Emily Bollinger / WGLT
Health care workers were given top priority when COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out across the country. But not all who are eligible are jumping at the opportunity.
A recent survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation found nearly a third (29%) of health care workers probably or definitely would not accept a COVID-19 vaccine. That’s slightly higher than the percentage of the general public that said they don’t plan to take it (27%).
Those figures are on par with what some central Illinois health care providers are seeing.
Ryan Taylor is assistant director of Green Tree Pharmacy that handles pharmacy services for close to 50 Heritage Health senior care facilities around Illinois, including in Bloomington, Chillicothe, El Paso and Minonk, among other locations.
OSF HealthCare
A new COVID treatment has shown promising results for some patients in central Illinois.
OSF Healthcare has given the antibody Bamlanivimab, or Bam for short, to about 600 patients who have shown COVID-19 symptoms since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved its emergency use last fall.
Dr. Brian Curtis, OSF vice president of clinical specialty services, said about 5% of those mostly senior and other high-risk patients ended up in the hospital.
“We anticipated from the data that for every 10 patients that we would treat, we would prevent one admission. We anticipate that we would prevent 60 admissions throughout the system, which really kind of supports the data,” Curtis said.
Town of Normal
A union-backed development group is moving forward with a $9 million affordable senior housing project that would use the old TB Sanatorium in Normal.
The Laborers Home Development Corporation has done a lot of senior housing and affordable family housing. The goal is to provide jobs for Laborers International union workers in the Midwest region. Laborers Home Corporation representative Tim Ryan said McLean County government approached the firm about the idea. We rehabbed a high school into senior apartments. I believe the county caught wind of that and asked if we would consider looking at this project for that same population, said Ryan.