Allegan County had 54% of its residents vaccinated

Dear Board of Commissioners and Community:

The year 2021 proved to be a challenging, yet rewarding time. Similar to 2020, Public Health was at the forefront of conversations and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In our 2020 Public Health Annual Report, we focused on how important partnerships and community cooperation were to mitigating the spread of COVID-19. This carried into 2021 as the largest deployment of a vaccine in our history occurred. We had a goal of vaccinating 70% of our population, in hopes of reaching levels of herd immunity and putting the pandemic behind us.

However, as the year progressed, it became clear that the goal would not be met despite deploying mobile vaccine clinics in less vaccinated areas and working with providers to become COVID-19 vaccine-approved providers.

We might not have met our goal to vaccinate 70% of our community, and had to work with challenges early on in the deployment with vaccine supply and demand issues, but we were still able to fully vaccinate 54.2% of our community. It took a village to accomplish this huge deployment.

Public Safety, Emergency Management, and Allegan County Volunteers provided resources for the COVID-19 mass vaccine events located throughout the county. The help they provided was crucial in this historic public health victory as we were able to administer as many as 1,500 doses at each mass vaccination clinic once the supply was adequate.

I want to thank every person that played a part in these events; you are appreciated and saved lives.

An economically vibrant community is a healthy community. There were dedicated resources to provide technical assistance, risk mitigation assessments, and guidance to keep businesses that had cases from developing into outbreaks, and kept schools in session. It was also important that our community had safe water and housing so we ensured all services including permits for septic, water, and soil erosion were issued throughout the 2021 year.

ACHD held routine meetings with community leaders and superintendents in order to maintain clear communication and work together as continued changes in guidance came from the Centers for Disease Control for Prevention and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. At these meetings, local data was presented, along with guidance and an opportunity to provide feedback or ask questions.

A newsletter was launched that included local public health topics to update our community members. We engaged businesses and medical providers to provide COVID-19 vaccines and testing to improve access and convenience.

This past year has reaffirmed my belief that it takes a village, but also brought up the need for civil and respectful discussions to effectively move forward in our goal of improving the quality of life and health for our Allegan County community. We all can learn from each other’s perspectives, but it needs to be done civilly and with respect, I hope you will join me in these future discussions as we recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and together build resilience within our community.

I invite you to read our 2021 Annual Report where we highlight ACHD accomplishments regarding COVID-19 response, Environmental Health Services, Personal Health Services, Planning and Preparedness, and Resource Recovery from 2021.

Angelique Joynes, Health Officer,

Allegan County Health Department