SUMMIT COUNTY, Ohio — With pandemic mask mandates ending across Ohio, Summit County officials recently took to live streaming to answer residents’ questions about everything from infection risks to convincing anti-vaxers.
The Q&A, held on Facebook Monday, featured Summit County Health Commissioner Donna Skoda and was moderated by Summit County Communication’s Director Greta Johnson.
The mandate to wear masks to prevent transmission of COVID-19 has been rescinded for most institutions, at the state level and locally, Skoda said, but people are still getting sick with COVID-19 and some are dying.
The health commissioner issued an appeal.
“Please remember, if you are not vaccinated, you are still at risk,” she said. “COVID-19 is still circulating, there is still community transmission, and you run the risk of having an asymptomatic infection and not know it, and give it to somebody who is far more vulnerable than you and unvaccinated.”
With the mandate lifted, no one will know who is vaccinated and who is not, which will be important in group settings, she said.
“There’ll be no enforcement, nobody will be out checking,” Skoda said. “A lot of this is going to be on the honor system but a lot of this is realizing that we have to do this for each other. I mean, you have to realize that you don’t want to get sick.”
And with more than 70% of Summit County residents already vaccinated, the demographics of infection are shifting, Skoda said.
“What you’re seeing is almost like a natural experiment that you didn’t even plan,” she said. “Because COVID doesn’t really have a home with older people anymore it’s moving into younger populations. That’s why it’s critical that we get our children and everyone 12 and older vaccinated. So COVID doesn’t have a home there either.”
With the mask mandate lifted, private businesses, like grocery stores and places people congregate, have the right to mandate mask-wearing on the premises, she said.
“The risk isn’t with the vaccinated people — it’s with all those folks that aren’t vaccinated, that could become very ill and die,” she said.
Skoda said the data shows that people who are vaccinated run a very low risk — about 5% — of getting the virus or spreading it.
The health department will continue to blanket the county with walk-in vaccination clinics and offer a choice of the two-dose Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, or the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
In addition to clinics around the community, the health department offers a drive-thru vaccine clinic every Wednesday through June 30, administering Moderna from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Pfizer from 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
This week, May 19, the clinic will extend its afternoon hours to 6 p.m. Skoda said, to administer Pfizer. The health department is located at 1867 W. Market St. in Akron.
Pfizer is the only vaccine approved for those 12 and older, so families are encouraged to bring their children to the afternoon clinic, Skoda said.
At sites that don’t typically administer vaccines, parents must be present for kids under 18 to be vaccinated, Skoda said. In schools, kids need a signed permission slip.
The health department usually takes J&J and Moderna to off-site clinics because Pfizer requires super-cold storage making it difficult to take on the road, she said.
Residents can call the health department at 330-926-5795 to find out which vaccines will be at the clinics, which are listed on the health department website.
Rumors have circulated in the community regarding pregnant women and the safety of the vaccine, Johnson said
“I heard and seen some anecdotal evidence that women of childbearing years have a reluctance to the vaccine based on misinformation they’ve heard about impacting their ability to have children,” Johnson said.
The vaccine is messenger RNA technology, which delivers information into the body, not the virus, Skoda said.
“Think of it like a-b-c-d-e-f, just some letters. Taking that chunk of genetic sequencing, and putting it in as a messenger into your body via the injection,” she said. “And then it goes to your immune system and says, ‘Listen, if you see anything like this, it’s not good, we want to get rid of it.” That’s what causes those antibodies.”
Pregnant women were not included in clinical trials for the vaccine but some of the women became pregnant, she said. The women’s’ babies were born with antibodies to fight the virus.
RNA technology is not new, Skoda said. It’s been used in other medications including cancer treatments.
Residents also asked for advice on how to persuade friends and family members who don’t want the vaccine, Johnson said.
Skoda used flu statistics, saying only about 50 percent of the population gets a flu shot, although every year about 36,000 people die of the flu, she said. That’s because people mistakenly think the flu is “benign.”
COVID-19 is also not benign, she said, it has killed may people.
“We can’t even figure out when or how it’s going to strike and who is going to be left with these very terrible side effects long-term, ” Skoda said. “There’s no rhyme or reason to who lives and who dies.”
Almost everyone has experienced some hesitancy about taking the vaccine because this is all so new, she said.
“It’s our only chance. COVID will be here and you need to get protected,” she said. “COVID isn’t just going to magically skip your house. It doesn’t work that way. I’ve never seen a virus behave like this, they can do so much harm in so little time.”
