— Photo courtesy of City of Somerville

By Fernando Cervantes Jr.

On August 5, the Somerville Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development (OSPCD) hosted a virtual town hall in regards to the rising number of COVID cases around Somerville and throughout the Commonwealth.

The meeting, hosted by Economic Development Assistant Nicholas Schonberger and Mayor Joseph Curtatone, mainly focused on the spread of COVID in the city and vaccine statistics throughout the last couple months.

Other officials in attendance were Tom Galliani, Director of Economic Development, and Kristen Stelljes, Incident Commander for Somerville. The town hall was held through Zoom and a recording of this meeting is available online on the Somerville government website.

After a quick introduction from Schonberger and a rundown of the agenda meeting, Mayor Curtatone gave some quick remarks on the state of the city after 18 months of the pandemic and the recent spread of the new Delta variant.

“We’re in a lot better place today than we were a year ago. We know a lot more, we have a lot of tools at our disposal,” Curtatone said.

In addition, Mayor Curtatone also spoke of the function of the town hall and the reason for the holding of the meeting. “Our purpose today, as we have always done throughout this crisis, is to tell you what we know, tell you what we don’t know, tell you what we’re considering and why,” Curtatone said.

After these remarks, Stelljes presented a variety of statistics and information on the pandemic, COVID and vaccination rates in Somerville.

Stelljes began by speaking about the recent increase in the COVID test positivity rate. “Our percent positivity has increased pretty significantly in the last two weeks, we’re now up to 88 percent,” Stelljes said.

Another important statistic presented during the town hall involved the vaccination rates in the City of Somerville. “72 percent of Somerville have been fully vaccinated, that is 54,713 individuals, and we have 4,339 [partially vaccinated] individuals who will hopefully join the fully vaccinated count soon,” Stelljes said.

Although a majority of the population of Somerville is vaccinated, Stelljes asked people who are unvaccinated to do it as soon as possible. “Please, if you are not vaccinated we encourage you to do so, and encourage your friends, family, colleagues, staff to do so,” Stelljes said.

After the presentation by Stelljes, questions from the community were fielded for the rest of the meeting.