Provincetown’s COVID-19 outbreak shows vaccine success

Coronavirus

“It’s actually a demonstration of vaccine success, but it really wasn’t media history.”

Governor Charlie Baker said that “one of the greatest challenges” that government leaders like himself have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic is to accurately convey and contextualize information on the evolution of the virus.

And in a speech on Tuesday, the governor of Massachusetts acknowledged that there had been times when “government leaders, health leaders, we haven’t all done a good job of describing what really happened “.

His main example: the now infamous COVID-19 outbreak in Provincetown.

The outbreak, which has reached more than 1,000 cases among mostly vaccinated individuals, made headlines suggesting vaccine “failure”, Baker said, when “in fact, that was the whole time. contrary”.

“It’s actually a demonstration of vaccine success, but it really wasn’t media history,” Baker said in a virtual address Tuesday morning at the New England Council.

Baker said there were around 10,000 people in the city of Cape Cod during the weekend in July when the epidemic began, a collision between the highly transmissible delta variant and one of the most vaccinated communities in the state.

A popular getaway destination in the LGBT community, Provincetown hosts a series of party weekends throughout the month of July. However, as Baker noted, the rain forced much of the activity indoors over the July 4th weekend.

“Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday – it rained every four days, so all outdoor activities that were to take place were moved indoors,” Baker said. “Crowded bars, restaurants, nightclubs, hotel lobbies, construction work. And lots of house parties that people thought were outside and inside.”

According to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that led the agency to change its face covering guidelines, about three-quarters of cases associated with the outbreak were in people vaccinated in a city where it is estimated that more than 90 percent of people have contracted the vaccine.

“Ultimately, the cluster was found to be north of 1,000 cases,” Baker said Tuesday. And that led to some real headlines across the country and in this region that said, you know, ‘OMG, you know, all these people went to this big weekend in Provincetown and they all got vaccinated and there There have been a lot of cases that have come outside of that. And frankly, a lot of people have interpreted this as vaccines that don’t work.

“But the story is actually very different from that,” he added.

While the outbreak has shown that even fully vaccinated individuals can transmit the delta variant, it has also shown how effective vaccines are in preventing the spread and, in particular, serious illness from COVID-19.

Baker noted that some infectious disease experts estimated the outbreak would have been around five times larger if no one had been vaccinated. In addition, there were only seven hospitalizations related to the outbreak, as well as one death in an immunocompromised elderly man.

“Anyone who’s studied this question says there would have been, you know, a number that you can’t even calculate any more in terms of how many hospitalizations there would have been if all these people hadn’t. had not been vaccinated, ”Baker said. “And a gentleman unfortunately passed away. He was 70 years old and was undergoing active chemotherapy treatment.

Most of the media coverage has since reflected this reality, but Baker says the outbreak has complicated messaging efforts promoting vaccine effectiveness.

“This has been in many ways one of the biggest challenges we in government have faced during this pandemic, which is trying not only to get the message across well, but also the narrative arc of the message to. long term on what is correct. ,” he said.

Baker noted that the data on vaccine efficacy are “quite convincing.” A recent Wall Street Journal analysis found that every state with an above-average vaccination rate also had below-average hospitalization rates, even in the midst of this summer’s Delta outbreak.

“If you look at the states that have the highest vaccination rates – obviously Massachusetts, New England, and the Northeast would be among the national leaders there – we have lower cases per capita, but more importantly, we also have lower hospitalization rates and lower death rates than the vast majority of other states across the country, ”said Baker.

“And if you look at the states that have the lowest vaccination rates, those are the ones that have the highest number of cases, the highest hospitalization rates, and the highest death rates.” , he added.

Baker added that unvaccinated people who are hospitalized also “tend to be much sicker than people who have been vaccinated.”

“I wish there was a really simple and easy way to help everyone figure this out,” he said.

Over the past 18 months, Baker said there were “a lot of nights I didn’t get much sleep” where he went downstairs and watched the UK parliamentary debates on TV – “a really crazy thing to do” – and realized his frustrations with communication were also shared across the Atlantic.

“When you add in the great anxiety that comes with the rest, it becomes a deeply complex conversation,” Baker said, adding that overcoming vaccine hesitancy on top of government mistrust “turns us into an exercise. very complicated and difficult messaging “.

That said, Baker added that he was “incredibly grateful” that so many people got vaccinated in Massachusetts, “which has at least partially vaccinated more than 88% of all adults, the second highest rate in the country. .

“This is the way to go and we are going to have to continue to focus on it,” he said.