We have had a busy week with clinics. If you have tried to call or email and I haven’t gotten back to you in a reasonable time, please do not hesitate to contact me again. While we are doing clinics, my voicemails and emails get a bit backlogged and I apologize for the delay.
VCHD has vaccinated 490 people in phase 1a so far. According to IDPH, Vermilion County has administered 1,101 doses of vaccine. 59 people have been fully vaccinated (both doses). This includes our hospitals, Carle, OSF, and the VA, some of the nursing homes through the pharmacy partnership program, VCHD, and if they were vaccinated by their employer out of Vermilion County. We would like to thank all our partners again for helping us. Arrow Ambulance was our EMS provider this week and VCEMA also helped us out as always. We are forever grateful!!
We will be opening to phase 1b next week and I must STRESS patience. This group includes the potential of 32,000 people, though we understand that not all will take it. We are working closely with OSF, Carle, and Gibson Health to help spread out the options for people, but it will take 3-4 months, maybe more, to get all of these people vaccinated. Due to the required post observation of 15 to 30 minutes post vaccination, we cannot get people through as quickly as we did with H1N1. We also have to have people come back to get their 2nd dose, which will delay some getting their 1st dose.
We will be moving to a new location the end of the month for our vaccine clinics, where we hope to increase our 100ish vaccines per day to 600. Information to come later as we confirm details.
We will also be implementing a new system that will be up and running late next week to make online appointments here on out. Please do not call or refer people to us to set up appointments or be on a waiting list at this time as we transition to the new system. With such a large group, we cannot accommodate every phone call to make appointments and the only way we can ensure social distancing, is to go by appointments and have a controlled number of people at our clinics. The last thing we want is to have a super spreader event at our clinics.
Yesterday, we added 69 confirmed cases and released 112. We also reported 5 additional deaths unfortunately. Our hearts go out to their friends and family. We have now lost 86 Vermilion County residents due to COVID19 related illnesses.
Our total number of confirmed cases is at 6,743. We have 18 in the hospital right now. We have 573 active cases. We are still working on today’s cases. Most of the day was spent with vaccinations.
Our region has been heading in a great direction this last week! We have had 4 days (1/8 – 1/11) under 8%. Our hospital admissions and increases have been up and down, but I hope that they will continue to trend where we need them to. If we want to get out of mitigations all together, we need to get our positivity rate down to under 6.5% for at least 3 consecutive days.
Here is a way to help us get those numbers down!
- Encourage people to practice social distancing and wearing masks.
- Encourage people to do take out.
- Encourage people to continue to not meet in large groups.
- Encourage people to think about our healthcare workers. They are working very hard, but can very quickly get overwhelmed if there is a large outbreak.
Updated Guidance
- Mitigation Measures FAQ (updated 1/7/2021) https://www2.illinois.gov/dceo/Documents/Essential%20Business%20FAQ.pdf
- School Guidance (updated 1/4/2021) http://www.dph.illinois.gov/covid19/community-guidance/school-guidance
- Vaccination FAQs and breakdown of Phase 1a and Phase 1b (this is extremely helpful to see who is next in line): http://www.dph.illinois.gov/covid19/vaccine-faq
