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TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, it's Mayor John Hamilton. It's Monday, May 10th. Just giving another public update on how we're doing with the pandemic. Thanks for all that you're doing in the community. I have to say it's a confusing and careful time, continuing to watch what's going on. I'll give you a couple of data points today, but basically, we're still uncertain about the direction that our community is headed in our state. We see some concerning trends.

For example, our hospitalizations, if you look across the state in Indiana, have gone up over the last six or seven weeks from a census count of around 600, sometimes even over under 600, per day in the hospital being treated for COVID, to now it's over 900 around the state. That's a significant increase in hospitalizations. We have not seen a similar increase in deaths by the state average, still, really single digits per day, so that's a great relief. But having that increase in people who are hospitalized for COVID is of real concern.

Similarly, the case rate has gone up significantly, how many people are diagnosed with COVID. On the other hand, we know the vaccinations are going up too, but we've slowed down a lot in vaccinations. We reached a peak of over 50,000 vaccine shots being delivered a day some weeks back, and we're now in the mid 30,000s per day. So many fewer people are lining up to get the shots, but we're still way below where we want to get to in terms of the numbers.

So these are concerning trends. If you have not gotten vaccinated, please talk to your healthcare provider, talk to friends, talk to neighbors, family members who have been vaccinated about their experience. We know that vaccines will help us defeat this pandemic. Once you're vaccinated, I'm vaccinated plus two weeks now, you're able to do more things safely, that's a great thing, and I encourage you to do so.

So really this week is a continued kind of nervous watching, frankly, about where we are. Again, it is the vaccines that are going to win this battle. And the slowdown in vaccine rates is a concern because we're not nearly where we need to be, where we want to be. We'll keep watching. We'll keep you updated. Of course, the press conference every Friday afternoon at 1:15 gives timely data for a lot of us about that. But our community's continuing to watch so it is really important to keep doing the things that keep us safe, besides the vaccinations, with masking, distancing, as appropriate under the guidelines that the CDC and the state health department give.

So that's the update for this week. Thanks for keeping good care of yourself and our community and I'll be in touch again soon.