Sublette COVID-19 update – Dec. 23, 2020
by Pinedale Online!
December 24, 2020
The Sublette COVID-19 Task Group gave their regular weekly update on Wednesday, Dec. 23rd, a day ahead of the usual Thursday schedule due to the Christmas holiday. The first COVID-19 vaccines are expected to arrive in Sublette County sometime next week. They have a priority list from the State saying how the first doses will go, mostly to frontline medical people and then to vulnerable risk groups such as the Sublette Center staff and residents. Later doses will go to front line essential workers and people over 75 years of age. The third round will go to people age 65-74 years of age and those with high risk medical conditions.
The vaccine we are getting is the Moderna vaccine. It involves two doses, 28 days apart. Right now, this vaccine is only approved for people over the age of 18. Sublette County Public Health Officer, Dr. Brendan Fitzsimmons, MD, assured that the vaccine is safe and effective.
Sublette County Public Health is working on setting up systems of notification for how people can get signed up to get the vaccine. Once they have the details worked out they will get information to the newspapers, radio, Facebook, weekly video updates, Pinedale Online, and Alert Sense. They will have scheduling software so people can easily sign up. They will also have a Be Safe app that people can get and report on if they have any side effects to the vaccine to help health officials monitor the vaccination program.
As of Dec. 23rd, Wyoming has over 42,000 confirmed or probable cases of COVID-19 and 373 deaths. With a population of about 550,000 people, that is a .06% death rate across the entire population in the state. The majority of those deaths are in the elderly age group with people often having underlying health conditions putting them more at risk for complications. Sublette County has 579 confirmed or probable cases and 5 deaths attributed to COVID-19. Two of those were people were living in other states at the time of their deaths, but the way the numbers are counted assign them to their county of permanent residence. The county death rate attributed to COVID-19 is also about .06% across the entire population. For people in Sublette County who have contracted the disease, the recovery rate is 99.94% over the past ten months of the pandemic. The County is doing ongoing surveillance testing on approximately 75 people per week. Last week, the Task Force said 95-98% of those tests have been coming back negative for COVID-19.
The county-wide mask order went into effect on November 16th. New positive cases of COVID-19 this past week have been significantly down in Sublette County from the tens and 20s range of mid-November. Since December 10th, the number of new COVID-19 positive cases has been mostly in the 1-4 per day range, a couple of times with a high of 8. The county-wide and state mask orders are in effect through January 8th.
Find current information about the status of COVID-19 in Sublette County here: www.sublettewycovid.com
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