LYNCHBURG, Va. – Health officials in the Southwest Region, including Carilion, Centra, LewisGale, and Sovah, report 280 patients are hospitalized with the coronavirus, 61 are in the ICU and 30 are on ventilators.
At Centra Health, officials are unsure when they’ll get the vaccine or how. Another question that remains is if those who already had COVID-19 should be vaccinated.
“They do likely have some amount of immunity to it, unclear of how much and for how long. We still don’t still know is that enough immunity to protect them for a good enough while that we’d say, ‘well, let’s not vaccine,” said Dr. Christopher Lewis of Centra Health.
Caregivers are expected to be among the first group to receive the vaccine.
Centra officials say they’re not going to mandate it for caregivers but strongly encourage it.