The Greater Greenbrier COVID-19 Task Force met this morning via conference call and reports the following information.
HEALTH DEPARTMENT. Greenbrier County has 640 confirmed cases, 3 suspect cases, 279 probable cases, 446 recovered cases, 452 active cases, 24 hospitalized, and 24 deaths. We continue to deal with a very serious situation. We are giving our first vaccines today. There’s a tier system in place to determine who gets the vaccine and when. Frontline providers get it first. Shipments arrive weekly. We will begin offering the vaccine to the general public as soon as possible, but that probably won’t be until February or March.
OUTDOOR GATHERINGS. Please continue to be careful with gatherings during Christmas. Even outdoor gatherings carry risk, because people don’t always wear masks or distance properly. We have significant community spread right now.
TESTING. We have many testing sites throughout the county each day. Please utilize community testing at RCB Clinic, MedExpress, Greenbrier Physicians, Rainelle Medical Center, and Monroe Health Center (free daily testing from 10 a.m.-2 p.m.). Please do not show up to the Emergency Room for a COVID test. That’s not helpful right now to our emergency rooms which are dealing with urgent situations.
GREENBRIER COUNTY SCHOOLS. The WVDE education map put us in orange, which is fully remote learning. Our students will then plan to return to school Jan. 4 following the holiday break if the public health situation allows it. While we are remote, our buildings are operating at 50% capacity with staff.
RCB CLINIC. COVID testing demand remains very high. We may soon expand mobile clinic hours to respond to that high demand. Our telephone systems are experiencing issues. We are working with the phone companies to work out that situation.
RAINELLE MEDICAL. We will host free testing at the Community School based site behind Greenbrier East on Wednesdays from 10a.m.-2 p.m. beginning next week. Also, our Maxwelton site and White Sulphur locations have erected permanent buildings outside to conduct on site testing daily.
COMMITTEE ON AGING. We divided our staff into two groups so that in case we do have a positive in a group, we will continue to have staff availability to provide services in the other group. We continue to provide all services to our seniors.
HOMELAND SECURITY. We’ve been busy decontaminating government offices/buildings. We continually upgrade our equipment as needed to make the work more efficient. Our 911 center is experiencing a very high volume of COVID calls. Our EMS providers are all functional. They are dealing with high volumes of patients.
VACCINE. Folks are asking lots of questions about when vaccines will be available. It looks at this point like health care workers and first responders will receive the first rounds of doses with the general public being eligible to receive it in February or March. As more info is available, we will share it ASAP.
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