Local government pushes for herd immunity
Reaching a 70 percent vaccination rate could greatly reduce COVID-19’s spread through Albany County, but the vaccination rate has slowed to a crawl.
Both the Laramie City Council and the Albany County Commission voted Tuesday to support the county health officer’s goal of achieving a 70 percent vaccination rate.
So far, just 51 percent of the county’s adults — and just 44 percent of its total population — are fully vaccinated.
That 70-percent goal is one estimate given by public health experts for the vaccination rate required for herd immunity — the point at which the coronavirus can no longer spread unchecked and has a more difficult time finding and infecting new hosts.
That will be vital for the health and safety of those who cannot, for medical reasons, take the vaccine themselves, County Public Health Officer Jean Allais told the city council.
“We need to get to a point where so few people have COVID that even those who can’t be protected — like the immunocompromised — won’t get a chance to get sick,” she said.
Allais added that factors such population density, mask usage and degree of social distancing alter the actual percentage needed for herd immunity.
“It’s really not possible to pin down a specific number of where we need to be,” she said. “Even if we knew what that number was, it’s not like a light switch. You can’t just turn it on and when we hit that specific number, COVID’s gone. It’s more like a receding tide. The cases will start to ebb overall. The spread of disease gradually slows, and as we increase vaccine coverage, the virus transmission decreases.”
But it will be a struggle for Albany County to reach anywhere near 70 percent vaccinated if current trends persist.
The vaccination rate in the greater Laramie area has plateaued. New individuals continue to get the jab every day. But the rate of new vaccinations has slowed to a trickle after an initial burst when the vaccine first became available and a bump following the CDC’s announcement that vaccinated individuals can leave their masks at home.
The pattern in Albany County mirrors that in the rest of the state, though the Albany’s plateau is higher than most other Wyoming counties.
Blue counties, and blue states, are more vaccinated than their red counterparts. While Albany County has a high rate of vaccination by Wyoming standards, the county — and especially the state — are less vaccinated than the rest of the country.
Wyoming is currently the fourth least vaccinated of all U.S. states and territories.
County health officers, ICU doctors and public health experts warn that such a low rate of vaccination is dangerous for the unvaccinated individuals — almost all hospitalizations and deaths are now among the unvaccinated — and dangerous for society, as it gives the virus more hosts to infect, more chances to mutate and more opportunity to develop a vaccine-resistant variant.
“What we’re seeing now is that the states that have the lowest vaccination rates have the highest transmission rates,” Allais told the council.
Both the council and the commission voted unanimously to support the 70 percent vaccination goal.
Challenges and fears
Community leaders are already thinking about how to encourage more vaccination.
Allais is working with a committee that includes representatives from the city and county, as well as from the faith community, Albany County School District No. 1, the University of Wyoming and Ivinson Memorial Hospital.
“We’re going at it from a multi-faceted approach,” Allais said.
She said that involves combating misinformation and working with primary care physicians to provide their patients with accurate information. Primary care physicians are often individuals’ most trusted sources of health information.
The group’s approach also involves bringing vaccines to people rather than asking them to come in. The group is even thinking about launching an incentive program — an idea that has seen some positive results in other cities and states.
When the vaccine is finally approved for children under 12 — the only age group yet to be approved — there could be another surge in vaccinations.
But another event in the near future could undermine efforts to slow or stop the spread.
“We in Albany County face a particular concern,” said resident Brett Glass, offering public comment. “In only a few weeks, we are going to get an influx of thousands of teenage and 20-something students coming back to the University of Wyoming. It’s an age group which tends to consider itself invulnerable and many of whom will not be vaccinated and will likely be bringing the Delta variant to us here in Laramie.”
Glass is perhaps right to be worried. When students returned to the university for the fall 2020 semester, it resulted in outbreaks so severe, the campus shut down. Cases surged in Albany County, making it the state’s worst hotspot.
Glass asked the council to go beyond the current resolution supporting the 70-percent goal and draft another resolution in which the city asks university leadership to require the COVID-19 vaccination of its students.
“It’s very important that we do this because, again, this is likely to particularly harm us here in Albany County if it’s not done,” Glass said. “The university already requires MMR vaccines and so this would simply be consistent with that policy. I realize there’s a chance that politics might get in the way here, but they shouldn’t. The virus doesn’t care about politics. It will opportunistically affect anyone who is not vaccinated and will harm our community if it’s not controlled.”
The virus in Albany County
There are currently more than 20 active cases of COVID-19 in Albany County.
The county has seen more than 4,700 confirmed and probable cases since March 2020, a figure representing about 12 percent of the county population. Nearly half of these cases were among 19-29 year-olds. Albany County has more college-aged people than any other county in Wyoming, but this age group is still overrepresented in the COVID-19 statistics.
Albany County has lost 18 residents to COVID-19 — many but not all of them older adults.
Just less than 44 percent of the county population is vaccinated, compared to just 32 percent for the state. Also more vaccinated are Albany County’s adolescents (29% vs. the state’s 12%), adults (51% vs. the state’s 41%) and senior citizens (72% vs. the state’s 61%).
These numbers are only slightly higher than they were a month ago, when 41 percent of Albany County — and 49 percent of its adults — had been vaccinated.
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