Pictured is Erin Hirschman Coulter with her husband, Dave, and her children. Coulter recently tested positive for COVID-19, despite being vaccinated for the virus. Submitted photo

Jamestown area resident Erin Hirschman Coulter is fully vaccinated but recently tested positive for COVID-19.

Coulter said she never thought she would contract COVID after being vaccinated. After receiving the shot, she went back to life as normal — not wearing a mask or socially distancing.

“I was walking around like I was bulletproof after I had my vaccine, but come to find out, it’s only 75-80% effective against Delta at most,” said Coulter, adding that she did a lot of reading on the subject when she was recovering from the virus.

Coulter said she started feeling ill on Aug. 19 and got tested on the 20th. She was told that her results wouldn’t be in for two to five days.

“I had a strong feeling I was positive, so I took a rapid test to confirm,” Coulter said.

Throughout her sickness, she experienced symptoms such as major congestion, chills, fever, shaking, slight cough, loss of taste and smell and extreme exhaustion. She is not certain where she contracted COVID, but believes it could have come from a camp her family stayed at recently.

“I felt wiped out the week before I tested positive and into the next week,” Coulter said. “I couldn’t focus on anything. The drive home from testing felt like an out-of-body experience. Fortunately, I only had one day with a fever and chills. Every day since then I’ve felt a bit better. I never was told what variation I had. I think they do further testing somewhere, but they don’t notify you or anything.”

While her two sons and husband have tested negative for the virus, her daughter did test positive. Coulter said her daughter is “completely asymptomatic.” This caused her children to miss the beginning of school and her sons to quarantine for 25 days in total.

“They’re considered to be exposed on her last day of quarantine, so theirs has to go 10 days beyond hers,” Coulter said. “So that’s another reason for masking. Avoid getting COVID at all costs.”

She said her husband, Dave, has been a fantastic support throughout her illness.

“He was vaccinated so he didn’t have to quarantine at all, but he’s pretty much only been going to work,” Coulter said.

Coulter said she believes masking and vaccinations are important for everyone to take part in.

“We need to have mandatory masking because vaccines are way less effective against Delta,” she said. “It’s not enough anymore for the people who want vaccines to get them and expect that they won’t get COVID — to say nothing of immunocompromised people. Masking will not work if some people do it and most choose not to. I wish people understood that it’s an all-or-nothing approach with both vaccines and masking. If everyone is not on board, no one will benefit.”

Coulter said she is also supportive of masking policies in schools. She said medical professionals should be making masking decisions, not parents.

Coulter believes that more cases of COVID like hers will come about if something isn’t changed in the region.

“We’re in the middle of a spike right now in Chautauqua County,” she said. “We need to all be masking in all indoor spaces where we will be in close contact with people. I was fortunate to have a mild case, but I could have given it to someone else who then needed to be hospitalized before I was aware that I had it.”

Coulter said she wanted to share her story and let people know about her experience. She also wanted to drive home the point that the Delta variant is nothing to mess around with.

“It’s been so frustrating to see people refuse the shot at all stages of this pandemic,” she said. “Yes, you could have a bad reaction, but your chances of having a bad reaction are less than your chances of dying from COVID. The numbers don’t lie.”

COVID HOSPITALIZATIONS DROP

The county Health Department noted 71 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, though the number of people with the virus in local hospitals did come down. Thirty-four cases were reported in Jamestown, along with eight in Dunkirk, five in Ashville, four in Sherman and three each in Fredonia and Westfield.

There are currently 424 active cases of COVID-19 in Chautauqua County, 31 people with the virus in the hospital and 1,001 in quarantine. There have been 10,989 cases recorded to date, 10,396 recoveries and 169 virus-related deaths.

Just over 50% of the 1,644 cases of the virus noted since Aug. 1 have involved people not vaccinated; 14% have involved people fully vaccinated, 7% partially vaccinated and 27% whose vaccination status was not known.

The county reported that 62.4% of the population over the age of 12 has received at least one dose of the vaccine while 56.8% have been fully vaccinated.