Shipyard vaccination push moves into high gear
Company-run effort aims to inoculate 70% of 25,000 employees
Newport News Shipbuilding’s company-run COVID-19 vaccination push is giving shots to 1,000 employees a day after a start-and-stop launch last month.
Tight supplies of vaccine meant the shipyard went without for weeks after launching the effort in early February. But now, the yard’s supplies from the state are secure enough for it to hit a goal of vaccinating 70% of its 25,000 employees, said Dr. Steve Apostoles, the shipyard’s medical director.
So far, the yard’s vaccination clinic at the Apprentice School gym on Marshall Avenue has administered more than 5,000 doses, Apostoles said.
“We feel that the best way to beat the virus is to get shots in arms,” he said.
The logistics have been complicated, because the vaccines the yard uses must be administered in two doses, several weeks apart, Apostoles said. He said the center
family planning decisions.
“Income gains since 2007 have been concentrated in older age groups (in Hampton Roads), the two age groups that would have children, householders under 25 and 25 to 44, had smaller income gains than the region as a whole,” Lombard said.
Student loan debt and low home ownership rates for young adults could also sway the decision to start a family, Lombard said.
Some families decided, at least for the time being, now is not the time to expand their family. Carly and Chen Gilkman, of Virginia Beach, are one of many couples to postpone expanding their family due to the pandemic.
“Knowing the current situation, that we would then be with a third child on our own, it just doesn’t even sound like an option,” Carly said.
The Gilkmans have a 3-yearold son and 1-year-old daughter. When their children were born, Chen’s mother flew from Israel to help care for them for the first few months.
That’s not an option now because she cannot leave the country due to travel restrictions.
Carly’s parents live in Connecticut, but she has not seen them in over a year because of the pandemic.
Carly and Chen told each other last year they would reevaluate their decision to have another child.
“We’ve already looked at each other and said ‘Not a chance,’” Carly said. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
The pandemic could push birth rates down even further for 2021, and possibly 2022, Lombard said.
There is a possibility missing births due to the pandemic will show in years to come, but it is unclear whether it will make up for the lack of births over the last 11 years.
Even when the pandemic ends, there will be lasting effects that could linger for years.
“(The pandemic) doesn’t change the underlying problem why we seem to see births keep going down. The economic uncertainty young adults have had doesn’t seem to be changing,” Lombard said.