By WHITNEE ICE
St. Joseph Post
Northwest Missouri has seen a recent uptick in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.
Mosaic Life Care’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Davin Turner, says getting vaccinated is the key to stopping the spread of the coronavirus.
“Even if you contract it and you’ve been vaccinated, is that you’re not becoming severely ill, you’re not ending up in the ICU, and you’re not dying from the disease,” Dr. Turner tells reporters during a news conference. “They’re finding that these vaccines are very effective against all the variants at this time.”
Turner says there has been an increase in positivity rates across the board and for a few reasons.
“One, people are getting out,” says Dr. Turner. “It’s warmed up. We've had graduations, graduation parties. People are having bigger gatherings and our vaccination rate is low.”
Turner says the hospital has been sending some tests off to the state to check for variants, however the hospital is still awaiting a response from the state.
“Several weeks ago, when they released, we did have all four variants in the state,” says Dr. Turner. “At that time the UK variant was the most prominent but we’re waiting for that update.”
Turner says, nationally, health officials are hoping to get 70% of the population vaccinated for herd immunity.