By Taylor Boyd
More than 150 Patrick County schools’ students and staff are in quarantine at due to potentially positive COVID-19 cases.
Schools Superintendent Dean Gilbert said many of the quarantines are not because of exposure at schools.
“A lot of that is family members and things students are doing outside of school. Right yet, we have not been able to say, ‘this child got it from this child at school,’” he said.
Gilbert said the school division anticipated a large case count this early in the year based on the increasing case count in the area. He also said there are no current predictions about potential future surges in the schools.
“I’m praying that this is the one surge that we’ll have all school year, and we’ll just deal with it and move on,” he added.
The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) on Monday also approved the first COVID-19 vaccine, clearing the way for mandates among some entities and booster vaccines in September.
The vaccine known as the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine now will be marketed as Comirnaty (koe-mir’-na-tee), used for the prevention of COVID-19 disease in individuals 16 years of age and older.
The vaccine also continues to be available under emergency use authorization (EUA), including for individuals 12 through 15 years of age and for the administration of a third dose in certain immunocompromised individuals.
Terry McAuliffe, a former governor and now gubernatorial candidate, called on Virginia employers to require the vaccine for staff. New York City schools and The Pentagon were among those initial entities to mandate the vaccine for employees shortly after approval was announced, according to online reports.
The Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines also remain under emergency use authorization.
The White House recently announced a potential recommendation for people to receive a third vaccine, or booster shot, if they received the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine.
State Vaccine coordinator Dr. Danny Avula said that recommendation came after reviewing the ongoing data of effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine, where three emerging trends appeared.
The first is that the vaccine efficacy against infection with COVID-19 begins to decrease overtime; the second “that the effectiveness against the severe consequences of COVID, the hospitalization and death, still remains very high. The third is that the effectives of these vaccines in general in the context of this new Delta variant in general is showing some decrease,” he said.
Avula said the federal government used three studies to identify the trends, which also are supported by studies done in Israel and the United Kingdom.
The combination of evidence led the federal government to start planning a rollout of booster shots starting on Sept. 20, he said, adding that was contingent on FDA approval, the neutral third-party review of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), and the CDC accepting the recommendation.
He said there is not enough data to make a clear recommendation for a booster for people who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Because of large supply of vaccines available, distributing a third dose is not a problem for Virginia and the rest of the United States.
The Patrick County Public Schools COVID-19 dashboard tracks COVID-19 throughout the division. It breaks the data down based on the building, positive cases, and quarantines, and is updated by the end of the day every Wednesday. To view the dashboard, go to www.patrick.k12.va.us/families/covid-19_dashboard.
For more tips on how to stay safe, visit www.vdh.virginia.gov or www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov.
