More vaccines available, but still not enough

(Editor’s note: As of March 2, the Virginia Department of Public Health reported 518 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Middlesex County, up 16 from the previous week. There were 18 Middlesex patient COVID-19-related hospitalizations and 17 deaths involving Middlesex residents. The Virginia Department of Public Health cautions that because of limited testing, the actual number of cases in Middlesex County is likely much higher than reported.)

Case numbers across the states have dropped dramatically, the new case count in the US is about 68,000/day, seven-day rolling average. Almost all states report stable trends. Hospitalization and death rates have fallen.

Virginia has improved, our new case rate is about 1,700/day seven-day average. Hospitalization rates have dropped to 50% of levels in mid-January, less than 1,500/day.

The Three Rivers Health District, which includes Middlesex County, has dropped to 30 new cases/day, seven-day average.

This drop in cases may be due to better adherence to protective measures and some population immunity effect. More than 100 million have had the disease, counting asymptomatic cases, and the percentage of people who have been vaccinated is steadily rising. In Virginia, about 15% of us have received at least one dose.

We will watch closely for the effects of the new, more contagious variants, there is a possibility these may pose a problem on several fronts.

Vaccination supplies up

All health districts are in phase 1b. Our policy is to divide available doses approximately equally between age-qualified individuals and essential frontline workers (this group includes people age 16-64 qualified by underlying health conditions). There are a lot of ethical considerations attending prioritization of vaccine allocations; discussions are happening on revised allocation strategies, we may hear more about that in the coming weeks. When the DHHS expanded phase 1b to include people aged 65 and older, and people aged 16-64 with underlying medical conditions, it greatly expanded the pool of eligible individuals and created expectations that could not be met quickly with the vaccine supplies and infrastructure we had at the time. This has been disappointing on almost every front but we will pick up speed going forward into the spring and summer months. For details of vaccination phases, visit https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/covid-19-vaccine/#phase1b.

This vaccine is much more complex than any vaccine we have ever administered…