Kramer: Township Caught In State Covid ‘Third Wave’

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The number of township residents testing positive for the coronavirus shows that Franklin is an active part of the “third wave” of virus infections recently declared by state officials.

That’s the word from Mayor Phil Kramer, who has been tracking data behind the virus’ affect on Franklin residents.

“I guess I could have called this back on the 22nd, it’s just more sustained now,” Kramer said.

Gov. Phil Murphy said on March 31 that the state was in its third wave of virus infections, and that some forecasts show the trend will just worsen in the coming months and not let up[ until well into the summer.

Kramer’s chart shows an increase in positive test results from about March 1 to March 12, then, after a slight decrease, a steady increase from March 20 through the end of the month.

Kramer said another thing he noticed about this third wave in the township is that it seems to be powered by people in their 20s and 30s.

The mayor said he noticed that “basically people in their 20s were getting infected more,” a theory confirmed during a regular call County mayors and administrators have with health officials, where it was disclosed that “hospitals are seeing an uptick in 20-29-year-olds.”

“An uptick in the numbers of positives, and an uptick in the numbers in the hospitals,” he said.

At the same time, Kramer said, his data show that infections among township residents aged 60 and over have been decreasing.

“Around Christmas, 20 percent of those infected were over 60, now 13 percent are over 60, so that’s a drop of 7 percent, which, one would hope, a reasonable person might hypothesize that those are the people getting the most vaccinations and that’s why there’s a drop there,” he said.

“But (the number of infections among) those in their 20s has increased 3.3 percent over the same amount of time,” he said. “They went from 22 percent to 25 percent.”

Kramer said the increase “could have been avoided.”

“The question is, how much pain are you willing to go through to avoid it?” he said. “There are countries who shut this thing down extremely quickly with very strict measures. That’s a decision that has to be made, as to how far you want to go.”

Kramer, who is a physician, said “unless you know someone is vaccinated, assume they are not and they can infect you.”

“We’re not through this yet, please be careful,” he added. “The more careful we are now, the faster we will be through it.”

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