RICHMOND, Va (WRIC) – Several children and adults walked in to get their vaccine at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School and other locations across the area Saturday.
Richmond Public Schools partnered with the Richmond-Henrico Health Districts to make sure kids get vaccinated against COVID-19 alongside adults.
8News was there and spoke to several folks trickling in and out of the school on Mosby Street.
One local teacher that showed up said aside from protecting her against the virus, the vaccine helped her in a whole different way.
After getting her first dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine around the end of January and the beginning of February, Tiffany Goodman said the dose triggered an immune response in her body.
“My upper body just swelled up really badly, and I was in a lot of pain, and I had the flu-like symptoms like a lot of people did,” she said.
Her doctor recommended she go for a mammogram. “They found traces of breast cancer,” she told 8News.
“I was a mess,” she added. “You know, nobody likes to hear that news at all.”
Goodman has since had a double mastectomy and reconstruction surgery and is healing. She was excited to get her booster shot. She laughed, “it’s been a tough year!”
Although it was a tough year for Goodman, she said she’s glad the breast cancer was caught early because that may not have happened if she hadn’t gotten the COVID-19 shot.
“My mom says that me getting the vaccine that I got literally saved my life,” she said. “We wouldn’t have known otherwise when I might have detected the cancer that my immune system had just picked up on.”
She said knowing there’s another variant in the country is frustrating, but she said she’s grateful for the protection against the virus.
RHHD plans to continue to have several walk-up vaccination events for kids and adults in the future.
