ROANOKE, Va. – As COVID-19 cases continue to rise across the country, the Roanoke City and Alleghany Health District are following a similar trend.
Health officials report there are 371 new cases of COVID-19 reported in the past week. Also, 31 people are currently hospitalized with the virus, and a statistic which health leaders say is concerning, 19% of those hospitalizations are among vaccinated people.
Despite these numbers, health district director, Dr. Cynthia Morrow says getting the vaccine is still one of the most effective ways to protect yourself against the virus.
“We also need to acknowledge the science that even those people who are vaccinated and are getting COVID, they are still having much better outcomes than people who are not vaccinated,” she said. “While it is frustrating that we are seeing breakthrough cases, I am as frustrated as anyone else that we are seeing breakthrough cases. We still have to keep that greater picture in mind that our hospitalizations rates and our deaths rates are far lower than we would have seen last year and that is in large part because of the vaccination efforts.”
Dr. Morrow says although mask mandates are not in place and they are a decision for policymakers to make, masking up whether vaccinated or not is a good idea now that we are seeing this kind of increase in COVID-19 cases.