Common Council Receives Covid-19 Update – 65.7% Of Appleton Residents Fully Vaccinated, Cases In Residents Under 18 Rose Less Sharply Than In Overall Population

During the 09/01/2021 Common Council meeting Interim Health Officer Sonja Jensen provided a Covid-19 update.

She reviewed the case counts. Appleton had 315 total cases over the two weeks prior to the 09/01/2021 Common Council meeting—160 cases over the past week and 155 cases the week before. That resulted in a burden per 100,000 people of 420 which placed Appleton in the “Very High” category of more than 350 cases per 100,000 residents.

She noted that this is where we were in late January and early February of this year. [Per the graph she provided, it was also where we were in early to mid-September of last year.]

She touched on a few updates the city had made to its Covid-tracking dashboard over the last few weeks. They are now tracking the transmission rate which is a metric created by the CDC. Appleton’s transmission rate is currently in the “High” category which is the highest of the 4 categories. They also have a graph on the website that shows the daily new cases and the 7-day running average. Every Monday it looks like there’s a bit of a jump in cases because those numbers include 3-days’ worth of numbers from over the weekend.

She then reviewed Appleton’s vaccination numbers. As of August 30^th, in Appleton the number of vaccinated people were:

• Fully Vaccinated (total population) – 55.3%
• At Least One Dose (total population) – 59.0%
• Fully Vaccinated (vaccine eligible population) – 65.7%
• At Least One Dose (vaccine eligible population) – 70.1%

She said there was about a 1% increase in those numbers from the two weeks prior.

She also broke out the numbers for 12–17-year-olds specifically.

• Fully Vaccinated – 46.6% (about a 3% increase from two weeks prior)
• At Least One Dose – 55.2% (also a 2%-3% increase from two weeks prior)

She moved on to hospitalization statistics for the Fox Valley Health Emergency Readiness Coalition (HERC) region. On 09/01/2021 there were 84 patients hospitalized for Covid 19, 18 of whom were in the ICU. Local health systems continued to report that greater than 90%, typically around 97%-98% of those hospitalized were not fully vaccinated.

During the 08/18/2021 Common Council meeting, she had reported that, since January 1^st of 2021, 4.4% of cases had been in fully vaccinated people. Two weeks later, as of 08/31/2021, that number had risen to 5.2% of case being in fully vaccinated people in Appleton. [I think it would be more helpful to see the percentage of cases per week that are in vaccinated vs unvaccinated. Doing an overall percentage going back to the beginning of the year does not seem like it would give an accurate picture since we didn’t even start vaccinating until the end of January and would not have had fully vaccinated residents until the end of February or the beginning of March even. If we could see week by week how many cases were in fully vaccinated vs not fully vaccinated, we’d get a better sense of how the vaccine is working over time. Nevertheless, an approximately 1% increase in overall breakthrough cases from two weeks ago to today does in itself seem noteworthy.]

During the 08/18/2021 Common Council meeting there had been some discussion about cases in youth. Staff had found a way to break down the number of cases in residents under 18. This was information that the Health Department was giving to the local schools, both public and private, so that those schools could keep an eye on it. In the two-week period from August 4^th – August 17^th, there had been 45 cases in people under 18. In the two-week period prior to that, there had been only 27 cases. The burden for only the youth population was in the “High” category as opposed to the “Very High” category of the entire population. [That seems like it would correlate reasonably decently with the jump in cases that the overall community saw at that time. From August 4^th-17^th Appleton overall had 245 cases and in the two weeks prior to that (July 21st-August 3rd) we had 119 cases. For what it’s worth, the increase in community cases overall was sharper than for the under 18 group.]

She then opened things up for questions.

Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) was thinking about a couple of events the city had held recently including the Mile of Music and wondered if they were able to measure any spread from Mile of Music in particular or other events that occurred around that time.

Interim Health Officer Jensen said she was not aware of any outbreaks associated with those events, but it was difficult to tell when the overall transmission rate in the community was high.

Alderperson Michael Smith (District 10) said that currently 55% of the community was fully vaccinated and wondered at what point would Appleton reach herd immunity.

Interim Health Officer Jensen said that was difficult to say. From what she had heard we needed to get at least 70-80% of the total population fully vaccinated.

Alderperson Smith asked if that only applied to the original Covid or to Delta and other variants also.

Interim Health Officer Jensen said that, as far as right now, it didn’t seem to matter yet. The vaccine was still effective against the Delta variant. But they don’t know what future changes there might be with the virus.

Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) thought separating out the burden in the youth community was interesting and insightful and wondered what the burden would be for the rest of the population with the youth removed. Separating the two groups might give a sense of if Covid was travelling more in the youth population, how much school reopening was affecting things, and how Covid was being mitigated in the more vaccinated population.

Interim Health Officer Jensen thought that was an interesting idea that they could look into. She said they would continue to track the cases and burden for the under 18 population throughout the fall for the benefit of the area schools.

Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) asked if Appleton was working with the county or any other agencies to help provide booster shots to the elderly and people in long term care facilities since those people were vaccinated early and are approaching the window when they would be recommended to get a booster. She particularly wondered about getting boosters available for people in communal living situations.

Interim Health Officer Jensen said there is a group within the Fox Valley HERC region which is made of the Tri-County health care systems and public health that was looking at a couple of things once boosters are approved and once vaccinations for 5–12-year-olds are approved. They’re trying to find ways that they can make sure that the community is covered. They are looking at and planning for that currently.

Mayor Woodford ended the question-and-answer session by telling the alderpersons that if they had any further questions, they could reach out either to Interim Health Officer Jensen directly or to him, and they would be happy to answer questions.

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=886960&GUID=3054076F-7758-42CD-9CB4-3F059F2F03E4&Options