At the 03/03/2021 Health Officer Kurt Eggebrecht gave a Covid-19 update.
On 03/03 Appleton hit a milestone of 8,000 cases to date since the beginning of the pandemic. On 03/03 Appleton had 279 currently active cases, meaning people who were at home in isolation. Unfortunately, there were also a couple more deaths, bringing the total number of Appleton residents who have died from/with coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic to 63.
Appleton’s case count ticked up a bit from the previous week. There were 71 cases two weeks before and 97 over the past week which raised the burden rate up to 224 (counting both confirmed and probable cases) which is still in the “high” category.
Although we saw an increase in cases it wasn’t more than 10%, so Appleton’s trajectory remained unchanged which also keeps us in the “high” category. We’re in our third week of the high category with only a slight uptick in cases.
He reviewed the testing totals from the National Guard Covid testing site. The total number of tests in February was similar to the total in January. Health Officer Eggebrecht mentioned that it is still a valued service. [Just a note–when you look at the daily totals on the chart, it appears that March testing demand is down sharply thus far compared with January and February, but Health Officer Eggebrecht didn’t comment on that.] He did stress that without the testing they wouldn’t know where the positive cases are, and that it’s important to identify people with coronavirus so they can help them stay in isolation as well as quarantine those who might have been exposed so they don’t spread the illness to others.
He mentioned that the last time the Council met, one of the alderpersons suggested putting the number of vaccinations on the website. He said they are now doing that and that people can go to either Appleton.org or the Fox Cities Expo Center Vaccination Clinic Website. [This could very well be my own mistake, but I honestly could not find where exactly that graph is posted.]
He said that they have administered 6,778 doses and he thought that was an interesting milestone because with the 530 appointments they were anticipating on Thursday, they would end up administering more doses of vaccine than they’ve had cases. He thought that was nice to see–to have had 8,000 cases but to now have exceeded that with the number of vaccines given. [I actually went back and relistened to this and double checked the number that he gave and which were shown on the screen. I don’t understand how he gets over 8,000 by adding 530 to 6,778. It’s also not clear to me that the number of doses given equates to the number of people vaccinated; I thought at this point they had some people coming back for their second doses. Nevertheless, it’s still a positive trend.]
He said that between the expo center vaccination clinic and healthcare providers and pharmacists providing Covid vaccines, 15% of Appleton’s total population has been vaccinated. Within that, 60% of Appleton residents who are 65 or older have received at least one dose of the vaccine. They’re very happy with the vaccination progress in the last month and look forward to getting more vaccine in the months ahead. They are looking to do their first vaccinations of the next wave of eligible people in the 1B category. On March 13 they hope to vaccinate roughly 1,400 educators and hope that they will have enough vaccine availability to provide all Appleton’s educators with at least their first dose.
There were no questions.
Mayor Woodford took the lack of questions as a good thing, but encouraged anyone to share any questions or concerns they have. He stated that they appreciated Kurt’s continued diligence on this as well as all the partnerships and collaborations that are allowing the city to operate the vaccine clinic at the Expo Center. He was looking forward to more doses and keeping this moving forward for the community.
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