GREENSBORO, N.C. — It’s been eight months since the first COVID-19 vaccine was approved.
Since then, we have two more approved vaccines, expanded who is eligible to children ages 12 and up, but we’re not done fighting COVID-19, and vaccination efforts continue.
In today's 2 Your Well-Being, we’re talking COVID-19 vaccine: where are we now, the latest updates, and what to expect going forward.
Dr. Andre Harvin is the Director of Pharmacy and Oncology at Cone Health. When it comes to vaccination rates in North Carolina, he said we're not where we want to be. A little be over half of eligible North Carolinians have received at least one dose of the vaccine, less than the three-quarters that experts want.
So why should you get vaccinated? Dr. Harvin said it's the best way to protect yourself from getting the virus. He adds, over 99% of people who are hospitalized or died from COVID in the last few months have been unvaccinated.
One reason why some people haven't gotten the vaccine is that they think they're young and healthy and don't need it. However,
However, Dr. Harvin said you need to look to the science. Early on, a lot of hospitalizations and deaths were in elderly people but now we're seeing more young and healthy people be ravaged by COVID. Dr. Harvin said the virus overwhelms the immune system and even if you do survive, there is so much we don't know about the long-term effects of the virus.
