With concerns about the spread of COVID-19 and specifically the delta variant surging across the country, the response continues to spiral in health care.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday said that people again should wear masks in indoor settings, even if they are vaccinated, and on Monday hospital professionals advocated that all medical personnel be required to be vaccinated
The Veterans Administration, which has a hospital in Salem and a clinic Danville, now will require all personnel to be vaccinated.
Some independent hospital systems also have taken that step, and officials at Sovah Health in both Martinsville and Danville said they were advocating with their staff to be vaccinated if not actually requiring the shot.
“Nearly 2/3 of Sovah Health employees have been vaccinated,” Danville/Martinsville Market President Alan Larson said in an email response to questions submitted to his marketing staff. “We are proud of our health care heroes for stepping up and making the decision to get vaccinated.”
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Larson declined to break down personnel by hospital or to provide any more specific information, such as the variance between those employed as medical staff or nonmedical staff.
“As a matter of practice, Sovah Health maintains confidentiality on all matters concerning our employees, and we are unable to share the specific percentages of employees who have received the COVID-19 vaccine; however, our facilities are above national and local percentages for vaccinated individuals,” he wrote.
He also referred questions about broader company perspectives to Logan Simmons, director of communications of LifePoint Health, the hospital’s parent company.
“At this time, LifePoint Health is strongly encouraging and supporting all of our team members across the country to become fully vaccinated,” Simmons wrote in an email. “There is significant evidence that grows daily indicating that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective.
“Understanding that the situation changes daily, we are committed to carefully evaluating the research and the level of COVID-19 activity in our communities before making a decision about whether to require the vaccine for our staff. Importantly, our decision will be independent of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granting full approval to any of the vaccines currently under emergency use authorization.
“We will continue to evaluate our procedures and closely follow guidance from our local, state and federal partners in public health.”
Cases of COVID-19 are exploding across the country, almost entirely among the unvaccinated, and there were 835 new cases reported Tuesday in Virginia – 20 of those in the West Piedmont Health District – and hospitalizations also are slowly rising. There were four (along with a death) reported today in the WPHD.
Vaccinations have shown a small rise in some parts of the country, but in Virginia the growth of at least partially vaccinated adults (now at just shy of 60%) and those fully vaccinated (53.7%) moves up very slowly.
Among adults only those figures, though, are 71.7% and 64.7%, meaning that Sovah’s employees are vaccinated at about that rate – and much higher than across the health district.
In the health district, which includes Henry, Patrick and Franklin counties and the city of Martinsville, only 41.6% have had one shot of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, and 37.6% have had the second shot or one of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to be fully inoculated against the disease
In the past 11 days there have been just less than 1,000 residents to get their first doses of vaccine, and 656 more are fully vaccinated.
But in Patrick County, with one of the worst vaccination rates in the state, only about nine first shots a day have been distributed recently (93 since July 16) and only five to six a day became fully vaccinated.
The CDC now rates all localities in the health district at the highest level of risk of community spread of the virus. The neighboring Pittsylvania-Danville Health District also is at the high level.
The CDC shows Patrick County as having a 24.39% positivity rate (as compared to 6.53% in Henry County, which has had the most cases and deaths in the district).
Variant cases also continue to rise, and the delta variant as of last Friday is responsible for three cases in the district, but health officials say they aren’t seeing any urgency from people wanting to get vaccinated.
“Interest in the vaccine seems level at this time,” WPHD spokesperson Nancy Bell wrote in an email. “However, we are launching a partnership with United Way, the MHC Coalition for Health & Wellness and the department of social services to encourage vaccination through targeted marketing and the use of community health workers.”
Larson said his leadership team at Sovah “is strongly encouraging and supporting all of our team members to become fully vaccinated. We reinforce this position at daily safety huddles, departmental meetings and briefs and during leader rounding.”
He also said that vaccination is offered as part of the onboarding process for new employees.
Said WPHD Director, Kerry Gateley, MD: “It [vaccination and response to the virus] is in the hands of the citizens at this time.”
But he also warned that should the numbers of COVID infections increase significantly, this could change.