NORFOLK, Va. — Governor Glenn Youngkin is praising his team and the Virginia Department of Health for developments in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.
The governor's COVID-19 Action Plan lays out all of the initiatives that have been put into place to address health disparities in communities since he took office.
That includes launching the Vaccine Communications on Hesitancy Education Workgroup. The goal is to study barriers in places that have low vaccination rates.
Advocates for health equity -- such as Gaylene Kanoyton, the founder of Celebrate Healthcare -- commended the governor on recognizing the problem.
However, Kanoyton said workgroups similar to this one had already been put in place long before this announcement, including the Virginia Advisory Workgroup Communications & Messaging Subgroup in which she was a co-chair.
Kanoyton said she commends the governor for addressing the problem, but instead of repeating studies and workgroups, she wanted to see different action be taken with the information they already have about health inequities.
"COVID by no means is partisan. It's bipartisan because it effects everyone," said Kanoyton. "It's already been addressed. So, let's look at the institutional knowledge and let's go and carry it forward to increase the resources in the areas that have already been identified."
Kanoyton said says she wants to see more opportunities for people to access the vaccine and testing independently.
"We want to make sure that we have at-home tests readily available at no charge. Let's put more money in transportation, so people can get to their doctors, so they can get to work," said Kanoyton. "If you want to make this pandemic an endemic and call it an 'endemic,' then let's put more resources in preventative care."
Health disparities among COVID-19 cases still are prominent at this point in the pandemic.
The Virginia Department of Health's Equity Dashboard said data reported in the past month shows the Black community is almost twice as likely to be hospitalized with the virus than white people in the state. The Latino community follows right behind with similar COVID-19 case rates.
The dashboard only shows the last month in detail but has the rate ratios over the last six months presented in a graph right below it.
In addition to establishing the workgroup, Youngkin said his office, along with VDH, partnered with Historically Black Colleges and Universities to address vaccine hesitancy among young adults.
Youngkin said his team and VDH scheduled about 200 mobile vaccination units across the state to reach underserved areas through the end of March.
He wrote in his report, "between January 20 and February 19, over 1,000 vaccine events occurred. There are 948 events planned through the end of April."
Youngkin wrote in his report about 1.6 million Virginians still are not fully vaccinated, but he hopes his initiatives will make a difference.
We reached out to both the governor's office and VDH to learn more about this plan, but we have yet to hear back.