According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, less than a third of Berkshire County’s roughly 100,000 residents have received the bivalent booster. Less than two thirds have received two or more doses of the first round of the vaccine, and under half have gotten a booster shot at all. It’s one of the areas of the commonwealth the Massachusetts Department of Public Health is aiming its new undertaking at.
“Pretty much the end of October, October 24th, we started the Get Boosted campaign specifically targeting rural communities as well as other communities that have lower booster rates. And so, we've been working for a couple of years now, looking at our vaccine equity communities. And those were communities that initially, we knew we needed to spend some extra time and resources to reach out to and try to enhance trust in the vaccine. But the Get Boosted campaign specifically allowed us to look at booster doses and communities that had some need,” said Chief Medical Officer Dr. Estevan Garcia. “The best way to protect yourself and your family is really by getting your booster dose in. And again, we'll meet you wherever you are. So, if you haven't been vaccinated at all and you go to one of our clinics and say, I'd like to start the vaccine primary series, we will meet you there, and we'll do that certainly for you. But from a booster perspective, we want to make sure that folks understand that getting the initial first and second doses were very important. But now, the booster dosing is really, the bivalent booster, is really what's going to protect individuals moving forward. And we're anticipating that this will become an annual kind of event, just like the flu shot.”
Now through March 31st, anyone in the Berkshires will take home a $75 gift card for stores like Stop and Shop, Cumberland Farms, Target, or Walmart if they get the bivalent booster from clinics participating in the Get Boosted campaign.
“This is going to go ahead and provide protection for the strains that are kind of circulating right now. And so, it's important for people to keep their immunity up, especially people who are the most vulnerable, such as people with a preexisting health conditions and have some of the other risk factors such as age, emphysema, [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease], but by us getting vaccinated, it's going to reduce the risk of us getting the most vulnerable amongst us sick. So, it's still out there, COVID is still a threat to a lot of people that have preexisting conditions. And so, it's part of the effort to keep them safe," said Jayne Smith, the Southern Berkshire Public Health Collaborative shared services coordinator. “COVID is going to be part of us. And you know, it still is killing people. My stepfather died just a few months ago from COVID. He was high risk. And I think that trying to figure out a way to balance protecting those around us and being healthy ourselves with just getting along with life I think is going to be something that we all need to think about and make decisions based off of how we want to treat ourselves and other people.”
Smith says she’s dismayed that the Biden administration has announced that it will end the COVID-19 health emergency declaration in May.
“Some of the programs such as the food access programs and additional food benefits that are going to expire with that are really going to hurt people who are already suffering from inflation," she told WAMC. "And so, there's a lot of concern out there for people who are really relying upon those social services to support them during a period of rising food prices, rising oil prices. You know, the rents in South County are just crazy. And so, to take away that infrastructure now, we're just not sure what that's going to look like for a lot of families who are struggling to stay warm and feed themselves through this winter.”
Northern, Central, and Southern Berkshire County are among the 14 rural areas covered by the Massachusetts COVID-19 Vaccine Equity Initiative: Rural Vaccine Program.
