On 09/08/2021 The Board of Health met. There were no action items on the agenda. The meeting was only 17 minutes long and it was almost exclusively taken up with a Covid-19 Update.
Appleton’s Interim Health Officer Sonja Jensen reviewed the standard set of slides that accompany these updates. Appleton’s case rate has continued to increase.
We had seen 160 cases 08/23-08/29, and that bumped up to 172 for 08-30-09/05. Appleton’s 2-week burden per 100,000 people was 442.7 which placed us in the “Very High” burden category of between 350 and 999 cases per 100,000 residents, a category Appleton has been in for 3 weeks.
She had a slide that showed the burden rate over time and illustrated that Appleton had been in the High category for 3 weeks. The last time Appleton was at that level was back in January of 2021.
She only had vaccination rates as of 08/30/2021 and was sure those numbers had increased somewhat since then. As of 08/30/2021
- Appleton’s residents were 55.3% fully vaccinated with 59.0% having received at least one dose.
- The vaccine eligible population (12 and up) was 65.7% fully vaccinated with 70.1% having at least one dose.
- The 12-17 population was 46.6% fully vaccinated with 55.2% having had at least one dose.
She said that since the Board of Health last met, the state had instituted a program to pay any vaccine eligible person $100 if they receive their first Covid vaccine dose between 08/20/2021 and 09/19/2021. She said that she had heard that there had been an uptick in vaccinations across the state related to that reward.
She reminded everybody that the best place to get up-to-date Covid information from Appleton was to go to the Covid dashboard on the city’s website. They are now displaying the transmission rate as set by the CDC. Appleton is currently in the red “High” category.
Mayor Woodford took that opportunity to note that a “High” transmission rate was one tier above the “Substantial” transmission rate, and both of those rate levels were things that trigger the CDC’s face covering guidance. The city will be mandating face coverings in city facilities until the CDC’s guidance changes or until the rate of transmission drops below the Substantial level. [I guess that basically answers the question I had asked as to what the city was trying to accomplish with this mandate and what metrics they were using to measure the success of masking. It sounds like this policy is going to stay in place simply because of CDC guidance, whether or not any real world efficacy is able to be measured and demonstrated.]
Interim Health Officer Jensen said that was good information and confirmed the mayor was correct that Substantial and High rates of transmission trigger the CDC’s guidance for universal masking.
Having finished the slide portion of her presentation she then went on to report that there had been a meeting the day before of the Fox Valley HERC region. The Fox Valley HERC region included 13 hospitals, and across those 13 hospitals 68 people were currently hospitalized with Covid and 14 of those patients were in the ICU. Hospitals were still continuing to report that greater than 90% of those who are hospitalized are not fully vaccinated. [I have confirmed with her that that number continues to be 97-98%.] She also noted that, between 01/01/2021 and 09/01/2021, 5.2% of Appleton’s coronavirus cases have been breakthrough cases occurring in fully vaccinated individuals.
Board of Health Chairperson Cathy Spears asked if Appleton had had any deaths from people who have been fully vaccinated and said that, typically, they haven’t reported any deaths from breakthrough infections.
Interim Health Officer Jensen said that, typically, there have not been deaths from breakthrough cases, but she did not have information down to that detail regarding the deaths.
Chairperson Spears said she was just curious because that was what she had been reading and she wanted to check that that was correct.
Interim Health Officer Jensen said that she didn’t know what the number was exactly but, typically, fully vaccinated people who get Covid are going to get a mild illness. However, she added, they can still transmit the virus to others which is why masking is important. She reiterated that she didn’t have that level of detail regarding deaths, but from what she has read, deaths in fully vaccinated people are very rare and would usually happen to people who have many other underlying health issues.
She moved on and reported that the Health Department was back at the schools this week providing second doses for they vaccination clinics they were holding at the middle schools. They held two clinics for second doses on 09/07/2021 and were going to hold another clinic on 09/09/2021. They were also holding a regular non-Covid immunization clinic that afternoon (09/08/2021) during which they would also be offering Covid-19 vaccines. They were also offering Covid vaccinations for city employees that come to health screenings on three different dates in September and October, and they planned to offer Covid vaccines for employees at the flu clinic that they will be holding in October.
