As Hoosiers continue to get vaccinated, gather at large events and start to take their masks off, the importance of the COVID-19 vaccine should not be forgotten, the county’s top health official recently said.

Dr. Christopher Bunce, Jackson County health officer, recently said interest in the vaccines was high when they were rolled out earlier this year, but that interest has started to decline.

The decline, he said, is attributable to vaccine reluctance or hesitancy.

“Vaccines elicit more fear than other types of medical interventions, like medications, for example,” said Bunce, who also is an infectious disease specialist at Schneck Medical Center in Seymour.

Currently, 37.1% of Jackson County residents and around 40% of Indiana’s population are fully vaccinated.

Over the past couple of decades, there have been movements questioning the safety of vaccines, Bunce said, but there simply isn’t a lot of evidence to back that up, and studies have shown vaccines used in the United States are very effective and safe.

When asked what’s being done by the Jackson County Health Department to increase the county’s vaccination rates, he said educational efforts are being reemphasized to promote the importance of getting a vaccine.

Even though public attention has been given to some hospitals and universities requiring vaccinations for enrollment or employment, Bunce said getting vaccinated is voluntary, and the health department doesn’t want it to be anything else.

The health department’s strategy, rather, is to convince the public of the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine and understand why people are reluctant to vaccinate.

Bunce said according to polls from public health studies on why people won’t take the vaccine, he said about 50% of those not vaccinated are concerned about side effects. He said this isn’t narrowed down to a specific side effect, but the concern is for side effects in general.

Around a third of unvaccinated people said they either don’t need it, don’t trust the government or are waiting to see how the vaccination effort goes.

Approximately 15% of people in the poll don’t trust vaccines in any circumstance.

Emphasizing the facts about the COVID-19 vaccine is important in acknowledging fears people have about it, Bunce said.

An important factor, Bunce said, is that 146 million Americans are fully vaccinated — a large enough number that we now have real-life data to prove the efficacy of the vaccines.

In this sense, the public doesn’t have to rely on clinical trial data as it did when the vaccines were first rolled out in December and January.

Data from other countries about the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine also help show it is working, he said.

“We can say with confidence that vaccination is safe and in fact much safer than most of the activities that we participate in daily life, like driving to work,” Bunce said. “You can’t avoid risk in life, but you can sort of understand where risk is coming from, and to be honest, it’s not coming from vaccination.”

People are still being hospitalized and taken to the emergency room with COVID-19 in Jackson County, but Bunce said all are unvaccinated.

He said unvaccinated people are the only people being diagnosed with COVID-19.

While he didn’t know the exact number of local hospitalizations, Bunce said the number is low and in single digits.

He acknowledged while there are cases of people getting COVID-19 after being vaccinated, it is very unusual.

Even though some local testing sites have started to close, COVID-19 testing is still available at private urgent care sites, Schneck Medical Center and at the former state police post located at 721 E. Tipton St., Seymour.

Since the COVID-19 case numbers aren’t large enough to warrant the number of testing sites that are around the state, some sites have started closing. A contract with the state with OptumServe Health Services is going to run out soon, so that also is contributing to sites being closed.

People still shouldn’t have difficulty getting tested, Bunce said.

Jackson County has been a blue level threat for three weeks now, and Bunce said infection rates have been steady but within the blue range. Just two positive COVD-19 cases were reported in Jackson County on Wednesday.

For a county to be a blue level threat in Indiana, its COVID-19 infection rate must be below 5%.

While the vaccine can protect the individual receiving it, it also is beneficial to others.

In his own practice, Bunce said he tells people even if they don’t feel like they need it, getting a vaccine would prevent transmission and protect other people who are reluctant.

“(He and the health department) emphasize the fact that one of the unusual things about vaccination that is different from all of the medications is that when you take it, it benefits other people,” he said.

The health department is still encouraging the use of masks but particularly for those who aren’t vaccinated. Masks also are recommended in crowded situations where one doesn’t know the vaccine status of the people around them.

Social distancing also is being promoted by the health department, but Bunce said there isn’t any mandate for the precautions they’re recommending and they are just good public health recommendations.

Doctors are an important resource to talk to about vaccines, and Bunce said people should talk to whoever they get their primary care from for more information.

“If you don’t trust the television or the government or whatever, just talk to your doctor,” he said. “Have a one-on-one conversation with your doctor, your nurse practitioner, someone who’s providing your care. I think you’re going to find that a lot of fears about this vaccine are unwarranted along with concerns about serious side effects.”

Bunce said serious side effects will always be a concern but are incredibly rare with the COVID-19 vaccine are not that they aren’t important in the big picture.

A large concern for Bunce and Dr. Eric Fish, president and chief executive officer of Schneck, is the Delta variant of COVID-19 that has originated from India.

The variant has been dominant in the United Kingdom in terms of infection rates and has started to become significant in the United States.

One month ago, only 1% of COVID infections were from the Delta variant. Now, it’s 10%.

The two reasons the Delta variant is alarming, Bunce said, is it’s more transmissible and more virulent, meaning people get more sick compared to earlier strains.

Knowing that, Bunce said current vaccines are effective against variants, including the Delta variants.

“That makes it really important that we get vaccinated because if we can get a lot more people vaccinated, then this virus isn’t going to transmit itself that much and the potential for mutation and the formation of new variants will go down, but only if we get vaccinated,” he said.

With concerns aside, Bunce said he is optimistic about COVID-19 infection rates going down, and having the vaccine is the key.

“We’ve got something that really, really works, and it pains me to see people not trust it because 146,000,000 Americans say so far otherwise,” Bunce said.