Livingston Officials Push for Teachers to Be Vaccinated in Next Group – TAPinto.net

LIVINGSTON, NJ — Despite ongoing concerns about vaccination availability in New Jersey, the total number of COVID-19 vaccinations distributed to residents has already surpassed the state’s cumulative total of COVID-19 cases as of Wednesday, and local officials—including members of the Livingston Township Council and Livingston Board of Education—are pushing for the state to ensure that teachers are included in the next eligible group to receive the first dose.

After receiving his second dose on Wednesday, Livingston Mayor Shawn Klein met with Livingston Board of Education (LBOE) President Samantha Messer, LBOE Vice President Pamela Chirls and Deputy Mayor Ed Meinhardt via Zoom to coordinate their efforts to encourage teachers and community members to receive the vaccine. Klein, who was among the first Livingston residents to receive the vaccine as a healthcare worker, has stressed throughout the week that the “advantages of getting teachers vaccinated in the next group are tremendous.”

“My personal opinion is that when you vaccinate teachers, there are five benefits,” he said. “The teachers will be safe; the students who are stuck at home—who are not learning as well as they can be, and who are having psychological damage in some cases—will get to go to school; working families will lose the childcare problem, making it much easier for them to get to work; the economy as a whole will be able to open up much more quickly once teachers and kids are back in school; and then the fifth thing—and this is remarkable—is that a large study at Tulane University recently showed that when schools reopen in most communities, hospitalization rates go down for a multitude of reasons.

“There is an association between countries opening up their schools and hospitalizations going down, and that means that the community is healthier…People are either going to get the vaccine or they’re going to get the virus; it’s going to be one of the other, so you have to sit back and ask yourself which has worse side effects.”

Although the vaccine has been known to cause headaches, soreness at the injection spot, and flu-like symptoms for a day or so after receiving each dose, Klein reiterated that “the coronavirus can kill you.”

“If it doesn’t kill you, about one in 10 people become these long-haulers, where they have cardiac, pulmonary and even neurological symptoms,” he said. “Actually, there was a study that just came out this week, which said that one in eight people will have a psychiatric diagnosis after they have a bout of COVID, and a lot of that’s related to inflammation in the brain. And then, of course, if you have the virus, you can pass it on to people that you love that you’re around, and they could get hurt, or they could get killed. So, it’s a no-brainer—we have to get the vaccine.”

Klein dedicated his second shot his two sons, Jack and Leo, and to “all the children of Livingston who have not been back to school full-time, but who hopefully will be soon.”

Messer, who has also begun the vaccination process as an educator in the New York area, echoed the mayor’s comments about the urgency of getting teachers vaccinated in New Jersey.

“The pandemic and having kids home from school is creating mental health challenges for the kids and their families,” she said. “We see families who are trying to juggle both their own work and helping their kids with remote learning, and they themselves are feeling overwhelmed. We have kids who are feeling hopeless and who do not like learning in front of the screen. So I think that, while there certainly will be benefits to our economy, I think that there will be a big boon to the collective mental health of our community if we can get kids back to school on a more consistent basis.

“Most of our teachers have been back in school with kids in front of them, and most of them have been acting as frontline workers since the beginning of the school year, and so I think we should treat them as such. The sooner that we can get them vaccinated, the better chance we have of getting more in-person instruction to happen.”

The Livingston Health Department reported a cumulative total of 1,427 cases of COVID-19 within the community on Thursday, including 51 new cases in the last seven days and 262 cases thus far in January. According to Klein, the township has led Essex County in the number of residents who have been vaccinated, although registering for an appointment has recently become more difficult as the weekly … of vaccines …

“I know that it’s been hard to get appointments for some people to get the vaccine; but there are more new appointments that are added on most days,” said Klein. If you are persistent, eventually you’re going to get in. None of the vaccines are going to waste. They’re all given out as soon as we get them, and Essex County is doing this the right way.”

The mayor also urged patience from residents as improvements to the distribution process continue to be made throughout the state, noting that Gov. Phil Murphy has “done a great job it’s a very difficult situation.”

“There are a lot of no-win decisions that he’s been forced to make, and I think he’s done a remarkably good job in making those decisions as best as he can,” said Klein.

On Thursday afternoon, Murphy said he was “optimistic about all the signs” coming from the nation’s capitol about “an increase in [New Jersey’s] vaccine allocation as well as receiving a three-week look ahead as to how many doses will be coming to the state.”

“We, like every other state, have greatly increased vaccine production and delivery,” said Murphy. “We just need the doses to make our program run as it has been purpose-built to run…

“We need to have patience as our vaccine program awaits the doses we need to kick into high gear. We need to maintain our social distancing and masking. We need to keep doing all the smart things to drive down our numbers. If we do this, we’ll be in a much better place.”

As of Thursday morning, there were 642,613 vaccinations distributed statewide compared to the new cumulative total of 610,324 total positive PCR tests received since the start of the pandemic in New Jersey. The total of COVID-19 cases increased by 3,962 on Thursday.

The New Jersey Department of health also reported 1,012 new positive antigen tests on Thursday, bringing the cumulative total of positive antigen tests to 70,959.

The state reported 82 new confirmed COVID-19 deaths on Thursday as well for a total of 19,172 lives lost to COVID-19 in New Jersey. The number of probable deaths remains at 2,129.