Covid-19 Cases at St. Cloud Hospital Down This Week [PODCAST]

CentraCare spokesman Dr. George Morris joined me on WJON this week. He says positive Covid-19 cases within CentraCare and St. Cloud hospital are down from around 70 last week to just over 50 this week. He says the amount of people in their ICU/critical care unit are about the same this week as opposed to last week, at around 20. Morris says he expects to see what he calls "waves" of positive cases within the coming weeks as more and more people get vaccinated. Listen to our 2-part conversation below.

Dr. Morris says CentraCare continues to vaccinate people at a high rate but because of a diminished demand walk-in vaccinations are available at some locations. He suggests that people call CentraCare at 320-200-3200 or use your CentraCare Mychart account online to schedule vaccinations. Morris says reaching herd immunity can still happen this summer and he expects this could occur as early as mid June.

Dr. Morris and I talked more about how much they've learned in the past year about Covid-19. He says it is possible that a person who has had Covid-19 has a longer time frame of immunity than originally thought but because of variants people who had the original form of Covid-19 may not have protection from the variants. We discussed the difference between the Covid-19 vaccines and standard vaccines. These vaccines didn't go through the typical process to receive approval but because of the emergency need the vaccines were approved. Morris says the technology had been there prior to the pandemic to produce vaccines where people are injected with a dead virus instead of these vaccines which trigger a protein among recipients to fight the virus and protect them.