As Schools Open In Southwest Georgia, Doctors Encourage Educators, Staff To Get Vaccinated

Caption

A students in Marietta wears a mask to school.

Credit: Marietta City Schools/Facebook (file photo)

As students return to in-person classes, they and staff will be required to wear masks in the Dougherty County school system.

But with a vaccination rate below 40%, the community needs more of those eligible, including teachers and students age 12 and over, to get vaccinated, Dr. Winston Price said Monday.  

That's below the national average, and certainly below the 70% needed for herd immunity, said Price, who is an Albany-based member of the National Medical Association.

If vaccination rates don't improve, he said schools will see outbreaks of the highly contagious delta variant of the virus.

"Unless (vaccination) is done across the board, we can expect within two to three weeks after school is back that many of these school districts will see a significant rise in the number of cases," Price said. "And, unfortunately, many of those children will suffer severe disease, end up on respirators and, unfortunately, may die."

He cited the death by COVID-19 of a 1-year-old in Tallahassee.

The spread of disease can occur in individuals who are not protected by a vaccine, even if they are mildly symptomatic or asymptomatic, Price said.

"So you can imagine in the school system with kids, who are social beings, interacting with one another," Price said. "(They) may come back home with asymptomatic COVID-19, pass it on to the adults in that household, and then that becomes a significant surge."

Because students under the age of 12 are not eligible for any COVID-19 vaccine, those around them must help by getting vaccinated and wearing masks, Price said, adding that this is not only his professional opinion but also in line with what the Georgia Department of Public Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics have all said in statements.

"We have a fairly significant number of parents who are pushing back to the school board and instructing their children not to give in and not to wear a mask on the school bus and in the classroom," Price said. "And that's what's leading to the increase in cases of COVID-19 in that community."

Just under 70,000 Georgians are hospitalized with COVID-19, and the vast majority of those patients are unvaccinated.

COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy in the community

The poorer and more rural communities the southwest part of the state are at heightened risk, Price said.

"African American and Latino communities are suffering disproportionately and making up a brunt of the number of hospitalizations and deaths, unfortunately, with this disease," he said.

Part of the problem is how politicized the pandemic has become, he said, adding that another issue is the lack of diversity in the medical profession.

"Until we correct the issue of diversity in health care, diversity in the physician workforce, many of the vulnerable population, unfortunately, are going to be hesitant," Price said.

His words echo what other medical experts have said recently.

Survey: Many Do Not See Racism As A Barrier To Health Care Access

A third of Americans do not see systemic racism as a barrier to good health, according to results from a survey released earlier this year by the nonprofit Rand Corporation, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This is despite that fact that communities of color have been hit the hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rand senior economist Katherine Carman said some people might not be familiar with the term "systemic racism," so researchers posed questions in terms of whether or not people thought it was harder for Black people to get access to health care than white people.

They also asked whether those surveyed believe it is harder for lower income people to get access to health care than higher income people.

"And most people had no problem saying that it was harder to get access to health care when you have lower income," Carman said. "But they were less likely to say that it was harder for Black Americans to get access to health care than white Americans."

The need for more diverse doctors is part of the solution for vaccine hesitancy in Dougherty County, Price said. 

Clarkston, in DeKalb County, has a similar problem, which is why the CDC granted $500,000 toward reducing vaccine hesitancy in the refugee community.

“Clarkston stands out as a community at risk socioeconomically, as well as for issues of housing, transportation and language barriers,” said Dr. Richard Rothenberg, a co-investigator of the project. “Because the age distribution in Clarkston is weighted toward younger people — largely the result of a younger immigrant population — the vulnerabilities that result from an older population are less accented. In sum, Clarkston has considerable overall social vulnerability, and significant efforts will be required to alter the existing disparities."

The disease is not only hospitalizing those at high risk

Compared to last year's surge of this magnitude, Price said, the significant change in the recent surge in cases is that we've shifted from adults to younger people being admitted to the hospital, visiting emergency rooms and ending up in intensive care units on respirators.

"In fact, in some communities, the predominant individuals who are being admitted are those in the age range from 15 to 39, which is quite different from our previous experience with COVID-19," he said.

Not only are the people who have not been vaccinated getting sicker but also they are dying. That includes a local high school principal, Price said.

"A good friend, who was a chair of a health promotion program that we have in Southwest Georgia, also just recently was buried as a result of a COVID-19 death, and he, too, was unvaccinated," Price said.

Schools across Georgia all have different rules when it comes to masks and social distancing, which is why experts such as Amber Schmidtke, a microbiologist who analyzes COVID-19 data in Georgia, say ignoring data about the delta variant is dangerous. 

Parents and leaders in education who felt comforted by the apparent fact that the coronavirus did not affect children as much as older adults may have been lulled into a state of complacency, Schmidtke said.

"So when this starts to happen in a bigger way in Georgia and kids who were previously healthy are on ventilators, I don’t want school superintendents to claim that there was no way this could have been predicted," Schmidtke said. "We have plenty of warning that the situation in 2021 is more dangerous than a year ago for children. Willingly choosing to endanger children by not doing the bare minimum of disease control and prevention should be treated the same way as knowingly allowing someone drunk to drive a school bus and organizations that do so should be held to account."

Price, in Albany, says society must do better to protect students who cannot be vaccinated.

"If you had your child at a swimming pool and the director of the swimming pool and the lifeguard not only told you you could not put the water wings on your child, and they certainly couldn't wear a life vest, you would be outraged," Price said. "And certainly if that individual said, in fact, 'if you put that safety device on your child, we will penalize you.' This is this is akin to what we're seeing in the school system."

He said people must put away their political ideals and protect the children.

"They are a resource for the future," he said.