Page last updated on January 31, 2022 at 4:30 pm
It's Monday, January 31st, 2022, quick public update–nothing new this week. We're still stuck in a very serious surge of the COVID pandemic, particularly the Omicron variant that's hit us very hard. If you look at the state website, you'll see every county in Indiana is red. That's the most severe status. As we look at the impact here, our numbers came down slightly over the past week in terms of the total number of cases, but still way up over a thousand cases per week. We had gotten below a hundred, as you may recall, a couple months ago and it's just climbed steadily since. For our own employment here in the City, we've had over a hundred positive cases, almost one in eight City employees testing positive over the month of January. So, we know Omicron is here. Of course, it's hitting our schools. It's hitting so many workplaces.
Those who are vaccinated and boosted are seeing a much, much, much better outcome. Often it's not significant or a little bump in health road. But those who are unvaccinated, this is a deadly infection, a deadly disease, very serious, hospitalizing people, putting people on ventilators. So doing all we can is so important still. Wear your mask. We continue to have the indoor mask mandate here in Monroe County. Keep your distance from folks. Don't share air with people if you don't have to, that are not in your own household just for the next short time. We hope for just a few weeks. We hope to see this declining. We just don't know. We have to be humble and be ready and continue to be steady so that our kids can go to school, so that our workplaces can continue safely, so that university can go forward, Ivy tech, others where it's so important that people get together and do their jobs and get their learning and such proceeding.
I want to thank our City employees because they've done exceptional things to make up for people who've been out with positive tests in sanitation, public safety, and others. We really appreciate that. And I know that's happening to many of you all around the city and to your workplaces too. So stay safe, please get vaccinated and boosted. There's plenty of opportunity to do that locally. Boosting is really important. Indiana's still way low on the national scale of how many of us have gotten vaccinated and boosted and that makes a huge difference on this latest variant. Keep safe, take care of yourselves and our city. We really appreciate that and I'll keep you posted as I do regularly. Thank you.
