Okeechobee Health Department official says COVID-19 positive rate high

Posted 1/15/21

COVID-19 cases in Okeechobee County are on the rise, Tiffany Collins of FDOH in Okeechobee County told the Okeechobee County Commissioners.

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Okeechobee Health Department official says COVID-19 positive rate high

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OKEECHOBEE — COVID-19 cases in Okeechobee County are on the rise, Tiffany Collins of the Florida Department of Health in Okeechobee County told the Okeechobee County Commissioners at their Jan. 14 meeting.

Since the pandemic started, Okeechobee County has had 2,844 positive cases of COVID-19 with 279 hospitalized and 55 deaths. She said as of Jan. 12, there were 27 patients in Raulerson Hospital whose primary diagnosis is COVID-19.

All of the ICU beds are in use, she said, although not necessarily for COVID-19 patients.

She said she has seen all of the death certificates and all of the deaths reported as COVID-19 had a primary or secondary diagnosis of COVID-19. If the death was due to homicide, suicide, car accident any kind of trauma, even if they had COVID-19, the death was not included in those COVID-19 death numbers, she said.

“The positivity rate is very high in Okeechobee right now as it is across the state of Florida,” said Collins.

For the past 14 days, Okeechobee County had a positivity rate of 22.07%. The county had 461 COVID-19 positive cases in the last two weeks.

“For contact tracing purposes we want to keep community wide transmission under 10%,” she said. If the rate is higher than 10% it is impossible to trace the source of the exposure to the virus.

She said Okeechobee County did not receive any COVID-19 vaccine this week.

Okeechobee County received a total of 1,800 since the week of New Year’s Eve, she explained. That total includes 1,000 doses to the health department. She said the hospital also gave the health department some doses from the 500 doses sent to the hospital.

So far the health department has done 1,269 vaccinations, she continued. They have used all of the vaccine they received to date.

“We don’t have eyes out on what the feds are distributing to the state more than a week ahead of time,” she said. So far, over the four weeks the state has shipped vaccine, the health department received two shipments of 500 doses each.

“There hasn’t been any kind of allotment,” Collins explained.

“Anyone can get their vaccine from anywhere,” she said. In addition to the demand for vaccinations from county residents, those from other counties are also trying to make appointments here.

“We’ve had thousands of calls around appointment time,” she said. “We don’t have enough lines to take those calls, so there are a lot of busy signals, a lot of dropped calls.

“We are taking appointments only for the amount of vaccine we have on hand,” she said.

Collins said on Thursday, Jan. 7, the health department had 680 appointments to make. “We had a line out the door when we opened,” she said, adding they also took calls for appointments. “The appointments were gone by 9:30 a.m.”

She said the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommendation is whoever vaccinates should make that second appointment, but “our directive was we don’t hold onto vaccines.

“I don’t have the vaccine on hand. It’s your responsibility to make your second appointment,” she said.

“You can go anywhere and get it.”

She said they had people from other counties coming to Okeechobee and they could not turn them down.

Collins explained those who are vaccinated are logged into the Florida Shots database. Before a second dose is administered, they will check the database to make sure the person receives the same vaccine as the first shot (Moderna or Pfizer) and they gap between doses is the right number of days.

“I can look up each person in the Florida Shots database to see where they received their first dose and what kind of vaccine they received,” she said.
She said people ask the best way to make an appointment but she can’t tell them. She said they take in-person appointments and phone appointments at the same time. They might wait in line at the health department and not get an appointment.

Collins said they don’t want to encourage people to come to the health department to make the appointments because they also have people coming there for COVID-19 tests as well as people visiting the building for other health department services.

She said she has to cut off line if there is not space for distancing.

“I don’t want people loitering in the health department,” she said.

However, those who stop by at the health department while vaccinations are underway could be lucky, she continued. “We have people who don’t show up for appointments. We have people who do show up but for some reason can’t have the shot that day,” she said. When that happens, if someone happens to be at the building asking about vaccinations they might get that shot. Once a vial is open, they have to use all of the doses, she explained.

“It’s a catch-22 if you have to stay in line,” said Commissioner David Hazellief. He said they don’t want people gathering in large groups because that increases the chance of spreading the virus.

The heavy volume phone calls for vaccination appointments are making it difficult for those who want to make an appointment for testing and other services get through, she said. It also makes it very difficult for those out the health department to call out.

“My only concern is the appointments,” said Mayor Dowling Watford. “We have some smart people in this county. It seems like we could come up with some better way to do the appointments. If we could just get people on a waiting list so they know they don’t have to keep calling on that day.”

He said the complaint he keeps hearing is that seniors can’t get an appointment.

Collins said the state is working on an online system.

It appears the seniors in rural Florida continue to take a back seat to those 65 and older in the urban areas, said Commission Chair Terry Burroughs.

“I’ve made my displeasure known with the state about how the rural counties have been treated,” said Mitch Smeykal of the Okeechobee Emergency Management Office.

“We’re being disenfranchised as far as I am concerned,” said Burroughs.

Smeykal said he just received information about next week’s vaccine distribution and “it’s not good.”

He said Okeechobee County will get 300 doses on Tuesday or Wednesday next week.

Smeykal also warned the public about a vaccine scam that includes Okeechobee County on Craig’s List, people are scheduling appointments and being charged, he said. Anybody asking for money in exchange for scheduling an appointment - it’s a scam. Anyone who is asked to pay for an appointment should report it to 1-866-9-NO-SCAM (866-966-7226).

He said Gadsden County had vaccine stolen from their Florida Hospital location.

BOCC, commission, COVID, covid-19, coronavirus

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