It is now the evening of 11/04/2021 but Appleton’s Covid Dashboard has not yet been updated, so I have no daily Covid numbers to post. I can however, recap the Covid-19 update that was given at the 11/03/2021 Common Council meeting.
Interim Health Officer Sonja Jensen briefly went through the numbers. As posted on Monday, Appleton had 257 total cases last week and a burden rate per 100,000 people of 617 and continues to be in the “Very High” category for disease burden.
She said that the transmission rate as defined by the CDC continues to be “High” and noted that that was what the city was using to guide it regarding indoor masking requirements. According to the CDC, for indoor masking requirements to change, the city would need to be in at least the “Moderate” transmission rate. [The “Moderate” transmission rate is between 10 and 49.99]
She said that one positive over the past week was that there had been a decrease in people being hospitalized and placed in the ICU for Covid both across the Fox Valley region and across the state. As of 11/03/2021 there were 77 people hospitalized across the 13 hospitals in the Fox Valley Healthcare Emergency Readiness Coalition region with 14 of those patients in the ICU. Over the previous two weeks there had been a bit of a decrease in hospitalizations.
She ran through the vaccination rates which were current as of 11/01/2021. [If you compare them to the rates from the beginning of October, you can see that the rates continue to increase somewhat markedly at the state and national level, which are behind Appleton, and less dramatically at the city level which already has higher rates than exist at the state and national level.]
She finished out by addressing the emergency authorization of the Pfizer vaccine for 5-11 year-olds. “Just one other update. As you probably heard on the news, the FDA and then the CDC advisory committee and the CDC Director have approved vaccine for use for 5-11 year-olds—the Pfizer vaccine. There’s a few more steps that the state has to go through in order for us at the local public health level to be able to administer the vaccine. But just so you know, we are making plans as well as all of our healthcare partners in the community to make sure that vaccine is available for all those who want it for their children in that age group.”
Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) was the only alderperson who had any questions. She said that at one point Health Officer Jensen had been providing the Council with the percentage of breakthrough cases and asked if Officer Jensen could provide an update in that regard.
Interim Health Officer Jensen responded, “I don’t have that percentage in front of me today. I apologize for that. It’s not something that I was able to collect. The state does update that on a statewide basis once a month. But I can get that to you if you would like by tomorrow.”
I reached out to Alderperson Hartzheim about that and was told that, per Health Officer Jensen, between January 1, 2021 and November 3, 2021 “12.1% of all cases were in people who were vaccinated.”
During that timeframe, Appleton has had 5,125 confirmed and probable cases. 12.1% works out to approximately 620 breakthrough cases. The last timeframe that the breakthrough case rate was reported was for January 1 through September 15 at which point the breakthrough rate was 7.6%. As posted back in September, the percentage of breakthrough cases between September 1 and September 15 worked out to approximately 30% of the cases.
Using year-to-date cases and breakthrough percentage it appears that between September 16, 2021 and November 2, 2021 [Health Officer Jensen stated the rate was through November 3, but I’m assuming that was a misstatement because the numbers for November 3 would not have been available until the day after the Common Council meet] Appleton had 1,670 cases approximately 357 of which would have been breakthrough cases. So, between September 16 and November 2 approximately 21% of Covid cases were breakthrough cases. That is down from the approximately 30% breakthrough rate during the first half of November. We’ll see next month where that number goes.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=886961&GUID=0A0DB456-0029-4C49-93A4-CE5E1993B8F3
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