St. Mary lags state in COVID vaccinations

As Louisiana pushes to get people vaccinated against COVID-19, St. Mary is lagging behind the rest of the state in coronavirus inoculations.
Meanwhile, Gov. John Bel Edwards was scheduled to take part in what is being called a health summit followed by a press conference Tuesday afternoon, the day before the current COVID mitigation rules are set to expire. There’s speculation that the next rules may be changed to combat a leveling-off of progress in fighting the disease’s spread.
The latest Louisiana Office of Public Health report says COVID shots have been administered to 12.72% of St. Mary people.
About 1.2 million people statewide have received at least one shot, or about 25% of Louisiana’s population.
The vaccination rate in Assumption is 12.62%. In St. Martin, it’s 9.94%.
The rate for Department of Health Region 3, which stretches east from St. Mary and Assumption to St. John the Baptist, is 13.8%, third-lowest among the nine regions.
The reason why St. Mary people aren’t getting vaccinated at a higher rate isn’t clear to Coroner Eric Melancon.
“There’s just not a lot of people getting it,” Melancon said Monday.
Supply isn’t the problem.
“They called me and asked if I wanted 100 doses this week and then another 100 doses next week,” Melancon said. “I said sure.”
The Parish Health Unit has administered 362 first doses and 177 second doses.
Melancon thinks the difference in efficacy rates among the vaccines may be discouraging some people being vaccinated.
The two available memory RNA vaccines, from Moderna and Pfizer, require two shots. Pfizer shots are administered 21 days apart, and Moderna shots are given 28 days apart. The protection is reported to be full in effect 14 days after the second shot.
The one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine is also available locally.
The Yale Medical School says the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are both near 95% effective under ideal conditions, and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is 74% effective generally and 86% effective in preventing serious illness.
Melancon said that because of the difference in effectiveness, he wouldn’t recommend waiting for a Johnson & Johnson shot if Moderna or Pfizer vaccine is available
Louisiana’s COVID statistics have improved dramatically since the third wave of coronavirus infections of the winter. The number of COVID hospitalizations in Louisiana topped 2,000 in early January, the highest level of the pandemic.
But for a week more, the hospitalization total was between 350 and 400. Edwards has warned that in the past, a plateau has been a sign that another surge is coming.
Louisiana moved into Phase 3 of coronavirus restrictions March 3. The new rules, which are due to be renewed Wednesday, raised customer capacity limits at many businesses and allowed the return of live musical performances with COVID mitigation measures.
The Office of Public Health’s color-coded map of parishes and their COVID positivity rates shows St. Mary as a high-risk parish with a rate of more than 10%. But Melancon said the state reporting is sometimes behind the available statistics, and that the latest information is that the positivity rate here is near 6%.