Vaccines for the People!

Top of the morning to you, dearest community!

What a busy couple of weeks it has been! And what a busy few weeks ahead as well!

We are happy to report that we are working again with our partner, Neighborhood Health, to support a community-wide vaccination effort in Bailey’s Crossroads/Culmore for eligible adults per CDC guidelines. These clinics, which started last week, will occur twice a week for the next few weeks, and possibly months. (Check out this article about it in ALXNow).

What does the small, but mighty Culmore Clinic bring to the table? Like last year, when we worked with Neighborhood Health to address barriers to accessing COVID-19 testing in our community, we are bringing our amazing volunteers who can serve as vaccinators (nurses - yay! - and nursing students - thanks Marymount University Nursing School!!); logistical/interpretation support (thanks, LDS missionaries!!); and clinical supplies and administrative support (thank you, Culmore Clinic donors!!).

Most of our patients fall within the next tier of eligibility parameters and so the team has been on the phone calling patients and getting those interested scheduled for their first shot. A big shout out to Caroline, Astrid, Louise, Elena, and Erica for making the calls; Pat for pulling the patient data records; and Barbara for managing it all!

By the way, Barbara and I stopped by the first day of the clinic and saw some of our patients there. As Barbara says: “The smile on their faces was priceless!”

On a related note regarding the pandemic in our midst, news in from the County is that the number of new cases is decreasing quite significantly, from over two thousand the week of January 3rd to 130 for the week of March 8th (for more information go to https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/covid19/case-information).

Hope you all are taking time to get out in the sun! Spring is almost here!

Anne-Lise