Mass COVID-19 vaccination sites will likely reopen this fall to handle the large number of people wanting booster shots when they become available, DuPage County Health Department Executive Director Karen Ayala said.
The demand will be even greater if a vaccination for children below the age of 12 is approved, Ayala told the DuPage County Board this week.
“We are making plans, we are working with our community partners and we are exploring ways of reinstituting our mass vaccination clinics for those efforts,” she said.
DuPage had a mass vaccination clinic open at the county fairgrounds in Wheaton until earlier this summer, when demand for the shots dropped off and they were able to move the service back to its office at 111 N. County Farm Road, also in Wheaton.
Plans for how clinics will be set up won’t be finalized until U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorizes the administration of a third dose of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine. As of right now, it’s not known if a second dose the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will be authorized.
How and where a mass vaccination clinic or clinics will be set up depends on the accessibility of the booster shot at other locations, such as pharmacies, health care systems and care facilities, health department spokeswoman Stephanie Calvillo said.
The approval of a vaccine safe for children also remains an unknown part of the equation.
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Jonathan Pinsky, Edward Hospital’s medical director infection control and prevention, agreed with Ayala’s assessment of what will be needed in the fall.
“I think we’re going to anticipate that when booster shots are available to the general population, there will be a lot of demand of the vaccine,” he said.
Edward-Elmhurst Health spokesman Keith Hartenberger said demand at their hospitals and clinics for vaccines remains steady and manageable right now, with 489 people vaccinated at their sites the week of Aug. 18 and 472 a week earlier. The vast majority received the Pfizer shot, data shows.
Vaccination rates in DuPage County continue to be among the highest in the state. As of Friday, nearly 583,000 people — about 63% of the population — were fully vaccinated, according to the Illinois Department of Health.
Ayala said the “vaccine is the very best strategy to get us out of this pandemic.”
She also shared with the county board the DuPage COVID-19 hospitalization numbers, which have risen over the summer. It’s gone from 20 people being hospitalized on July 15 to 115 as of Aug. 17, with 24 of those patients needing ICU beds, she said.
Since May 1, more than 91% of the county’s confirmed COVID-19 cases and 95% of the cases needing hospitalization were people who were not vaccinated or partially vaccinated, Ayala said. More than 90% of the people who have died of the virus in that same period also were unvaccinated or partially vaccinated, she said.
“If we have COVID individuals in those ICU beds and we have residents who have a heart attack or who have a car accident or something else requiring an ICU bed, then our capacity to address those concerns is minimized,” she said.
Edward reported that 24 of their inpatients Friday were being treated for COVID-19. Of that number, 18 were not vaccinated.
“There’s a stark difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated (patients),” Pinsky said. “The unvaccinated tend to be younger and sicker. Over July and August, the bulk of the patients were in their 40s and 50s.”
DuPage County remains at the “high” level for transmission rates on the list compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is true for all counties in Illinois but one. The only good news is there has been a small dip in the county’s seven-day case positivity rate, the CDC’s data tracker shows.
Naperville has had 414 active coronavirus cases over the last 14 days, according to the most recent COVID-19 dashboard data compiled by the city. Two-week case counts have been at their highest in the Naperville area since early May.