|
In just over one year since the discovery of the first COVID-19 case in our region, Washington State has surpassed 5,000 COVID-19 related deaths including 354 in Seattle. Seattle and Washington residents have sacrificed a lot this past year, and that sacrifice has saved countless lives.
Moving forward, our greatest challenge in the coming weeks will be ramping up vaccinations and reopening safely - including our schools. This week, Governor Inslee announced a new projected timeline for vaccines in Washington state. Under this new timeline, employees who work in congregate settings – including grocery store workers, transit workers, teachers and childcare workers – will be eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccination beginning on March 22.
As we add more eligibility, our region must be patient. Even though we are still receiving limited doses each week, we are working hard to ramp up our capacity to administer vaccines to as many people as possible as quickly as possible. In addition to our mobile teams and sites in Rainier Beach and West Seattle, we’ll soon open a major regional site at Lumen Filed Event Center which will be capable of more than 20,000 doses a day. For information about getting vaccinated in Seattle, please visit the City’s website.
The next phase of our reopening locally is our schools. Seattle continues to have the lowest cases and hospitalizations of every major city in America although we were the initial epicenter. COVID-19 and remote learning has impacted many parents, teachers, and students, and the pandemic has exacerbated opportunity gaps that put low-income students at a disadvantage relative to their better-off peers. Getting kids back into classrooms is important, and it can be done safely.
The CDC and public health officials believe schools can reopen safely by following public health guidance, and we’ve seen schools across the region, state, and nation open safely. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the City has continued operating child care facilities serving hundreds of children safely - this includes in person learning at the Seattle Preschool Program and our Teen Hubs serving Seattle Public School students. President Biden also has prioritized teachers through the federal pharmacy program to open up eligibility and access to the vaccine.
Even as more of us begin to get vaccinated, we’ll need to continue wearing masks, practicing social distancing, and following all public health guidance. We will get through this, together.
Mayor Jenny A. Durkan announced a first of its kind partnership today among the City of Seattle, the Port of Seattle and Sound Transit to invest $1.75 million to provide long-lasting construction careers for historically underserved communities, with room for upward growth. The investments aim to reduce existing racial disparities in construction and in the larger community through access to family wage jobs, training and support for workers.
Mayor Jenny A. Durkan joined government, health care, and community partners at the new Community Testing and Vaccination Clinic in Rainier Beach to announce the next phase of the City’s expanded vaccination effort. The City of Seattle is expanding the citywide mobile vaccination strategy and opening new, fixed vaccination sites—including a mass vaccination site later this month.
Currently, many parts of North Seattle have some of the highest vaccination rates in King County. We’re prepared to also stand up two additional sites in April doses permitting in addition to our mobile teams and community pop-ups visiting North Seattle.
Amanda Snyder // Seattle Times
Everybody has their moment. That day, event or instant when this weird virus they’d been reading about turned concrete, started to seem different, bigger.
A year ago Sunday, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan was the grand marshal in a downtown Girl Scouts parade to promote their new Lemon-Ups cookie. “They’re absolutely delicious,” she told a man dressed in a lemon costume.
|
