Happy Friday, Floyd Forum readers! I’m sorry about the dearth of content this week. At least one of my planned stories was felled by the cancelled Town Council meeting on Thursday. (Although I’m glad they decided not to hold the meeting, of course, for everyone’s safety! This ice has been a mess.)
I hope everyone has been staying safe and warm despite the winter weather and widespread power outages. Today I’m bringing you a general update on vaccination in Virginia, as well as details about a program in the NRV to mitigate loneliness during the pandemic.
Long story short: Things are looking up, in Southwest Virginia and elsewhere! So fingers crossed, this dispatch will raise your spirits and get your weekend off to a great start. As always, thanks for being here and fostering this virtual community with me! I always love to read your emails: aspinksdugan@gmail.com.
-Ashley
Vaccines, adherence to public health guidelines help drive down COVID infections
Slowly but surely, Virginia is making progress toward vaccination critical mass. Vaccinating at least 70% of the population is the goal. According to Ballad Health Chief Infection Prevention Officer Jamie Swift, that’s a nationally-accepted standard for “herd immunity” against a virus. It will be important that Virginians continue to exercise caution even after we reach that point, by practicing good infection prevention behaviors. But life will start to return to some semblance of normalcy.
As of Feb. 19, more than 1.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in Virginia. This represents almost 13% of the population having received at least one dose, and 420,000 people being “fully vaccinated.” As a reminder, though, full vaccination has multiple components. Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are about 90-95% effective at protecting you from getting sick, even if you contract coronavirus. But in order to have the full protection of the vaccine, a person needs to receive both doses and wait an additional two weeks after the second dose for their immune system to learn to fight the virus.
After you’re fully vaccinated, it’s okay to relax a little. A writer in The Atlantic put it more eloquently than I could:
Risk-mitigation strategies are needed in public spaces, particularly indoors, until more people are vaccinated and infections wane. But not all human interactions take place in public. Advising people that they must do nothing differently after vaccination—not even in the privacy of their homes—creates the misimpression that vaccines offer little benefit at all. Vaccines provide a true reduction of risk, not a false sense of security. And trying to eliminate even the lowest-risk changes in behavior both underestimates people’s need to be close to one another and discourages the very thing that will get everyone out of this mess: vaccine uptake.
That said, it is important to remember that we don’t have data yet on whether it’s possible to infect others even after you’ve personally been vaccinated. That means for the good of the many, it will be best to continue mask-wearing and social distancing whenever possible, and especially while indoors or in close proximity to non-vaccinated people. These measures will help control the spread of the virus and eliminate it within the general population more quickly. This will also mitigate unnecessary illness and suffering in both the short- and long-term.
Already, Southwest Virginia is seeing the benefits of steady vaccination and stricter adherence to public health guidelines. Since mid-January, the Ballad Health service territory has seen its percent positivity rate drop from 30-35% to just 14.5% this week. Because of the decreased incidence of COVID-19 infections, Ballad has been able to resume elective and non-emergent surgeries and loosen visitation rules.
In the past couple weeks, the entire state has ramped up its vaccination efforts. Its allocation of vaccine doses has increased via two avenues. Gov. Ralph Northam announced at a Feb. 5 press conference that Virginia’s allocation of doses from the federal government had ticked up slightly. Then today, Dr. Danny Avula, who coordinates the state’s coronavirus response, said its allocation increased even more. This week, Virginia will receive 160,000 doses, compared to its average 130,000.
In addition, a federal partnership with CVS pharmacies will support vaccination clinics at CVS locations throughout the state. The 26,000 doses distributed to CVS each week will supplement the state’s existing allocation.
Not every CVS in Virginia will participate in this vaccination program, and it won’t immediately expand access to the vaccine. Statewide eligibility requirements are still in place, and in the short-term, appointments at CVS pharmacies are even further restricted. Right now, only Virginians who are 65 or older can request appointments.
However, the CVS program will help Virginia move through folks in phases 1a and 1b of eligibility more quickly. Then, appointment eligibility will expand to phase 1c and eventually, the general population.
On Tuesday of this week, Virginia launched a statewide pre-registration site for COVID-19 vaccination. All Virginians can visit vaccinate.virginia.gov right now and fill in a simple form about various eligibility criteria. Then, when vaccines become available for people in your eligibility group, you’ll get an email from your local health district prompting you to set up an appointment. For those uncomfortable entering personal information online or without access to the internet, a call center is available. The Vaccinate Virginia Call Center is open seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. You can call (877) 829-4682 to join the same pre-registration list being curated online.
Virginia’s vaccination progress did hit a roadblock this week because of severe winter weather. The Virginia Department of Health announced Thursday that weather had impacted vaccine delivery, delaying more than 106,000 doses bound for the Commonwealth.
“Due to weather conditions in Virginia, multiple vaccination events scheduled for the next few days have already been postponed. If vaccination events are postponed due to weather or shipment delays, providers will reschedule these events and reach out to individuals with directions about updated appointments.
When the severe weather ends, VDH expects shipments to resume as normal,” a press release from VDH said.
In other troubling news, a variant of the coronavirus which originated in South Africa has reached Southwest Virginia, VDH Public Information Officer Robert Parker confirmed on Thursday. This particular variant is associated with increased person-to-person transmission of COVID-19. However, at this time, there is no evidence that infections with this variant cause more severe disease.
“We are in a race to stop the spread of these new variants, and it’s time to double down on personal precautions,” New River Health District Director Dr. Noelle Bissell said. “It is critical that all Virginians comply now with mitigation measures. The more people that become infected, the greater that chance the virus will mutate and a variant will arise that could undermine all our vaccination efforts.”
Locally, as around the country, the isolation and fear caused by COVID continues to wear on folks, especially the elderly. Thanks to a project spearheaded by Master’s of Public Health students at Virginia Tech, senior citizens in the New River Valley can access some virtual companionship to help them through these hard times.
The “COVID Companions” program was created by Tech students Emily Hoyt and Laura York, along with the Virginia Tech Center for Gerontology, the New River Valley Health Task Force, the Virginia Tech Public Health Department, and the Blacksburg Police Department, Hoyt explained in a recent email. She and York “recognized the effect that COVID-19 has had on the older adult population and wanted to do something to help,” Hoyt said. Her email continued, “COVID Companions aims to improve the quality of life of isolated older adults in the New River Valley by providing outreach and educational resources.”
COVID Companions is a buddy program that will connect older adults with a background-checked friend within the NRV community. The program includes weekly phone calls or video calls between the older adult and the companion. COVID Companions can also assist participating seniors with developing the technology skills necessary to stay connected to their buddy, friends and family. If participants do not have access to technology, the program can provide a Fire HD tablet and teach them how to use it, Hoyt said.
Hoyt said the program has been overwhelmed with volunteers to act as companions to elderly participants. But it is still searching for senior citizens to be part of the program. Interested folks in the New River Valley can sign up for the COVID Companions program by contacting Hoyt at emihoy@vt.edu or VT Center for Gerontology Operations Coordinator Cindy Booth at cgbooth@vt.edu.