Veterans who fought for our country now fighting a virus

ANNA Ill. (KBSI) – A look at the veteran’s home in Anna Illinois.

Flags are waving in the air to support the ones who fought for our country. Those same veterans are now inside fighting a virus. 

You are looking at the outside view of the building as they are in lock down on the inside for the residents and staff only at this time. 

Terry Price, is the Director of Illinois Department of Veteran Affairs, and he says he is in charge of several of these homes across the state, but this one is dealing with covid a little bit harder this year. 

“This is one of the larger increases that we’ve had. We’ve had increases over the last several years since Covid became a thing,” said Price. 

There are now 27 positive Covid 19 cases from the Illinois Veteran Home in Ana.

“We have the Illinois Department of Health, and her own in-house protection prevention go to the facility to make sure that we are continuing to follow our regulations and doing things we’re supposed to do all of our veterans are offered and are taking antiviral medication and we’ve reported no serious illness in any of our residents and no one is being hospitalized at this time.”

Price says he is concerned about the staff and residents dealing with the virus. 

He plans to travel to each of the locations and help out in any way he can.

“As far as what we are seeing in our region right now it’s still too early to determine what our case rate is for flu as well as Covid but now as a time when the CDC encourages residence throughout the region to get their flu shots and it’s also a good time to get that new COVID-19 booster.”

Shawna Rhine is the Community Outreach Coordinator with the Southern Seven Health Department.

Rhine thinks getting vaccinated is so important to help minimize instances like these. 

“I want people to realize that these vaccinations have been around for many years. The new COVID-19 shot does protect you from the new variant and so if it’s been a while since you’ve had the Covid booster now is the time to get that done all vaccinations are safe are effective they do work, and they do what they need to do in order to keep the residents, healthy and safe.”