Dr. Stanley Martin (Photo provided)
DANVILLE – Vaccinations rates across Pennsylvania and the Valley are doing well, but could be better…that’s the latest analysis from Geisinger’s Director of Infectious Diseases, Dr. Stanley Martin.
He says despite Pennsylvania being near the top of the nation in vaccination rates, “Does that mean we are ideally where we want to be? No not really. We’re kinda in the mid-60% range if you’re taking people 18 years and older, and of course, children under the age of 12 can’t be vaccinated at all right now, unfortunately.”
As for mask wearing, Dr. Martin says if you’re fully vaccinated, you won’t have to wear a mask all the time, and, “Without the vaccine, you’re still gonna be potentially susceptible to getting this infection. This Delta variant…please understand…this is a super infectious strain of COVID. And if you don’t get vaccinated, even if you’re very conscious about trying to wear a mask, you will likely get infected at some point.”
But Dr. Martin says lots of projections are indicating we could see a peak of the latest surge of COVID infections by October, “But again, depending on the rate of vaccination, that may happen sooner…at least we’d hope that’d happen sooner. We’d anticipate the numbers probably aren’t going to get as high as last fall, just because we do have a considerable amount of the population that is fully vaccinated at this point.”
