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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Marion County Commissioner, who was vaccinated before testing positive for COVID-19, says county needs better ‘mitigation practices’

Marion County Commissioner Kathy Bryant, who was vaccinated before she tested positive for COVID-19, says she believes the county needs to start “pushing mitigation practices” again in light of the rising positivity rate and number of COVID-19 cases. 

Bryant made the comments during the Tuesday, August 17 meeting of the Marion County Board of County Commissioners. 

“It’s extremely important that we start pushing mitigation practices again. We are experiencing right now what we expected to see last year,” said Bryant, who suggested that mitigation practices in 2020 helped prevent the spread the county is now seeing. 

Among the most common mitigation practices are receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, the use of masks in public spaces, and social distancing, among others. 

During an emergency meeting of the Marion County School Board on Monday, board members voted to implement a mask mandate with an opt out clause for all students and employees.

Bryant cited her personal experience to drive her points home.

“I’m just going to go ahead and say this, for the record: I was vaccinated for my first shot eight days before I tested positive,” said Bryant. She believes her case was “very mild” because she was vaccinated. She encouraged residents who are eligible to receive monoclonal therapy to consider the procedure. 

“Because of some health issues that I have, I was able to quality for the monoclonal therapy. I highly recommend that people are paying attention to that. It is one of the proven therapies out there that is proving to have different outcomes,” said Bryant. 

Bryant said critics of the vaccine are not following the numbers and suggested that hypothetical answers were not good enough. 

“I know that there’s a lot of talk out there ‘Well you know, whatever the recovery rate is.’ The problem is you don’t know who’s going to recover, you don’t know who’s not going to recover, you don’t know what kind of long term effects you’re going to be left with if you do get a severe case,” said Bryant.

According to health officials, over 90% of COVID-19 cases at local hospitals are Marion County residents who did not receive the vaccine.

“Numbers don’t lie. If you have your vaccine, you are more than likely to have a much milder case and not end up in the hospital,” said Bryant. 

Shortly after Bryant concluded her remarks, Commissioner Craig Curry indicated that on August 13, out of 395 residents that tested positive for COVID-19 on the day, 392 were unvaccinated.

“The numbers speak for themselves. The issue that I really have for folks that aren’t being vaccinated, what it does, is it potentially allows the virus to mutate,” said Curry, who referred to the delta variant.  

Bryant suggested the “lambda variant” was already on the way.