Charlottesville Quarantine Report

Hello and welcome to Charlottesville Community Engagement. I’m your host, Sean Tubbs, and before we get started, I wanted to remind some of you and tell some of your for the first time that this program is an offshoot of a podcast I created in March 2020 to get information out about COVID-19. Doing the Charlottesville Quarantine Report made me want to get back to journalism, and here I am a year and a half later with the 228th installment of this show and what is the 57th installment of the Charlottesville Quarantine Report. Let’s get right to it.

One year ago this week, the future was uncertain and I and many other people didn’t know what was going to happen. I created this podcast, which has now evolved into a regular one that expands on this legacy. The first few minutes of this one wax nostalgic, but there's no time for that. There's still work to be done. A full text version of this one will be posted on the CCE site, but this began as a podcast, so people in this feed get the first shot and taking a listen.

We’re now at a point in this murky pandemic where one thing is clear - uncertainty about the future is a commonly held concern. This week, Albemarle and Charlottesville both reported one-day records as a second local surge hit due in part to the arrival of UVA students from across the country to begin in-person instruction. On this Saturday, February 20 edition of the Charlottesville Community Engagement Newcast and Newsletter, we hear the response from the University of Virginia as a Town Hall held Friday afternoon. We’ll also check in with officials at UVA Health and hear a statement from the Blue Ridge Health District related to long lines this past Wednesday at the vaccination clinic at the K-Mart. The idea of this newsletter is intended to make things a little less murky as you make you decisions about your life in the days, weeks, and months to come.

It’s Super Bowl Sunday, and a day many might usually gather to celebrate on this unofficial national holiday. But the pandemic is still keeping this from being a normal time, and this installment of the Charlottesville Community Engagement newscast and newsletter is intended to catch us up on where we are eleven months since the first positive case was recorded in Virginia.

At a briefing on January 22, 2021, the executive director of the Blue Ridge Health District had a clear message for people in the greater Charlottesville area. “There is a vaccination shortage and I just need everyone to understand that,” said Dr. Denise Bonds. Bonds is one of several people featured in this January 24, 2021 edition of the Charlottesville Community Engagement newsletter and newscast which doubles as an episode of the Charlottesville Quarantine Report. We’ll also hear from Dr. Costi Sifri from the University of Virginia and Dr. Danny Avula, Richmond’s health director who is also serving as the state’s vaccine coordinator. “Right now in Virginia we’re getting about 105,000 new doses per week and clearly there is much more demand than that,” Avula said. “Why is that and how do we address it?”