A Covid-19 outbreak in Provincetown helped motivate the shift in focus of the CDC’s masks. Here’s what residents have learned and how they are reacting

“Personally, I felt like it would be difficult to contract (Covid-19)” after receiving the vaccine, said Ken Horgan, owner of a Provincetown hotel.

“But I was educated quickly, since we were all here, getting the vaccine doesn’t give you the chance to engage in high-risk activities or assume that you don’t have to take precautions,” a- he told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on Friday.

To curb the spread, local leaders have reinstated a mask mandate for Provincetown, and fully vaccinated residents and business owners say they are doing their part to again double safety measures and push for more vaccinations.

“We’ve been told that if you’re vaccinated you’re almost invincible and I think we… wrongly assumed that,” Alex Morse CNN City Manager John Berman said on Friday.

“A Petri dish for the country”

Debbie Nadolney, director and curator at AMP Provincetown Gallery, said that although she, her partner and most of the other people she knew in town had been vaccinated, she felt the requirements for masks and other security measures had been lifted too soon. She said she mainly continued to wear her mask after her vaccine and encouraged others to do so while in the gallery.

“It seemed like common sense to me to continue,” she said. “Only half of the country … has been vaccinated, we haven’t reached yet, you know, the 70% or 80% vaccination rate in the country. So why are we celebrating?”

Nadolney has said she is now imposing masks in the gallery and hopes the city’s mandate will not be lifted anytime soon. Removing mask requirements was a “mistake” in the first place, she said, and she hopes other parts of the country will take advantage of the city’s experience and need masks in addition to. push for more vaccinations.

“Provincetown is such a small place but we have obviously been a petri dish for the country,” she said.

Roberts, who owns the puzzle store, said he enforced the mask requirement and that if customers didn’t have face covers, employees would give them one. Now that he knows that vaccinated people can also spread the virus, Roberts said he was very careful not to get infected because his 7-year-old son is still not eligible for a Covid-19 vaccine.

“Go in the right direction”

Horgan, the owner of the hotel, said the outbreak was both a sobering and an eye-opening experience. Local leaders and business owners “banded together” and implemented their own requirements for masks and vaccines, he said. His hotel, like others in the city, now requires proof of vaccination.

“If you are planning to travel and are not vaccinated, please do not come to Provincetown,” Horgan said. “We really take our health seriously and for our local businesses to survive we have to stay operational. And to stay operational we have to stay healthy.”

There are now 103 active cases in town, according to Morse, the general manager.

The latest figures, in addition to the new mask tenure, mean the city “is heading in the right direction,” Morse told CNN on Friday.

“What we take away from here is that this Delta variant is highly transmissible, more contagious, more likely to have a breakthrough infection, but it is unlikely that you will be hospitalized and you are certainly not going to die. “, did he declare. noted.

“The Delta variant is incredibly dangerous for unvaccinated people and while we have a short term mask mandate, our long term way out is really through vaccination.”

Dr Jane Aronson, 69, was among those fully vaccinated and infected in Provincetown. She said she had developed symptoms, including shortness of breath, cough, and a mild fever. But the vaccine saved her life, she said.

“That’s exactly what happened,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Friday. “I was immediately like, ‘I’m scared, but I know this vaccine will work.'”