Montgomery County Creating Contingency Plan For Possible Wave of COVID-19 Delta Variant

Montgomery County Creating Contingency Plan For Possible Wave of COVID-19 Delta Variant

County Executive Marc Elrich and Montgomery County officials have begun planning the county’s response to a potential outbreak of the Delta variant of COVID-19.

Elrich sent the following tweet on Friday:

The Delta variant, which is at least two times more contagious than the original strain, is primarily a threat to those who have not been vaccinated.

In his his weekly zoom press conference, Elrich said, “I’ve asked Dr. Stoddard and Dr. Gayles and our entire COVID response team to create a contingency plan in order to prepare us for the next steps if these rates worsen. I want to be clear about that.”

According to Infectious Disease and Public health physician Tom Frieden, “Vaccines have saved hundreds of thousands of lives already and will save hundreds of thousands more, but they’re not 100% effective. No vaccine is. They provide great protection — not perfect protection. More cases will lead to more breakthrough infections, which is expected, but vaccines drastically reduce risk of hospitalization and death from Covid. People who are vaccinated are also less likely to spread the virus, so people around them are safer, although they aren’t protected completely.” Read the full article here.

For more information on where you can get the COVID-19 vaccine, visit the County’s COVID-19 website.