The Board of Health met 11/10/2021. They had several information items that touched on Covid-related issues.
The first item in question was the Covid-19 Update.
Interim Health Officer Sonja Jensen reviewed the weekly numbers. The information in the agenda packet was outdated, but she had the most current information in front of her. Appleton’s currently 2-week burden rate per 100,000 people is 685.3 which is the Very High category. She said that regionally we’re at kind of a plateau right now with cases and that the statewide there had been a little bit of an increase. Hospitalizations had been down for the last 2 or 3 weeks but they were up a little bit again both regionally and across the state.
Appleton has a transmission rate of 342.7 which was still in the CDC’s “High” transmission category which was the highest category. The city looks at this rate to determine if staff and visitors to city buildings have to wear masks. Appleton needs to get down to the “Moderate” category of less than 50 before masking would be removed.
The vaccination rates listed were from 11/01/2021. She said that they had been seeing a gradual increase of about 1% every two weeks for vaccinations and of a little bit more in the younger category.
The vaccination statistics did not include 5–11-year-olds who have only recently been able to get vaccinated. She said there were many opportunities in the area to get children in that age group vaccinated. ThedaCare, Ascension, CVS, and Walgreens were all offering it. The city was also working directly with the schools in Appleton to hold a couple special clinics at the end of the following week. Prior to that they needed to get staff trained because the storage and handling of the produce was specific for this age group. They also planned to make it available at the city’s Thursday and Friday vaccination clinics at the Kensington Drive location along with the already available boosters and primary doses that are available for the rest of the population.
That was the end of her update, so Board Chair Cathy Spears opened this up for questions.
Chairperson Spears asked if the city had seen an uptick in calls regarding vaccinating 5-11 year-olds. She remarked on the high vaccination rate in the 12 and older population and seemed to conflate that with the 12–17-year-old vaccination rates. She incorrectly seemed to suggest that the rate of vaccinated children was higher than vaccinated adults. That made her wonder if there had been a lot of calls regarding 5–11-year-olds.
Interim Health Director Jensen said they had received calls ever since the FDA opened the vaccine up for 5-11 year-olds, so there seemed to be a lot of interest. She noted that she had ordered a little more vaccine so that that they could be prepared to continue to vaccinate people. [She did not give any specific numbers regarding calls received.]
Chairperson Spears also wanted to confirm for the record that the vaccines coming from the Federal government and being administered by the city were free. On the other hand, if people go through the healthcare systems [as opposed to the city] their insurance will be billed.
She asked what Partnership Community Health Clinic was doing regarding the Covid vaccine.
Health Officer Jensen did not specifically know what their plan was but she mentioned that Partnership, Red Shoes Inc, and some sort of multi-cultural organization were planning to hold a special vaccination clinic on November 19th about which more information would be out soon.
Committee member Kathleen Fuch mentioned that she saw in the newspaper that morning that FEMA had extended the free availability of vaccination until April. Previously that was supposed to end in January.
Chairperson Spears thought that was excellent and said that she had heard from Spectrum News that monoclonal antibodies were available in pharmacies now and that if a person tests positive at a pharmacy they can then get the monoclonal antibody shot right there. She thought that was good news and could help decrease hospitalizations. [It seems a little weird to me that during an official Board of Health meeting a members would be passing around vague half-complete information they heard on the news. It seems like the information they present should be a little more definitive than that. If I want to hear half-baked retellings of news articles, all I have to do is walk over to the water-cooler at my work.]
There were no more comments or questions and the committee moved onto the 3rd Quarter 2021 report which was second information item that had Covid-related information.
Interim Health Officer Jensen pointed out the total number of Covid vaccinations the city had given out as of the end of September. 33,686 this year as compared to 0 last year, since they weren’t offering them last year. [The vaccine didn’t become available until the very end of 2020.] She said that number didn’t really speak to the work that staff had done to deliver the vaccine and run the clinics. It had been a great effort and everybody involved had been a wonderful team.
She reported that during the 3rd quarter, the City of Appleton had started up their “regular” immunization clinics again to make sure that children had an opportunity to get caught up if they were behind or to stay up-to-date with their non-Covid vaccines. In fact, they were holding a clinic the day of the Board of Health meeting and she had been told that the schedule was full which she thought was good news.
She noted that home visits were down. Over the summer they had started back up some of the programs they had put on hold due to Covid, and those continue on a priority basis. The most recent surge in Covid this fall had impacted some of those services.
A board member asked who was eligible to participate in the “regular” immunization clinics.
Interim Health Officer Jensen said there were specific guidelines the city had to follow. People eligible for vaccines through the city included people who were uninsured or whose insurance did not cover vaccinations as well as people on BadgerCare or any other kind of medical assistance and people who were Native American.
The Covid vaccination clinics, on the other hand, were open to anybody. Interim Health Officer Jensen noted that it was “important to mention too, we do not—we will not ask for ID, insurance cards, or anything like that at our Covid clinics.” [An idle question springs to mind: how would vaccine passports work if thousands of people received vaccines but their identities were never verified?]
The Board had no further questions or discussions on that item, and they moved on to the 3rd Quarter Budget Performance Review
Interim Health Officer Jensen drew the Board’s attention to the 2730 Prevention Grant and the fact that it looks like they overspent that grant. She assured the Board that that was not the case and that there was a supplemental grant, but the way it was showing up was confusing.
Chairperson Spears asked if “we” [I took that to be the Health Department} were being subsidized by American Recovery Plan Act money.
Interim Health Jensen responded that they did have aa number of grants related to Covid. She mentioned three. One was an ELC grant, one was specifically for testing and contact tracing, and another was specifically for vaccinations. She said there were a couple other pots of money also available related to the ARPA funding.
Chairperson Spears wanted to know if they were coding staff timecards to keep track of that, to which Interim Health Officer Jensen assured her they were. In order to get the funds, the City needed to demonstrate that they were utilizing them correctly, so they had different timecard codes depending on whether they were helping with vaccination clinics or performing contact tracing, for example, so the city could know exactly how their activities fit under the scope of what each particular grant allows.
There were no further questions, to the Board moved onto the item about the approved noise variance.
There was only one approved noise variance on the agenda—for the Turkey Trot event.
Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) asked if the city was on a trajectory toward achieving pre-Covid noise variance request levels or was there a decrease in requests?
Interim Health Officer Jensen said that over the summer months and into early fall they had been picking up to pre-Covid levels, but this time of year they typically don’t have as many requests because there aren’t as many outdoor events. She thought that over the summer requests had definitely been picking up.
Those were all the items that touched on Covid during the Board of Health meeting.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=879511&GUID=2D6044D8-E93A-4752-BEED-9B2C9F0B3250
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