REGIONAL- COVID vaccinations for children ages 5 -11 with the Pfizer vaccine can commence immediately after Centers for Disease Control Director Rochelle Walensky gave final approval to the recommendation on Tuesday, and Gov. Tim Walz says Minnesota is ready to get started.
Touting a network of more than 1,100 pharmacies, health care systems, clinics, local public health and tribal health agencies, school clinics, and state-run community clinics already experienced in delivering vaccinations, Walz proclaimed the state’s readiness to deliver in a press release.
“The state is prepared for this critical moment in the battle against COVID-19,” Walz said. “Our goal is to ensure that the vaccine is widely, equitably, and efficiently available to all children ages 5-11. I encourage parents to get their children vaccinated when the shots are ready.”
Walz said the state will partner with school districts and charter schools to host vaccination clinics in school buildings. A survey of schools indicated 80 percent are interested in providing vaccination clinics.
Minnesota Department of Health Community Coordinators also will host immunization clinics for children and families.
However, St. Louis County Public Health Director Amy Westbrook on Tuesday encouraged parents to look first to their primary health care providers.
“We want kids and adults to seek vaccine through their health care systems,” Westbrook said. “We know that health care systems are really stretched right now and we don’t want to overrun them, but we certainly want people to have their health care homes.”
The county health department also offers at least two vaccine clinics a week on the Iron Range and in Duluth, Westbrook said. Now that vaccinations for younger children have been approved, Westbrook said the schedule will be adapted to allow for good accessibility and availability for working families and young children.
Who will get it
The new authorization adds about 500,000 Minnesota school-agers to the vaccine-eligible population, but as with vaccinations in other age groups, the unknown is just how many will actually get vaccinated.
Recent polling suggests getting 5-11-year-olds vaccinated against COVID will be an uphill battle. A relatively consistent finding across multiple surveys is that about one in three parents say they will definitely not get their child vaccinated. Some find that up to another third of parents plan to take a “wait and see” approach and delay vaccinating their children. The most optimistic finding was a Gallup poll indicating that 55 percent of parents plan to get their children vaccinated, a number Gallup says has remained constant for months.
The Gallup poll also reported that Republicans, parents who are unvaccinated themselves, and parents without a college degree were particularly likely to resist vaccinating their child, including after-school and Saturday clinics.
There’s no word about a possible incentive program for 5-11-year-olds yet, but the response to the state’s “Kids Deserve a Shot” program for ages 12-17 that offers $200 gift cards and a chance in a drawing for $100,000 state college scholarships has been mixed at best.
Last week the governor’s office reported that first dose vaccinations among 12 to 17-year-olds were up nearly 40 percent in just one week since the launch of the program. Digging into the raw numbers, that represented an increase of only 600 students statewide over the prior week when there was no incentive program and represents two-tenths of one percent of the 262,000 who have received a first dose.
In St. Louis County, as of latest data Tuesday, 48 percent of those 12 to 18 years old have received at least one shot of vaccine.
“Reflecting on our current rates compared to pre-incentive months, they don’t appear to have increased significantly,” Westbrook said.
Meanwhile, the state sweetened the incentive pot for 12-17-year-olds on Tuesday by adding “Minnesota Experience” drawings to the program. While $200 gift cards are available only to those who are newly vaccinated since the start of the program, all fully vaccinated youth are eligible to enter drawings for various prizes largely oriented toward professional and college sports. There’s also a North Country incentive in the mix, a Sunday dogsled day trip for four in Ely offered by Wintergreen Dogsled Lodge. More information about the “Kids Deserve a Shot” program can be found online at https://mn.gov/covid19/vaccine/vaccine-rewards/kids-deserve-a-shot/.
Schools
New data is now being provided for schools with more than five COVID cases during two-week reporting periods, that appear on the state’s affected schools list, including 26 schools in St. Louis County.
ISD 2142 stopped disclosing individual school case numbers in September beyond the standard notifications to parents and staff. While numbers fewer than five in a reporting period are not revealed, North Woods Secondary School had between 15 and 28 cases in the month of September, with no additional reports for the first two weeks of October.
ISD 2142’s Cherry School, at Iron Junction, had the highest case totals among all St. Louis County schools listed. From Sept. 5 through Oct. 16, between 30 and 47 cases were reported in the elementary wing, and an additional 25 to 38 cases in secondary grades. The outbreak was at its highest the last two weeks of September, with only 5 to 9 cases each in elementary and secondary sections the first two weeks in October.
The district’s three other schools haven’t had more than five cases in two-week period and haven’t been on the state’s list. Likewise, Ely ISD 696 has avoided inclusion on the list. Ely, which announces new cases on its Facebook page to keep patrons and the public informed, reported one new case on Monday and two on Tuesday, bring the school year total to 12.
Westbrook reinforced the message that vaccinations provide the best protection against getting COVID, and in lessening the severity of the disease and the chances of hospitalization or death in the event of a breakthrough case. While cases among children have been fewer and less severe than in adults, the latest wave driven by the Delta variant of the virus has brought with it increased concern for the welfare of children.
“We do see pediatric (hospital) admissions,” Westbrook said. “it’s less than five percent of our total hospital admissions overall in the county, but early in the pandemic, it was probably less than one percent of our hospital admissions. So, we do see severe illness in adolescents and younger age people. The virus, as long as it has a population to cycle through, we’re going to continue to see community transmission go through our communities and kids, a population that spends a lot of time together and playing together.”
Persistent surge
Health officials were hopeful that a recent decline in COVID case numbers statewide and in the county signaled the beginning of the end of the pandemic’s fourth wave in the state, but the numbers have risen again, and a Mayo Clinic projection suggest there won’t be a decline until later this month.
From a peak on Oct. 5, new cases in St. Louis County started dropping, but the trend reversed on Oct. 19 after hitting a seven-day average of 88.1 the day before. Nine days later, on Oct. 28, the average stood at 96.6, with 120 new cases reported that day.
Hospitalizations of COVID patients requiring ICU beds has declined slightly, but overall availability of ICU beds remains tight in northeast Minnesota, with only seven beds available on Tuesday. Non-ICU hospital beds are also close to capacity in the region, with only 59 of 685 beds available.
“October was our third highest number of hospitalizations since the pandemic started,” Westbrook said. “They really have been in a tenuous situation. Staffing is certainly affecting their capacity, as is the issue of people who delayed preventive care due to COVID, and COVID needs. Those are the three big factors that are impacting hospital capacity, and long-term care staffing, too.”
The situational bottleneck caused by a shortage of long-term care facility placement for COVID patients who are ready to leave the hospital but still need extended institutional care has become severe. In the Twin Cities area, Benedictine St. Gertrude’s in Shakopee has become the state’s first alternative care site to relieve the hospital capacity crisis by accepting 30 transitional patients from area hospitals, staffed by the COVID-19 Emergency Staffing Pool and temporary nursing assistants from the Minnesota National Guard.
“This is an all-hands-on-deck moment for our hospitals,” Gov. Walz said.
Local data
Westbrook said she would characterize the COVID case situation in northern St. Louis County as level to slightly declining, and data for the North Country zip codes monitored by the Timberjay support that. New weekly cases were reported in all six zips, the highest number in Cook with 12. Ely had seven new cases, Embarrass had five, Tower, three, Orr, two, and Soudan, one.