West Central Reporter

Many Morgan County residents are getting their COVID-19 vaccinations to protect against the highly-contagious virus that has spread largely unchecked throughout the country. 

One such resident, MacMurray College senior nursing student Savana Long, has received the first of the two required doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. Still, she said she didn't decide right away that she would even be vaccinated, WLDS-WEAI reported.

"You know, I had a lot of controversy of course, getting the vaccination," Long said in the news report. "I at first said 'no way, not going to get it.'"

Then Long thought again.

"And then, just thinking about it a little more, I did get like quarantined a few times this semester," she said. "I was out of class, and that really, I feel like put me behind."

In the end, Long said in the report that getting the vaccine was the right thing to do.

"If I can do my part and get vaccinated, and hopefully we can all get that immunity, so we're not having to quarantine, get out of class," Long said in the news story. "Everyone needs to be in class or out in the community, being social again. If I can do my part, I definitely want to."

The news story was about Morgan County's ongoing COVID-19, currently in its first round, 1a, which includes healthcare workers. 

More than 200 had registered for the first dose in Jacksonville during a distribution event by the Morgan County Health Department, working with Jacksonville Fire Department and Jacksonville Morgan County Office of Emergency Management, the news report said.

Another area resident at the event for his first dose was John Cody of Buchanan and Cody Funeral Home in Jacksonville, who told WLDS-WEAI that he has had many shots in his time and he didn't even feel his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

"We are facing this on multiple levels," Cody said in the news story. "You know, we are out at nursing homes and hospitals. We know that we have had people that have had COVID. We know we have had people that has it and didn't know it. I am certain that we had people who walked through our front door that we needed to talk to that had it and didn't know it. So, it is something that is very worrisome to me."