Following Monday's formal approval of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine by the Food and Drug Administration, Garland County Health Officer Dr. Gene Shelby said he hopes it will encourage more people in the county to get vaccinated.
"I think it's really great news," Shelby said. "I know it's something that I and many have been highly anticipating -- you know, certainly the people that didn't want to get the vaccination until it is fully approved, which it is now, so I hope that will kind of get some people that are on the fence off the fence and getting the vaccine.
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"So I think it's a real positive step and I think we really need to try to get the word out that it has been fully approved and call out to people that were using it as an excuse to say that it's not an excuse anymore. Hopefully, we'll see an uptick in our vaccinations by getting that full approval," he said.
Replacing the emergency-use authorization granted last December, Pfizer's vaccine marks the first to get approval by the FDA, and as such, "the public can be very confident that this vaccine meets the high standards for safety, effectiveness and manufacturing quality the FDA requires of an approved product," Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said.
The decision comes one week after most schools in the country started classes. Shelby, on Friday, praised the efforts of the school districts in Garland County for their pandemic preparedness, noting he feels strongly all of the districts have been diligent in their planning for the new school year.
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"And if there's one area that we're in better shape than we were this time last year is that we have a year's experience under our belt," he said. "That's the good part. And the bad part is that our active cases in the county is about over four times higher this August than it was last August. So we've got a lot more virus and we've got a lot more of the contagious delta variant virus in the community, too, so we've got some things that are working in our favor and we've got some things against us too."
Shelby noted how much worse the pandemic could be if not for the districts' preparation along with the masks and vaccinations.
"Oh, it really could be" a lot worse, he said. "And, you know, the school superintendents -- all the school superintendents -- have been very much on board for over the last, you know, eight or 10 months since we've had the vaccine and doing all that they can to get as much of their staff and faculty vaccinated. And I think they've had varying degrees of success. I know that (Superintendent) Shawn Cook at Lakeside School District has -- he's been more vocal at our meetings about all the things that he's been doing, and then I think he's got some really pretty good numbers -- up around between 75 and 85% of the faculty and staff vaccinated."
Shelby said that at last week's Hot Springs/Garland County COVID-19 Task Force meeting, he was pleased to see that four Garland County schools had enacted a mask mandate while the other three were highly encouraging the wearing of masks. He noted that masking, other than being vaccinated, is the number one way to prevent the transmission of COVID-19.
"But, you know, in the school situation, it's just impossible to keep social distancing -- especially, younger kids," he said. "But I think they're definitely all committed to doing that but also fearful of what could happen with having so much virus in the community for sure. ... And that's, you know -- vaccines is the bottom line as far as stopping this pandemic. It's the more people we can get vaccinated, the quicker that we'll be able to get a handle on it. And I think that's one of the reasons why we're seeing such a spike here in Garland County is because our vaccination rates are so low."
There is, however, anecdotal evidence that more people are starting to receive the vaccine in the county, Shelby said.
"I mean, just in my -- I have a small clinic and I don't have that many patients that I see on a regular basis but I definitely, over the last month or two, seen a lot more interest in getting vaccinated whereas two months ago, I would talk to someone about getting vaccinated and they'd say, 'Nah, I don't think I really wanna get it.' But now they're saying, 'I think want to get it; Where can I go?' And I say, 'You need to get it today -- don't wait till tomorrow.' That's the take-away that I try to emphasize to my patients."
Regarding the upcoming athletic events that accompany the beginning of school, Shelby notes there is a big difference between indoor activities and outdoor activities. He says, though, that people are still not completely free even outdoors. Shelby said he recently spoke at a Lakeside School Board meeting in which he addressed this issue in keeping such athletic events from being "super spreader events."
"But I think the key points that I suggested to them was to really kind of control the access points so that you don't have a lot of students bunched up either going indoors or bunched indoors going outdoors," he said. "And I think that was one of the keys. And again, I think (you) just have to be smart and be safe about the people that you're around, even outdoors if you're around a bunch of people that you don't know their vaccination status and they're not wearing masks, I would move away a little bit."
With recent discussions on a third dose of the vaccine being available to the immunocompromised and even the general public as soon as next month, Shelby said Arkansas still ranks as one of the lowest states in the country in people who are fully vaccinated, with Garland County residents even lower.
"People need to get vaccinated," he said. "I mean, everybody's tired of this but the only way we're going to really get over it is get a significant percentage of people vaccinated. And Arkansas still ranks, you know, 46th, 47th in the percent of people that are fully vaccinated. And if you can believe in numbers, Garland County is behind the state level, so we've got a long ways to go. And it's really showing up in the New England states where they've got 70 or 80% of the population vaccinated. They're not dealing with a lot of the issues that we're dealing with here."