Health officials continue to encourage residents to get vaccinated from COVID-19, especially because of the Delta variant.
We’ve had many conversations in the past 18 months with Dr. John Love, Infectious Disease Specialist with the Butler Health System and our latest have dealt with the Delta variant.
Dr. Love agrees with many other health professionals that the variant is more transmissible than the original strain. He continues to stress the importance of vaccines, even if we are seeing lower numbers of COVID related hospitalizations and deaths in this area.
Love says, “Our vaccination rate is ok. It’s certainly not as high as other parts of the country are, but we can still protect more people with more vaccinations. (And) thinking of the MRNA vaccines, which are our workhorses, like Pfizer and Moderna, those take 5 or 6 weeks to reach full vaccination immunity. So, if we don’t start getting you vaccinated now, we won’t see any benefit of any increased vaccination for 5 or 6 weeks because it takes that long to generate the protective immunity.”
Love also responded to the thought of getting just one dose of Pfizer or Moderna, since both are a two-shot process.
“We have pretty good data now that a single dose of Pfizer is not particularly great against the Delta variant. He says that’s different than the originally strain of COVID where he says it wasn’t great but there was some ‘decent level of protection from a single dose of Pfizer or Moderna’. He says people aren’t as well protected from a single dose when it comes to the Delta variant.
Man health professionals, including Dr. Love, have said from the beginning that Pfizer and Moderna is a 2-shot process.
Butler Health System continues to offer the COVID-19 vaccine. Here’s the link to schedule your vaccine through the Butler Health System. https://butlerhealth-firstdose.rsvpify.com/
You can listen to our latest conversations with Dr. John Love below.
