[Danielle Weston]

I dialed into the Williamson County Weekly Vaccine call (held every Friday) this afternoon and I want to pass on what was shared. The last time I was on this call was back in January. I wanted to get on today because I have been watching the data (number of cases and hospitalizations) drastically decrease over the last two and a half weeks in our area and state wide. These much lower numbers are reflecting the impact of the vaccine and herd immunity.

The agenda was:
Covid Vaccine & Hospitalizations Update
County & Cities Health District Operations
County Vaccine Waitlist & Appointments
Vaccine Call Center
Vaccine Registration Technical Assistance Sites

They reported a decrease in demand for the vaccine this week compared to recent weeks.

The population of WilCo is 566,000. According to the county dashboard, yesterday there were 29 new cases in the county and today there were 26. For perspective, in late January, WilCo was reporting around 400 new cases every day.

They reported (consistent with their dashboard) that a full 25% of county residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine and 10.1% have received both. Recently the county dropped from “Red” phase to “Orange” for the first time since November 2020.

They reported that the number of residents on the vaccine wait list who are in the 1a, 1b and 1c categories has dropped to just below 4k. Apparently this is much lower than where this number has been and they expressed much optimism at this success. Furthermore, the majority of these 4k people are in the 1b category. I wasn’t allowed to speak on the call but was able to type a question in the query box about access to the vaccine for school employees. They read my question aloud and expressed confidence in their efforts working closely with school district administrations and relayed that teachers who want the vaccine have had the opportunity. They added that if school districts in the county have staff members who have not had the opportunity to be vaccinated that administrators should reach out to the county Emergency Management Director right away because they are eager to remedy that.

They added that there have been many no-shows for vaccine appointments and said this was probably due to residents getting vaccinated elsewhere.

Finally, 31 home bound residents received the vaccine in their homes this week.

***

I also want to share some data from Travis County here as well. Keep in mind this is information from official state and county Covid dashboards/websites. This was obviously not discussed on the WilCo call today.

Travis County has a population of 1.3M. Yesterday the number of new cases there was down to 56 and today it was 85. They moved down to Stage 3 a week ago due to drastically reduced number of cases and hospitalizations. At least 25% of Travis Co residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine and 11% have received both vaccines.

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