JACKSON, Wyo. —Teton County health officials provided the community with a COVID-19 update today, March 19. The Health Department also shared an update in terms of the vaccination efforts in the county.
Teton County Health Officer, Dr. Travis Riddell discussed the recent spike in cases with 54% being attributed to known contacts and 46% attributed to community spread. He said, “We likely have the more contagious variants circulating our community” adding that “when our numbers decline, people ease up on the precautions they are taking which in turns causes the numbers to tick back up again.”
As of March 18, 2021, Teton County has given out 8,027 first doses of the COVID vaccine.
The Teton County Health Department is currently vaccinating individuals included in Phase 1C and individuals who are in Phase 1A and 1B who have not already received the COVID vaccine. According to the Health Department, Teton County’s Phase 1 registration has over 7,000 individuals listed.
During the 28th COVID-19 community update today, Rachael Wheeler, MPH Public Health Response Coordinator for Teton County Health Department, provided the community with a vaccination schedule update. “We are offering, with the help of St. Johns’s Health, between 1,500 and 1,600 COVID vaccine appointments each week,” she said.
The vaccine appointments are currently split between those ages 50-64, individuals with chronic conditions, and essential workers. Those ages 50-64 will be selected based on age with the oldest individuals receiving appointments first. Essential workers and individuals with a chronic disease will be randomly selected weekly.
The longer a person is on the registration list the greater the chances are to be selected. An additional 100 individuals are selected from the registration list to be on the waitlist for a COVID vaccine that week. If they are not pulled from the waitlist, those individuals receive appointments the following week.
Wheeler explained that the Health Department is working to increase the number of vaccine appointments, “we are hoping that we will be able to open COVID vaccines for the general public by mid-April at the latest.”
During the update, the panelists discussed the vaccines and current results, “All three vaccines have been shown to reduce hospitalization and death by 100%,” said Wheeler.
Wheeler also explained the vaccine supply, “I know a lot of people in our community are clamoring for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and I will let you know we had very few doses in March, we had about 300, those have been given out and we have not heard from the state how many we will receive in April so if you have been selected for a covid vaccine appointment we would encourage you to sign up for one of our Pfizer or Moderna clinics.”
Dr. Paul Beaupre also weighed in during the update. He explained that St. John’s had zero COVID patients from last Sunday until Tuesday. One patient was admitted on Tuesday but was going to be discharged today he said. He also discussed recent vaccine results.
“We got some very encouraging news this week from the country at large and that was that a pregnant woman who had received the vaccine gave birth, and the baby was tested and the baby had antibodies for COVID. This woman had never had COVID so it is true that the vaccine produced antibodies in the fetus,” said Dr. Beaupre, adding, “This is really encouraging news, I know a lot of women in the community are trying to make decisions on pregnancy and vaccination. This is a step in a positive direction in advocating for getting vaccinated while pregnant or while considering to become pregnant.”
