Connect

This is the first in a series of emails to our friends and neighbors in the local area from Craig Kent, MD, Executive Vice President for Health Affairs, to highlight our COVID response and how our organization is poised to serve our patients and the community. To sign up for the UVA Health Community Update, subscribe here.

Dear friends and neighbors,

Ten months ago, few of us would have imagined that we would be just about to enter a global pandemic, unlike anything we had ever seen. It has been a difficult year for all of us. Still, I am proud of how UVA Health and its 13,000 healthcare providers, researchers, and educators have responded.

COVID-19 rates in Charlottesville are lower than many comparable areas.  Our community has done its part to reduce the virus's spread and save lives by following public health guidelines, from mask-wearing to social distancing.  We must keep it up, especially at this critical moment.

I know there is concern about the spike in COVID-19 cases we are seeing around the country. Hearing that, I want to let you know what we are doing at UVA Health to keep our community safe.

Our 736-bed hospital is busy.  We provide tertiary and quaternary care for a very large region and, in some cases, all of Virginia. This is care for patients who do not have COVID-19. However, know that we have the capacity to handle both patients with and without COVID-19 who need our care.

Still, we have accomplished much to prepare for a possible surge. We have purchased more PPE to protect our team. We have increased the amount of testing, both in the community and among our teams and patients in the hospital. And we have created several alternate staffing plans to balance our care for COVID-19 cases with other needs and operations.

I am hopeful that an effective and safe vaccine for COVID-19 will provide some light at the end of the tunnel and help us all return to normal day-to-day activities. On Tuesday, we administered the first doses of the vaccine to our healthcare workers involved in the direct care of COVID-19 patients.

As vaccine supplies increase, we will follow the Centers for Disease Control's direction and offer the vaccine to our UVA Health team and then to the community, starting with the elderly and others with greater susceptibility to COVID-19.

As soon as we know more about vaccine distribution, we will share that with the community.  Knowing that it will be some time until everyone will have access to the vaccine, UVA Health is committed to providing continuing access to COVID-19 testing locally.  To date, we have performed thousands of tests through testing events with our community partners, including Cultivate Charlottesville, featured below. These efforts are making a difference.

We have some of the world's foremost infectious disease experts and epidemiologists — like Bill Petri, also featured below — at UVA Health. Their expertise will continue to guide us forward through this challenging time.

I look forward to staying in touch with you all on this journey and updating you on the latest from UVA Health. Until then, I wish you and your loved ones a safe and peaceful holiday.

With hope,

K. Craig Kent, MD
Executive Vice President for Health Affairs
University of Virginia

Meet Our Partners: Cultivate Charlottesville

I'm proud to recognize the incredible work of Cultivate Charlottesville, an organization dedicated to food sustainability and community wellbeing.  Cultivate Charlottesville works with community partners to provide much-needed food and supplies to people who test positive for COVID-19 at our community testing events.  We're so proud to work with Cultivate Charlottesville to promote health and wellness.

Meet Our Team: Dr. William Petri

A renowned infectious diseases specialist and professor, Dr. Petri cares for patients with COVID-19 and researches treatments and vaccines at UVA Health.  In a recently published article, he answered many common questions about the first COVID-19 vaccines, including those about their efficacy, safety, and the approval process they follow.