ROANOKE, Va – More than 100,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been distributed to people across the Roanoke Valley.
The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) is making a big push to finish vaccinating people over 65 with underlying conditions and is hoping to move into the next phase of vaccination by early April.
In order to do that a lot of efforts are being made to bring the vaccine to those who may have a hard time accessing it.
People who live at Morningside Manor were up bright and early Tuesday morning to receive their second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
“You need to do everything you can to ensure that you live long as and to say relatively healthy,” said resident Marie Schultz.
She was one of the first in line to get her shot and she’s getting the vaccine in hopes of soon hugging her family for the first time in a year.
“Being 73 years old, I said well I want to live a little longer because I have great-grandkids, you know, and I want to see them and enable me to do things that now that I couldn’t do before,” Schultz said.
Schultz isn’t alone in the eagerness to get fully vaccinated.
The Roanoke City and Alleghany Health Districts are making a big push to vaccine people over 65 or those with underlying conditions.
“We’ve had about 60% buy-in for the vaccine at the three locations, which is, which is very, very good. So we’re hoping that this is the first step, and we’ll have some more opportunities to get everybody vaccinated, are those,” said Executive Director David Bustamante.
Staff at the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority know that some of their residents have a hard time making it to traditional vaccine clinics, so they brought shots to them.
“Given our tenants, it’s very hard for them to find the transportation that’s necessary to get them to the vaccine location so being able to partner with Michael’s pharmacy and have them come to our sites was very very extremely beneficial to our residents,” Schultz said.
But Schultz said the vaccine isn’t an end all be all. She hopes more people in the community will continue to be smart until cases go down.
“You still don’t know who’s out there that has COVID Even though they may have had a COVID shot,” Schultz said.
The housing redevelopment hopes to host more clinics as the vaccine becomes more available.