Page last updated on September 7, 2021 at 1:42 pm
Hello, this is Mayor John Hamilton on Monday, November 9th, just giving a public update is I try to do regularly. A couple of big topics this week will be the elections and COVID.
First on the elections, of course, over the past weekend, all the major news outlets declared the national election for president concluded with the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as president and vice president-elect. We, of course, have many people celebrating that. There are other people who are disappointed in that, like every election. And I want to congratulate the president-elect and vice president-elect and look forward to working with them from our town here in Bloomington. And also, encourage everyone to recognize the importance of working together and peaceably letting the election results flow through our system as they will, as they have for over two centuries. We will look forward to working together to address a lot of the challenges that are in front of us. And congratulations again to the president-elect and vice president-elect.
Locally, our elections all went smoothly and we congratulate all those who won. And we thank all those who participated in the election as well. It was a big turnout. 63,000 people voted in the county and thanks to all who voted and help make democracy continue, the progress that we make there.
On COVID, let me just report, we continue to see real deterioration in the state as we do in the country, with records set several times last week in the country, as well as the state. Just to put some figures to remember, over the last four to six weeks in the state of Indiana, the hospitalizations for COVID have more than doubled, the daily deaths from COVID have more than tripled, and the daily case rate, the seven day moving average of how many people are diagnosed, has more than quadrupled, doubling of hospitalizations, tripling of deaths, quadrupling of cases. This is a very, very alarming, steep increase that we don't see flattening out yet. We hope it will.
And locally, while we do, we have not seen this, we are doing better than the state, we still feel this. We do have increases in hospitalizations here, and we have increases in the daily case locally here as well. Not nearly like the state, but we cannot be an island. We have to keep protecting ourselves, our neighbors, our family, through masking, through physical distancing, through all the hygiene that's important. That is so important.
Over the weekend, we saw parties and celebrations, and I understand that, but when they're not masked, when people are not masked, when we're not physically distancing, we are putting our community at risk. We do not want to have to go backward and shut down or tighten up again. But if we need to, we will, because this is a deadly disease. It's increasing dramatically in our state and in our country. And we are not immune from that. Just to really a sober and strong reminder that this disease is among us, it's spreading. It can happen at any time. Please follow the guidelines, avoid large gathering, stay masked, stay distanced. You can be with your household, but be very careful, because it just here. It's increasing dramatically and we need to protect each other.
That's a quick update. Hope all are well. Please continue to take care of each other in the City of Bloomington as you do. And we'll give you more updates along the way.
