Lake County— The pandemic surge is plateauing but not dropping down completely, Interim Public Health Officer, Dr. Gary Pace, reported in a pre-recorded presentation to the Lake County Board of Supervisors Tuesday. Pace and Dr. Charlie Evans co-share the role of acting public health officer for the county until a permanent one is appointed.
“We’ve not seen cases from the (Lake County) Fair yet,” Pace said. “Next week or so will tell us a lot. I continue to worry about fall and winter. We will see spread and illness. For the most part, people who are vaccinated are being spared from illness and death. If another surge hits, we’ll see numbers climbing up again.”
As of Sept. 16, 2021, 32,400 people in the county have been fully vaccinated, and 18,100 eligible have not been vaccinated. “That’s a big field of vulnerable people COVID could rip through,” Pace remarked.
Of the fully vaccinated, 71% are Native Americans, 57% are Latinos, and 54% are whites.
And of the COVID cases in the past month, 87% were unvaccinated and 65% were in the 20 to 64 age range. By location, among the unvaccinated cases, one in three lived in Clearlake, one in five in Lakeport, one in 11 in Kelseyville and one in 11 in Lucerne. COVID testing has dropped and the county has climbed down to 21st in the state ranking with a testing positivity rate of 42 cases per 100,000. .
The Sept. 22, 2021, data on the Public Health website showed the total number of confirmed cases in the county since last year is now at 6,013 and a death total of 90 as of press time Wednesday.
Pace said schools are dealing with a lot of cases now, causing disruption in classrooms. He noted, “Parents of school kids can help a lot by getting vaccinated and getting their children vaccinated. It seems parents are bringing the virus home and kids are getting it from them.”
As a reminder, Pace mentioned the availability of a mobile vaccination van that the state has loaned to the county. The van will stop at different sites in the county for six more weeks to provide those eligible a convenient way to get vaccinated. Pace also indicated that for those who are homebound and unable to leave the house to go to a vaccination site, public health workers can go to their homes to administer the vaccines. Interested parties may contact Public Health to make the request.
“We all need to take steps to keep our community safe and keep hospitals open for sick people,” Pace said.
Other perspectives
Making Zoom appearances at Tuesday’s BOS meeting, representatives from the Native American and Latino communities provided COVID-19 updates.
Ernesto Padilla, Chief Executive Officer of the Tribal Health Center(THC), indicated that everyone in the Native American community who wanted to be vaccinated has been vaccinated and the THC will continue to offer COVID and flu vaccinations.
He said that since the start of 2021, the THC has administered some 4,012 vaccines, of which, 1,000 were to Native Americans. A total of 2,900 patients have been vaccinated, including Native Americans.
“From the start, we had ‘stand–downs’ on the weekends of February, March and June,” Padilla explained. “Demand started strong in February, averaging 300 per weekend. Demands are dropping. We’ve worked on outreach with Public Health. We can only vaccinate our patients.”
The THC outreach in June and July included visiting the tribal rancherias to vaccinate residents and staff. Padilla said demand at the rancherias was low, with vaccinations averaging between five and 10 at each of them.
Angela Cuellar Marroquin, Lake County Office of Education’s (LCOE) Director of the Child Care Planning Council/Lake County Quality Counts System, shared some of the vaccination efforts LCOE has taken.
To address the language barrier, Cuellar-Marroquin said, “We opened up a specific time on Fridays, 9 a.m.to 5 p.m., for the Spanish-speaking. We had five different phone numbers. The first day, we made 300 appointments. We had most of the farm workers. It was good to see that we jumped to 19% after one month. So we continue to share on Facebook information on whom to call about COVID and other resources, such as food.”
Cuellar-Marroquin also said that LCOE staff continues to share with the Latino community messaging provided by Public Health and to encourage those who were vaccinated to share their stories and the reasons why they got vaccinated. “We were excited to see we’ve built trust with everybody,” she said, acknowledging that misinformation had been a primary reason in vaccination hesitancy. “At the beginning, Latinos had the highest number of cases. Now, they don’t lead the group.”
Agendas of public meetings and supporting documents are available for public inspection in the Lake County Courthouse, Board of Supervisors Office, First Floor, Room 109, 255 North Forbes Street, Lakeport, California; and online at https://countyoflake.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx
