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CHEYENNE A recent increase in COVID-19 cases in Laramie County can be attributed to a few large gatherings and vaccination rates that are still too low, said Kathy Emmons, executive director of the Cheyenne-Laramie County Department of Health .
These events include a big wedding, a church gathering, and graduation parties. She said there was also a nursing home that had seen an increase in the number of cases affecting both staff and patients.
I would say the increases are due to gatherings of unvaccinated people, and all it takes is one positive person, Emmons said. If people are not vaccinated, it spreads like wildfire.
Emmons said Laramie County’s case count slowly started to rise again in mid-March, but around May 10 the county began to see a significant increase in the number of cases.
Wyoming Department of Health figures on Wednesday put Laramie County at 236 active cases comparable to the county’s number of cases in January, Emmons said of a total of 551 active cases in the state.
At the Cheyenne Regional Medical Center, 21 patients were hospitalized with COVID-19 on Wednesday, including eight in the intensive care unit and five on ventilators. Five people have died from the virus in the past eight days.
On Sunday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention classified Laramie and Hot Springs counties as having a high level of community transmission, meaning there have been more than 100 new cases per 100,000 people in the past seven days. Only 9.5% of US counties are currently in the high category.
On Thursday, June 10, the Laramie County Sheriff’s Department announced that it had reinstated its masking requirement for visitors to its building due to a recent spate of COVID cases in the Laramie County Jail.
The county has seen an increase in the Delta variant, Emmons said. First identified in India, the CDC said this variant now accounts for at least 10% of COVID-19 cases in the United States.
If it happens here like everywhere else, it’s going to continue to pose more challenges in terms of spread and disease, so we just need people to get vaccinated, she said.
At a meeting of the Cheyenne-Laramie County Board of Health on Tuesday, Emmons described the COVID-19 situation in the county as not being good.
At one point, we had dropped to single digits, and over the past two weeks, we just picked up aggressively, Emmons said at the meeting. So, this is definitely not a good sign.
Recent vaccination rates in the county have been very stagnant, Emmons said. At its peak, the health service was vaccinating around 400 people every day, up from around 15 at the start of last week.
Of those in the county who are 12 years and older, and therefore eligible to be vaccinated, 49.3% have received at least their first dose of the vaccine, according to the CDC. This places Laramie County in fourth place in Wyoming, out of 23 counties. Teton County leads the way with 88.3% of its eligible population having received at least one first dose, followed by 55% in Fremont County and 51.3% in Albany County, the reports showed on Sunday. CDC data. Community transmission is currently considered moderate in Teton, Fremont and Albany counties, according to the CDC.
Emmons stressed that the COVID-19 vaccine continues to be free, regardless of where a person receives it. Providers can ask patients to bring their insurance information to bill for administrative fees, but those without insurance do not pay these fees.
At Tuesday’s board of health meeting, President Dr Darryl Bindschadler spoke about stagnant vaccination rates in counties linked to recent spikes in the number of cases. He referred to the adage: You can lead a horse to the watering hole, but you cannot make it drink.
It’s interesting to me that where infections occur in terms of age has certainly changed, and certainly those most at risk are largely protected or have died, they are gone, Bindschadler said. We can do what we can do, and I don’t think we should waste much sleep over the fact that we were in this situation.
In Laramie County, 80.4% of people 65 and older, those generally at higher risk of more severe cases of COVID-19, received at least one dose of the vaccine, CDC data showed on Sunday. .
I don’t think we should give up, but damn it, I don’t think anyone has any innovative ideas, continued Bindschadler, a doctor trained in public health. The idea of giving $ 5 million to [get] the vaccine is not the answer to understanding putting your neighbor at risk, as well as yourself. If they can’t get this simple message out after all the deluge of information, then someone’s going to suffer, and right now it’s our county, which is a shame.
Laramie County health official Dr Stan Hartman added there were two ways to get herd immunity: a majority of people getting vaccinated or a whole bunch of people getting sick.
It appears that in Laramie County they were going for a mixed model, Hartman said at the meeting.
In an interview, Emmons said she always wakes up in the middle of the night wondering what the health department could do differently to motivate people in the county to get vaccinated. Even so, the comments of her fellow health officials reflected a reality check for her.
At what point do we say that we have done our best and the patient is no longer listening or is no longer willing to do what needs to be done to be safe? And it’s difficult, because obviously I take it incredibly seriously, she said.
We’ve provided plenty of water, and people have to decide what to do with it now, Emmons continued, referring to the saying used by Bindschadler at the board of health meeting. It’s really very disturbing and disappointing because, on our side, we see all the patients who go through the hospital. … It’s really hard for us because we see the reality of it, and it’s hard to believe that people don’t think it’s real when we see the effects every day.
Emmons also said at the meeting that the hangar spoke with Governor Mark Gordon and suggested introducing vaccination incentives for Wyomingites, as many other states have done.
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