COMMUNITY
RIVER GARDEN STEPS UP TO DO THEIR PART By Mauri Mizrahi, River Garden Senior Services
On a beautiful afternoon, Emily Turner from Action News JAX interviews Mauri Mizrahi about River Garden's high vaccination rates among residents and staff. "Becoming vaccinated is a 'game changer,'" Mizrahi said.
As we emerge from the COVID-19 surge, River Garden is grateful for the vaccine. We are now more than 18 months into the pandemic and to many of us, life feels as if we are on an endless roller coaster. At one point during the summer, Florida was the epicenter of a major COVID-19 outbreak with 20 percent of all COVID-19 infections in the country. The positivity rate in Duval County exceeded 27 percent. Local hospitals have been bursting at the seams, reporting that more than 97 percent of their COVID-19 patients had not been vaccinated against the virus. We have been told that COVID-19 has now become a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
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Health care providers are doing their part to bring an end to the pandemic, and River Garden is no exception. We have worked hard to educate and encourage our residents, families and
staff to be vaccinated against COVID-19, and we have been very successful. Over 97 percent of our residents and 84 percent of our staff have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.
We have had many cases of COVID-19 on our campus over the summer. The one saving grace that we have pointed to over and over again, is that the vaccinated individuals who experienced break through infection had either mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. We are experiencing firsthand the benefits of River Garden’s high vaccination rate. Beginning October 1, all River Garden staff must be fully vaccinated in order to continue working on our campus. Since mid-July, we have not hired anyone who isn’t fully vaccinated by the time they begin
working for us. Area hospitals are taking a similar stance and we are hoping that all skilled nursing facilities will follow our lead.
As we welcome the New Year, let’s hope for a year of sharing simchas with loved ones. May our holiday tables be joyous and filled with friends and family. Let’s rejoin as a community and recognize that when we are together we support each other with a source of vitality that gives us energy, strength, and purpose to live. We are social beings and need human connection to thrive.
America has consistently shown that we are stronger when we work together in common purpose. It is now time for everyone who is not yet vaccinated to step-up and do their part – if not for yourself, then for our residents and each other.
