 What makes for excellence in heart care? It starts with one of the most amazing teams of heart surgeons and cardiologists that I've seen assembled under one roof and the region's leading technology in a new $40 million facility. This is the nationally recognized Heart and Vascular Institute of Eastern Kentucky at Pikeville Medical Center. Due to the new COVID variant XBB 0.1.5, COVID cases are beginning to rise. We spoke to Public Health Director Tammy Riley on what you need to know about the new variant. This new Omicron sub variant is detected in the United States and will likely dominate here as well in Kentucky and Eastern Kentucky soon. That's fairly inevitable. The disease severity is low but with greater numbers of individuals likely to be infected. You know you will see some increase in hospitalizations although overall disease severity it has improved no doubt but there's clear data and evidence that the bi-valent booster licensed disease severity and again 28 times less likely of death if you've received the bi-valent booster. The Pike County Health Department is offering the bi-valent booster on Mondays at the Pikeville location and on Tuesdays at the Belfry location no appointment is required. According to you know state experts at the state level you know I was told that you have almost up to a 28 times less likelihood of dying if you've received the new COVID bi-valent booster vaccine but so few have. As a matter of fact for those greater than 50 years old only about 22 percent of the population in Kentucky have the bi-valent vaccine booster and then for younger adults and and peeds the pediatric population those numbers get lower and lower the younger you go yet the data is there that the booster the bi-valent booster does protect us. For more information on case numbers and updates on COVID go to Pike County Health Department on Facebook reporting for mountaintop news I'm Brianna Robinson