Virginia has provided vaccinations to more than 89,000 people, more than 3,200 in Henrico

The Virginia Department of Health announced Wednesday it’s expected to receive 370,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year, a decrease from the 480,000 doses estimated from early December.

As of Monday morning, roughly 89,300 initial doses had been administered in Virginia – up from about 54,000 Dec. 30, according to the Virginia Department of Health. More than 3,200 of them had gone to Henrico residents.

Long-term care facilities residents and staff have begun receiving the vaccine, primarily onsite through a pharmacy partnership program with CVS and Walgreen’s vaccination team, according to Christy Gray, director of the VDH’s division of immunization.

Long-term care facilities are a part of Group 1A, which has first priority to the vaccine and also includes healthcare workers, who began receiving it earlier in December. Correctional healthcare workers are included in Group 1A, Gray confirmed.

Virginia Unified Command is expecting a recommendation for final approval by the Virginia Disaster Medical Advisory Committee of determining who will be in Groups 1B and 1C, Gray said.

VDH’s vaccination dashboard, which is divided into two sections of vaccine summary information and demographics, is updated daily from data provided by the Virginia Immunization Information System. The numbers on the dashboard are lower than the actual number of vaccines administered, Gray said.

“There's a lag in reporting for a number of different reasons,” she said. “We do expect that the number is actually higher, but we have to wait for that information to come in. We're working with our providers on if they're having any issues and entering this information into our registry and troubleshooting those issues as they come up. Dealing with new systems and operations at this scale, it is expected to be slower at the beginning, but we are expecting to increase our efficiency over time.”

Information that enters into VIIS allows providers to know which type of vaccine to give and when to give a second dose, and also gives individuals proof of their COVID-19 vaccination, Gray said.

“The goal of this is to support patients and their healthcare providers in making healthy decisions by providing reliable, easy to access information about a patient’s immunization history,” Gray said. “It only contains information about immunizations and does not contain other medical history for an individual.”

Black, Latino and Native American communities in Virginia have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19. According to the VDH’s vaccination dashboard demographics, 40,127 of the 54,295 people vaccinated have not disclosed their race and ethnicity. Gray said the VDH is conducting community forums and listening sessions to receive feedback on outreach efforts regarding minority populations.

In response to a question about safety concerns surrounding the vaccine, Gray said, “I want to remind people that these vaccines have gone through every step that every vaccine goes through to get approved and recommended for use in the United States. All of the safety review steps happened. There were no corners cut, there were no things waived because of the need to get the vaccine to market.”