbers of people hospitalized at MFH due to the virus.
“We are in a pretty good spot right now,” he said. “A good portion of last week we continued to have patients hospitalized with COVID-19, but in the last few days we haven’t.”
Methodist Fremont Health continues to vaccinate those who live or work in Dodge County.
“We are doing about 1,200 doses a week — about half for the first dose and about half for the second dose,” Richmond said. “We’re excited to do that. Our folks have found that to be really rewarding and even a little bit healing to be a part of it after what they’ve been through in the last year.”
Uhing said that within the Three Rivers jurisdiction — Dodge, Saunders and Washington counties — 25.04 percent of individuals 16 and older are completely vaccinated.
“That is just over 15,000 people so we are making progress each week,” she said. “The huge thing for us was that last week we opened up (vaccinations) to 18 and older within all of our counties”
Uhing said there have been four variant cases in Dodge County, including three for the UK and one for the California variant. Washington had one case of the UK variant reported over the weekend.
Contact tracing tied one of the cases back to a service that was attended.
“People need to continue to do their part,” Uhing said. “If you are sick, stay home. If you are going to go into a place with a large number of people and you don’t know if they’ve been vaccinated, wear a mask. With the service we are talking about, there were eight or nine positive people there and one tested positive for the (UK) variant.”
Uhing reiterated that while the situation may be improving, it is no time to think the COVID-19 crisis is in the past.
“We’re not done,” she said. “We’re still in the middle of a pandemic so we’ve all got to be careful a little bit longer.”
