New Haven Health Director Maritza Bond wants New Haveners to get vaxxed and boosted before the New Year — and to then send their seasonal family photos to the city for a chance to take part in a “picture perfect” public health campaign that will light up local televisions and billboards.
Bond shared that city wishlist — the outcome of which rests not on Santa’s shoulders but on individuals making “socially responsible” decisions, as Bond put it — during a Monday morning appearance on WNHH FM’s “The Tom Ficklin Show.”
Bond was drawing attention to the New Haven Health Department’s “VAXgiving program,” a campaign launched Nov. 25 which offers any family who has gotten vaccinated against Covid-19, its variants and the flu an opportunity to win $100 in gift cards and/or to have their family’s holiday photo featured on television, billboards and social media to raise awareness about infectious disease prevention. Click here to learn more and to participate.
That campaign arrives a few days after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration included children down to six months of age as eligible to receive the bivalent Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines — and amid an increase in respiratory disease cases and hospitalizations both locally and nationally. Bond reported Monday that hospitalizations for Covid-19 in New Haven have increased by 96 percent over the past two weeks, with 111 patients currently hospitalized for Covid and its variants across the city. Cases of the flu and related illnesses are also rising all across the country.
In lieu of mask mandates, Bond urged everyone to take advantage of the resources and information we have on hand to care for ourselves and our community at large this year, including vaccines for Covid-19 and its variants as well as the flu, accessible and free tests and masks, hand washing, social distancing, and medicine to catalyze quicker recovery times.
“We now have resources at people’s disposals,” Bond said, directing individuals to drop by the New Haven Health Department at 54 Meadow St. between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. to get free vaccinations.
“Let us come together as a community to show that in New Haven, in our Elm City, we do get vaccinated and that is how we’re going to continue to be able to partake in these holiday festivities as we are entering them in the next week or so,” Bond said.
Click on the video below to watch Bond’s interview Monday morning on WNHH Radio’s “The Tom Ficklin Show.”
Is it "socially responsible" to receive an experimental therapeutic solution, designed by the greedy pharmaceutical industry, and 'approved' (rubber-stamped) by the already-bought-and-paid-for FDA?
Or is that something else?