Officials in a small city straddling Barrow and Gwinnett counties are telling their personal COVID-19 stories on video to encourage their residents to take the vaccine, as hesitancy persists among Georgians to get the shot.
Auburn Mayor Linda Blechinger and two other city officials, in a sobering video posted Friday to the city’s Facebook page, shared how COVID-19 has personally affected their lives. The officials explained why they chose to take the vaccine and why their residents should also take it.
Blechinger, who has an auto-immune disease, shared that she tested positive for COVID-19 shortly after Christmas last year. Her symptoms persisted for two months, severe enough that she ended up in the hospital. “It was really difficult time for me to recover from it,” she said.
Told by her doctor that another case of COVID-19 could land her in the hospital again, Blechinger said she took the vaccine. She reported that she felt fine after a couple of days with the help of rest and ibuprofen.
Alex Mitchem, city administrator, spoke on the video about his own severe case of COVID-19 last November, taking months to recover. Losing his grandmother, neighbors and friends to the disease, Mitchem said he got vaccinated to “do my part,” adding that “we all want things to go back to normal.”
“This is your responsibility in the community,” Mitchem said in the video. “The sooner we do that, the sooner things can get back to normal.”
Iris Akridge, public works director, said she took the vaccine to protect her three daughters and 10 grandchildren.
“You hear all the bad news about this, about that. Don’t believe that,” Akridage said in the video. “Just believe the medical advisers and doctors, like Dr. Fauci. Please listen to him and take the vaccine.”
City staffers have lost both sets of their grandparents, Blechinger shared, and police officers healthy before contracting COVID-19 were placed on oxygen. A city worker was so affected by the disease that he stayed in the hospital for two weeks, received oxygen at home and now has blood clots in his lungs, she said.
Blechinger said she looks forward to seeing her son for the first time in a year after he receives his second vaccine dose.
As of Thursday, 17% of Barrow County had received at least one vaccine dose, according to Georgia’s Department of Public Health vaccination distribution dashboard. About 22% of Gwinnett County had received at least one vaccine dose by Thursday, according to the dashboard.
By time of publication, Auburn officials did not respond to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s requests for comment about the cost of the video and what motivated them to release it.
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