She said that “we” [which I took be area health departments and healthcare providers] continue to work in the Tri-County area, planning for when booster doses are approved and for further in the future if Covid vaccines are approved for the 5-12 year-old age groups. She stated that neither of those things were currently approved, but they were planning for the future.
A committee member asked what kind of a response they had been getting from the school-based clinics and how many students were participating.
Interim Health Officer Jensen said that during those clinics they had offered vaccinations to family members as well as students. She thought they had around 82 people receive vaccines which would have included both students and family members. She noted that it had also been open to private school students also.
Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) said that, going over the numbers, Appleton had 230 active cases and there were 68 people hospitalized. He assumed the rest of the people were at home.
Interim Health Officer Jensen clarified that the 68 people who were hospitalized were not all in Appleton. They were spread out across the entire Fox Valley HERC region which includes 13 hospitals. [The Fox Valley HERC region includes Menominee, Shawano, Outagamie, Waupaca, Waushara, Winnebago, Calumet, and Green Lake counties.]
Alderperson Schultz said that, of the active cases some of those were hospitalized and some were at home.
Interim Health Officer Jensen thought that most of Appleton’s active cases were at home from what she knew, but she didn’t have those numbers.
Alderperson Schultz asked of the 68 patients hospitalized including the 14 who were in the ICU, did she know how many of those were under the age of 18?
She said that information was not reported to them and that most of those hospitalizations were outside Appleton’s jurisdiction.
Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 9) asked what the bigger obstacle was right now with increasing vaccination numbers: issues accessing vaccines or vaccine hesitancy?
Interim Health Officer Jensen said the vaccine is readily available in our community and the Health Department had not had many people calling to say that they couldn’t get it. She said that, obviously, there were always some equity issues with vaccines and the ability to acquire the vaccination, but from what she’s seen and heard the main issues was hesitancy about the vaccine.
Chairperson Spears had a question about testing. She knew that they were doing some testing at the Timber Rattler’s stadium, but she wanted to know what their ability was to potentially ramp up testing. They had the National Guard doing testing last year. She received information from some people who wanted to get tested and were going to go to their primary care provider for that, but if they did that, their insurance was going to get billed for it. She was concerned about the availability of free testing and wondered if there was a way for them to get money from the state to provide free testing more than a couple days a week.
Interim Health Officer Jensen answered that they were working on that. They have applied to have the National Guard come, and they hoped that they would be able to give out information soon about having free, nearby, drive-through testing for people. The National Guard’s availability has decreased and they are down to about 60% of the capacity that they had been. She said that they have also heard that it’s been taking longer for people to get their test results back, so that was something they were looking at on a regional basis. She said that free testing was still available at the Sunnyview Expo Center on the north side of Oshkosh. “So, we’re aware of the issue and we’re working on it. ‘We hope we’ll have news soon’ is what I can say.” [That makes is sound like there is some kind of plan in the works behind the scenes.]
Board member Kathleen Fuchs asked if there was any testing going on within Appleton schools and if there were any protocols for how that testing was carried out.
Interim Health Officer Jensen said that testing was taking place. The Appleton Area School District had a partnership with a lab so families and students could get tested. She didn’t know the details of the program, but testing was happening.
Alderperson Schultz said there seemed to generally be a 4-5% gap between the number of people who were fully vaccinated and the number of people with only one dose. He wanted to know if that gap had narrowed over time and if they expected it to narrow and catch up with the fully vaccinated number or if they expected there to always be a bit of a gap between those two numbers.
Interim Health Officer Jensen said that, since she had started running the reports in June, that gap had been fairly consistent over time. Part of that was due to the fact that there was a 3-4 week waiting period between the first dose and the second. Additionally, over the last few weeks, across the state, there had been an increase in people going to get their first dose which might result in that gap increasing a bit. Although nationwide there have been reports that a lot of people are not going back for their second dose, that has not been the case in this area.
Alderperson Schultz said that was the root of his question. Was Appleton following national trends or doing better than them?
Interim Health Officer Jensen said that Appleton has been doing a little bit better.
The Board had no further questions.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=879509&GUID=4F4C93F7-8B8D-4EFB-8EDB-C4B87A7ED2BF
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