The Common Council met 03/17/2021. Health Officer Eggebrecht gave a Covid Update.
They are seeing a decrease in testing at the National Guard site during March.
Although he said that it’s still an important thing, he said the decrease may be a sign either that people are seeking testing at other locations or, he hoped, that transmission within the community has decreased. In fact, he stated he thought it was due to that second reason. He went on to say that as vaccination is increasing, we should be seeing lower transmission rates which is why he leaned toward believing that transmission rates are down. [I’ve included a graph showing the 7 day running average of new cases with January 24 marked which is when they conducted their first limited vaccinations at the Expo Center.]
Vaccinations at the Expo Center continue. They anticipated conducting a total of 2,200 vaccinations this week.
Mayor Woodford clarified that those numbers only reflect the vaccinations that have been given out at the Expo Center vaccination clinic, but there are many other vaccinators in the area so the total number in the Fox Cities is higher.
Alderperson Michael Smith (District 6) said that a couple of his family members tried to register online to receive their vaccinations at the Expo Center. No dates were available. When they tried to look for future dates they went all the way to 2022 but no openings appeared to be available. He wondered if there was something his family members should have done differently or was there a way for the website to say that it’s closed for the week and that people should wait until the next week to register.
Health Officer Eggebrecht appreciated the question and said they would look at what sort of messaging they could do. One of the issues with scheduling is they never know how much vaccine they will get. Early on, they had a waitlist which was very frustrating to people. By the time they called the people on the waitlist, many of them had already found alternative places to get vaccinated which resulted in a significant no show rate. As a result, they determined a waitlist was not useful to have.
They open up registration once they determine how much vaccine they will have available, then open registration up. That typically happens on a Sunday for the following Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. They can’t go further than that because they don’t know how much vaccine they will get. If they did go farther than that it’s likely that many of those people would find alternative places to get vaccinated, and if they didn’t cancel they would be holding a spot that ought to be available.
Alderperson Smith also mentioned that the agenda only contained the slides Health Officer Eggebrecht regularly shows but not the entire presentation he gave. He wondered if there was a way for Health Officer Eggebrecht to send him all of the slides that he presented.
Health Officer Eggebrecht said that he could do that. He also mentioned that the information is also posted on Appleton.org in the Covid section. [I still don’t see where the chart showing the number vaccine doses given at the Expo Center is posted. I don’t know if I’m just missing it.]
Alderperson William Siebers (District 1) said that he got his fits shot at the Expo Center a couple of weeks ago. He found the vaccine clinic to be very well organized. They treated him well, and he walked out of there very impressed.
Health Officer Eggebrecht wanted to recognize all the nurses and volunteers that help run the clinic. He said it was a tribute to this region and our state that people are really willing to help our neighbors and be a part of that. He said he would be sure to share Alderperson Siebers’ praise with the workers at the Expo Center.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=825734&GUID=3BA63E0C-B886-48F5-87C4-4C47B4CA644D&Options=info|&Search=
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