RICHMOND, Va. – Gov. Ralph Northam announced Wednesday that Virginia will soon begin providing more information about vaccine recipients in the Commonwealth.
“You can see how many people have received their first shot, how many people have received their second and how much of Virginia’s population has been vaccinated,” explained Northam.
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As of Thursday, 553,463 Virginians have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
No race or ethnicity is reported for 49.63% of that group.
So far, 88,410 Virginians have been fully vaccinated and no race or ethnicity data is available for 50,069, or 56.63% of that group.
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The governor is looking to change that.
“Often in the delivery of health care and certainly in health care outcomes, there’s massive inequity in Virginia and in our country,” said Sen. Tim Kaine. “We don’t want to make those worse by having deployment that is inequitable, even subconsciously. If we just fall back into old patterns it won’t be what it should be.”
The new information will also show how many vaccine doses are being shipped to which health districts.
Kaine said this move is especially important in ensuring the dissemination is geographically equitable as well.
“We wouldn’t want to see metropolitan areas doing great, but we’re not doing sufficient vaccination in rural areas,” said Kaine.
On Monday, Virginia Health Commissioner Dr. Norm Oliver wrote to every clinician in Virginia to start collecting race/ethnicity data.
The governor also mentioned that he is backing bills in the General Assembly making it a requirement to have this data from those being vaccinated.
No date has been given on when this information will be available.