 Would you rather pay $650 or $66 for a smart phone? Simple. With the Appalachian Advantage plan, pay less upfront, and then just a few dollars more every month. Better service, bigger savings. That's today's Appalachian Wireless. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, getting accurate, verified information on the virus has been a top priority. As such, we met with Tammy Riley, Public Health Director at the Pipeville City Health Department today for the latest information on COVID cases and vaccination rates in our area. We currently have 436 active cases to date. We have 159 deceased verified and over 10,366 total cases reported to date. We have seen the new daily cases coming in slowing to some degree. It's all relative in that compared to where we were back in the winter surge. We're not that far behind, but as compared to where we were during the Delta surge in August over late summer, we've certainly seen some of those daily numbers and all the other relative data decline slightly. This past seven days, we've had 222 cases. New cases reported in a seven-day period. So that reflects around 30 as far as just a raw average, 30 a day. But when you normalize that data per 100,000, that puts us up over 54 cases per day. Riley also pointed out that while vaccination numbers for our area appeared strong and steady early on, they have since declined. As a result, Pike County is now trailing the overall state vaccination rate significantly. So the state overall has a 62% vaccination rate for the overall population. Ours is 52%. When you look at the demographic of 65 and older, those most at risk, the state is over 90%. They're 94% and Pike County is at 73%. So we're still behind. There's some catch up that we certainly need to make. Riley also emphasized the need for continued mitigation efforts from the public, vaccinated or otherwise, especially as a number of new COVID cases declines. Our numbers are still, there's still about 30 cases a day coming in, even with the numbers we're feeling like that they've lowered and they have. But that's still a significant number of people. We're still seeing, you know, death reports coming in and those are still being reported to us. We need those numbers to come down. We want to see those numbers decline. So we're still asking for mitigation efforts, regardless of vaccination. You know, if you're in a crowded congested area, going indoors, wear your mask, certainly unvaccinated need to continue to aggressively mitigate and be as cautious as possible. For Mountaintop News, I'm Joshua Slung.