Hello Kent County, I’m Dr. Adam London, Director of the Kent County Health Department. I want to wish you and everyone in our community a very Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and an amazing new year. I also wish you a healthy and a safe holiday season. We’ve come a long way in the past 12 months. Sadly, we’ve lost hundreds of people who were dear to us. Some of whom were young, healthy, and they were robbed of decades of life. And everyone we’ve lost was a precious and sacred part of our community. We’re going to miss them all dearly and we’re going to feel their absence during this holiday season. I think it is important to remember that the case mortality rate here in Kent County is approximately 1%, that’s half of the state, national, and international case mortality rate. This is due to your good work and the good work of amazing people who have made sacrifices small and large for the protection of all of us. I’m proud of everyone who has helped roll out safe and effective vaccines to hundreds of thousands of residents. It’s been an undertaking like nothing else in American history. I think of the massive testing efforts, the many vaccine clinics that have been set up – including the West Michigan Vaccine Clinic at DeVos Place which operated last winter and spring, and the many that are operating right now at clinics, health departments, and pharmacies in neighborhoods throughout west Michigan. And I think of all who have done the right things to reduce risk such as wearing facial coverings in indoor public places. To those of you who have helped in these efforts, you are truly heroic and you are great Americans. The hard truth, however, is that we have a had a very bad month. As a community, we’ve done a lot to decrease the severity of the Delta wave of COVID19 cases. However, our hospitals have been at capacity or over capacity for quite some time now. We have been losing Kent County residents every day. And as I mentioned, some of them have been very young. It breaks my heart to know that we’re going to lose some more people before the holidays…maybe even someone who’s watching this video right now. If you are unvaccinated, we need your help and more importantly we need you. The vast majority of the people that we losing at this moment were unvaccinated. You may disagree with me and you may dislike me, but please know: I do not want anything bad to happen to you. I’ve seen far too many people and far too many families find out far too late that COVID is a very bad thing. Lives that could have been saved by a proven, tested, and safe medicine: vaccine. For more information about the vaccine, please go to vaccinatewestmi.com or simply contact any of the countless locations where it is available right now. And again, I hope you and yours have a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
