ASHEVILLE, NC – March 30, 2022 – The Buncombe County Department of Health & Human Services held a virtual panel discussion on March 30th to explain “COVID treatment options”. Buncombe County Medical Director Dr. Jennifer Mullendore moderated the discussion. She was joined by COVID health care providers from Mercy Urgent Care, MAHEC, and Pardee Hospital.
The panel discussed medical therapeutics, vaccination, and public health measures to reduce the risk of getting COVID-19. Serious complications are extremely rare following COVID vaccination and serous side-effects are extremely rare from medical therapeutics. Possible complications from getting COVID are much greater and strongly outweigh the risk of problems from either vaccination or medical therapeutics.
COVID treatment options are for people with a positive test, recent onset of mild-to-moderate symptoms that do not require hospitalization, and at-risk to develop severe illness. People who are at-risk are age 65 or older, obese, immunocompromised or have chronic illness. Some therapeutics come in pills and others can be administered by intravenous infusions. There is a preventive medicine that is administered intramuscularly for very high-risk people who cannot have the vaccine because of medical reasons. These medications are prescribed by health care providers. People can find out how they can get these treatments on the North Carolina Department of Health & Human Services website under COVID-19 Treatment Locations, the federal government ‘Test-to-Treat’ website, and locally at Mercy Urgent Care.
The panel recommends:
- Wear a face mask in crowded spaces if at-risk to get COVID
- Grace Barnwell, nurse practitioner from Mercy Urgent Care and Dr. Stephanie Call, Chair of Internal Medicine from MAHEC said “Test early. Treat early.”
- Being up-to-date with vaccinations and boosters reduces the risk of infection, severe illness, hospitalization, death, spreading the virus to others and developing chronic complications from COVID-19. Dr. Chris Parson, Medical Director for Pardee Center for Infectious Diseases said, “Get your vaccine and booster shots.”
Listen to the full report below:
Contact: Dick Needleman, Health reporter, 103.3 AshevilleFM, healthyasheville@ashevillefm.org