GREENVILLE, N.C. (WITN) – As students return to school and temperatures drop during the fall and winter months, COVID-19 cases are on the rise in North Carolina.
Lavon Johnson, a mother of four, said parents face more of a burden these days when it comes to getting their kids vaccinated.
“When it comes to vaccinations, it's nothing like it used to be. We needed a lot more back then,” Johnson explained.
Pitt County Public Health Director Wes Gray said there has been a short-term increase in COVID-19 cases over the past five weeks.
“It's a little bit higher than the increase we've seen recently,” Gray said. “Usually it goes up for about three weeks and then it starts to go down again. Right now we just want to wait and see what the trend is and if it continues into the fall, when flu cases start to increase in September.”
North Carolina is one of 27 states with very high concentrations of COVID-19 in wastewater, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
According to NCDHHS, by Aug. 7, Greenville had reported having 128 million copies of the virus gene per person in its wastewater.
Amid increased activity, the CDC is recommending vaccinations for children as young as 6 months old, but parents like Johnson remain skeptical.
“I would never recommend it for young children because I know one of the vaccinations I got sent me to the hospital and I can only imagine how it would feel for a child to go through what I went through,” Johnson said.
The COVID Bridge Access Program, which provided free vaccines to the uninsured through federal funding, ends at the end of August, which could affect vaccination rates, Gray said.
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