Speaking to the Rome News-Tribune this week, Dr. Gary Voccio – head of the Northwest Georgia Department of Public Health – said that the area continues to see a large influx of the omicron variant of COVID-19 cases among residents, with the unvaccinated the most affected.
“We are continuing to exceed numbers we haven’t seen before,” Dr. Gary Voccio said. He added that the high number of COVID cases is region-wide, affecting all ten counties in the Northwest Georgia Health District.
The Rome News Tribune said, on top of that, hospitals are feeling the surge. Atrium Health Floyd reported 99 covid-positive patients and AdventHealth Redmond had 71 on Thursday.
“We’ve actually had a couple of deaths from covid in our hospitals recently. The hospital numbers are just overwhelming for them,” Voccio said. “And as expected, 90% of the patients on ventilators are the unvaccinated.”
Health officials still maintain that the best protection against COVID-19 is to be vaccinated and to wear masks in public. To protect yourself and others from spreading the virus, Voccio recommends being both fully vaccinated and boosted. You can get boosted 28 days after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine or five months after receiving the full dosage of Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.
As far as masks go, Voccio said N95 masks are the best protection. If you can’t find one, wearing both a surgical mask and a cloth mask is the second best way to protect yourself.
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