The holiday weekend presents many opportunities for good times, and the City of Jonesboro wants you to practice responsible safety measures to ensure the celebration doesn’t take a turn for the worse.
Food, firework and swim safety failures annually lead to emergency responses, trips to the hospital and untold home medical treatment. Mayor Harold Copenhaver reminds everyone to always swim with a buddy, designate a responsible adult to watch young children in and around water, and maintain food in an insulated cooler when planning a cookout to eliminate the risk of foodborne illness during the warmer temperatures.
But this holiday also comes at a time when COVID-19 cases are rising in Jonesboro and Northeast Arkansas. The Delta variant is much more transmissible than previous types of COVID that have been in our region, and hospital numbers have grown again to more than two dozen.
“While we think of ourselves as coming out of this pandemic, the truth is more layered,” Copenhaver said. “Medical experts are warning me of a rising trend, and I once again ask everyone to please get vaccinated to help eliminate this scourge in Jonesboro.”
The Arkansas Department of Health reports that 90.5 percent of current cases are of those who are not immunized. Since late January, 3,765 in Arkansas have been hospitalized with COVID-19, and 98.3 percent of those were not immunized. Of the 988 deaths in that time, 99.6 percent were without immunization.
“The statistics represent a clear and true story of the vaccine,” Copenhaver said. “Please join us in making Jonesboro safe, and if you are not vaccinated, protect yourselves and your loved ones by practicing the safety protocols we have talked about since early 2020.”
Press Release
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