Mayor’s COVID Update – The Downward Trend Continues – TAPinto.net

WAYNE, NJ – On Saturday, Wayne Mayor Chris Vergano uploaded a video update to the Township website. He discussed the COVID numbers and the Township is continuing its downward trend in new cases.

“Let’s review the COVID numbers for February and where we are,” said Vergano to begin.

Through the first 19 days of February, Wayne has had a total of 388 new positive COVID cases. This is an average of 20.4 new cases per day.  Vergano then compared the last few months.

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Average new cases per day

  • February – 20.42
  • January – 35.5
  • December – 36.78
  • November – 18.3
  • October – 4.97

“As you can see, for the month of February we’re trending way behind the month of January which is good,” said Vergano who proceeded to advise the continued use of masks, social distance and frequent hand washing.

“We need to continue to do all the things that we’ve been talking about for almost a year now, which is hard to believe,” he added.

Vaccines

“Wayne is one of the fortunate communities that decided from day one to run our own center,” said the Mayor. “Now with that comes its own problems.”

The problem, according to Vergano is “simply supply and demand.”

“I’ll do the math for you,” he said. “We have 55,000 residents. Probably 10,000 are children so that brings us down to 45,000. We want to vaccinate 70% of those which is the CDC’s suggestion.”

Seventy percent of 45,000 is 31,500.  Wayne has vaccinated 3,195 residents to date.  Another 500 residents have been vaccinated at the County “Mega Site” in Woodland Park, according to Vergano. This leaves about 28,000 more residents left to vaccinate.  At 300 vaccines per week, it will be 92 weeks before that goal is reached.

“Unless the number of doses is increased to the Township of Wayne, people from Wayne are going to have to get vaccinated on the outside, in addition to using our center,” said Vergano.

“We’re doing everything we can in order to bring you vaccines,” added the Mayor. “But that is all controlled by the state of New Jersey Department of Health which allocates how many vaccines that we’re getting each week.”

The Mayor then warned anyone with appointments for vaccinations at the Wayne site this coming Wednesday.

“Now this week, it’s kind of scary because of the snowstorm,” he said. “We have not received our vaccines yet for next Wednesday even though we scheduled appointments for next Wednesday.”

If these doses do not come in time, the appointments are likely to be pushed back a week.  These residents with appointments will be contacted if this happens.  

Other Vaccine Locations

The Mayor also mentioned several other ways to get the vaccine locally.

COVID Testing

“If you still need to get tested, there are a lot of places you can go but one of the easier ones is Passaic County,” Vergano advised.

Passaic County is still running their COVID testing both at-home and at various locations.  Click here for their testing schedule and more information.

“Please be patient,” he said again. “I know it’s difficult. If you’re calling the health Department, we actually have two people that answer the phones and their phones are ringing all day and all night, and we also have to do all the contact tracing from COVID positive tests. So, our health Department is overwhelmed right now.”

“If you need us, the number here at town Hall is 973-694-1800,” he added. “And my email is mayor@waynetownship.com. Thank you and be safe.”