TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) — For Danny Hoggard, he isn’t taking any chances when it comes to COVID-19. Even through low COVID-19 cases over the past few months, Hoggard said he never let his guard down.
“I never believed it was over. I always thought that it was going to get worse,” said Hoggard.
Hoggard got his COVID-19 booster from Bethel Missionary Baptist Church’s mobile medical unit at Cascades Park Saturday.
Throughout the pandemic, the church put an emphasis on bringing vaccines to minority communities in, and around, Tallahassee.
When the numbers in Leon County and Florida decreased, the church then started focusing on overall health needs in the community, providing different screenings and checkups, while still providing vaccines.
Now, with 911 new cases in Leon County, according to the Florida Health Departments COVID-19 report, Claudette Harrell with Bethel Missionary said they’re once again pushing even harder to get people vaccinated.
“We never lost focus of that,” said Harrell. “We understand that residents, they want their lives back, they want a normal that they’ve experienced before, but we also understand that we’re not quite out of this pandemic yet.”
The Florida A&M University testing site is seeing the impacts of rising COVID-19 cases in Leon County.
The site is seeing around 300 per day with a positivity rate of 21 percent, as compared to around 150 people per day getting tested just a month ago.
Tanya Tatum, director of student health services at FAMU said although they’re seeing a rise in cases, they’re not seeing the severity of people getting sick than they had at the start of the pandemic.
“We’re not seeing the same level of hospitalizations that we had with the Delta variant, so that’s something that is different,” said Tatum. “So I think people are having a lesser severity of illness, but we’re getting it more frequently.”
Regardless, people like Hoggard said they’re not taking any chances this summer.
“Even though I’ve got the shots I’m still wearing this mask,” said Hoggard.
