Registered Nurse Ethan Collins and Family Nurse Practitioners Tauna Gulley and Nicole France prep for mobile COVID-19 testing in Southwest Virginia. Photo courtesy The Health Wagon Inc.
The head of The Health Wagon, the Wise County-based free clinic system that serves more than 5,600 patients in Southwest Virginia, many with medical vulnerabilities, said in a Thursday interview on “CBS This Morning” that the clinic has not received any COVID-19 vaccine doses from the state government.
According to the Virginia Department of Health, the two regions served by Health Wagon — Lenowisco and Cumberland Plateau health districts — have received 33,425 doses so far out of a total of 1,392,275 doses distributed across the state, but CBS stated that the majority have gone to local hospitals, pharmacies and health departments.
One of Health Wagon Executive Director Teresa Tyson’s main complaints is that her patients often don’t have access to reliable transportation or gas money to get to hospitals or other locations for shots, which is why the clinic uses mobile units that travel to 13 locations in Buchanan, Dickenson, Lee, Russell, Scott and Wise counties. The clinic’s patients also are more likely to have underlying medical issues that can cause worse cases of COVID-19, she says, and the region’s poverty rate is the highest in the state.
