Muskingum County Joint Unified Command Center holds Briefing as Ohio COVID-19 Health Orders are Lifted Today

MUSKINGUM COUNTY, Ohio- The Muskingum County Joint Unified Command Center held a Covid-19 update meeting this afternoon addressing Ohio’s mask mandate ending and the importance of vaccinations.

Zanesville-Muskingum County Health Department medical director Jack Butterfield started the meeting off by talking about how the Covid-19 cases have dropped. He stated that individuals’ risk of developing an infection with Covid-19 after being fully vaccinated is 0.01 percent.

“The focus now is making those numbers improve. We do that now through vaccination and emphasizing that there really is almost no good reason to not get vaccinated,” Butterfield said.

Two local high school students also addressed their reasons on why they got vaccinated. An OBGYN encouraged pregnant and young women to get vaccinated. She stated the vaccines are safe and important.

“We’re not seeing the major complications from the vaccine that we actually see from Covid-19 itself, so it’s safer to get the vaccine and not have those complications because the vaccines work so well… There’s benefit in pregnancy, not just for mom but also for their baby too,” Genesis OBYGYN Kristina Loomis said.

Dr. Butterfield said to take the politics out of it and take the social media, misinformation campaign out of it. Look at the science and the data.

Moving forward, Dr. Butterfield expects to see some type of surge of Covid-19 this winter and fall, but it won’t be like anything we’ve previously seen. The virus is still around and is still infecting the unvaccinated who are vulnerable.