As the number of COVID-19 cases decreases, some Kane County Board members say it may be time to close the mass vaccination site in Batavia that is currently set to operate through May.
While Kane County is still considered in high transmission of the virus, the number of COVID-19 cases has significantly decreased. Uche Onwuta, Kane County Health Department director of health protection, said residents should continue to wear a mask in public settings until they see around 10 to 50 cases per 100,000 residents. Currently, the county has 231 cases per 100,000 residents, a sharp decline from the 914 cases per 100,000 people on Jan. 18.
“You can see why there is concern with the public health community over what to do as our cases are coming down and people are getting restless about COVID guidance,” Onwuta said at the Wednesday meeting of the Kane County Board Public Health Committee. “We are making very good progress, it’s just we are not there yet.”
Committee member Vern Tepe said the Batavia mass vaccination site is currently serving less than 100 people per day. He said the health department has done a great job at communicating other vaccination events held throughout the county and if they continue to do so, he questioned if the county should continue to run the Batavia site.
Currently, around 77.5% of the county’s population 5 years older and up have had at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Chairman of the Public Health Committee Jarrett Sanchez echoed Tepe’s comments and said the board should seriously look at shutting down the mass vaccination site.
“It’s time to move on to our next model for mass vaccination,” Sanchez said, which would be using hospitals, pharmacies and pop-up clinics for the vaccination effort.
Currently, the county has a weekly test positivity rate of 5.85% and hospital admissions for people with COVID-19 decreased to 72 people total in Kane County for the seven days ending on Feb. 13, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Onwuta said the positivity rate data is no longer necessarily an accurate measure of how many residents have COVID-19 because many are using at-home test kits. She said the CDC is considering looking at other metrics, like hospitalizations and ICU bed availability, to track the virus now.
But the COVID-19 numbers still have not fully stabilized, Onwuta said, pointing to a weekly average of 175 cases per week, but on Tuesday the county saw 332 cases in one day.
“It tells you how fluid things are,” Onwuta said. “Things keep going up and down until it finally stabilizes. It is not just a one-day effort.”
As of Feb. 10, there are 56 active outbreaks in the county with nine at schools or daycares and 47 at public gathering locations, she said. Outbreaks are defined as three or more COVID-19 cases that may have a shared exposure.
There is not a current date planned for closing the Batavia mass vaccination site. The county can continue to operate the site through May, according to agreements signed for the facility in January. The Kane County Board will discuss further steps concerning the future of the site.
