More people in Olmsted Co. have now received vaccine than tested positive for Covid

As new Covid-19 case numbers continue to slowly decline in the Rochester area, the ‘finish line’ of the pandemic — while still some months away — is coming into clearer view. 

Vaccination reports show that a larger proportion of Olmsted County residents have been vaccinated against the virus than the proportion of residents who have tested positive for Covid-19. While 10,248 cases have been reported since March, the latest vaccine data (posted on the Olmsted County Covid-19 dashboard) says 14,678 Olmsted County residents have received at least one dose of vaccine. 

That gives the county a 9.6 percent vaccination rate, the second-highest rate of all counties in Minnesota. (Mahnomen County, a largely rural county in northwest Minnesota, has vaccinated 712 of its roughly 5,500 residents — good for a 12.6 percent vaccination rate.)

The state’s vaccine dashboard was last updated on Monday, January 11 — and in the three days since then, thousands of additional doses have been administered. Mayo Clinic’s latest vaccine report, current through midnight Thursday, says 18,591 employees at the Rochester campus (46.1 percent of the total Rochester campus workforce) have received one dose of vaccine. 

While not every Clinic worker on the Rochester campus is an Olmsted County resident, the new Mayo report — plus efforts from Olmsted Medical Center — make it a near-certainty that at least one out of every 10 people in the county have received a dose as of Thursday evening.

Graham Briggs, director of Olmsted County Public Health, said the county’s high vaccination rates are primarily thanks to the large amount of health care workers that live in the area — many of whom fall into the state’s Phase 1A priority guidelines. As the vaccination process moves into Phase 1B and beyond, Briggs added he expects to see some positive results from vaccination efforts before winter’s end.

“We’re in this gray area right now, where we’re just starting to see a decent portion of the population getting vaccinated,” said Briggs. “While 10 percent [vaccination] probably isn’t enough to blunt transmission, it is enough to change the outcomes of cases and the risk in the community — and that number will grow.”

Briggs added the number to watch over the coming weeks will be ‘daily incidence’ — in simpler terms, the amount of daily new cases per 100,000 residents. Currently, that number sits at 52.9, but if vaccine roll-out continues to expand, Briggs says that number should start to steadily fall as winter progresses and more residents get vaccinated.

“We can measure vaccination all day, and that’s nice to know, but we should be watching what happens because of vaccination,” said Briggs. “Instead of talking about cases per day, I hope to be seeing soon that we’re only finding a few cases per week.”

Who’s up next?

While Briggs was pleased by the vaccination numbers, he called the situation “extremely fluid,” with wildly differing amounts of vaccine being shipped to hospital systems on a weekly basis. 

The “fluidity” remark was seconded by one of Mayo Clinic’s leaders on Covid-19 vaccination, who said it has been a tough task to plan for and distribute vaccine shipments. Dr. Melanie Swift, co-chair of Mayo’s Covid-19 vaccine and distribution program, says the Clinic receives vaccines from the state, who distributes even larger shipments received from the federal government. 

That three-step process has allowed for flexibility in where doses get shipped across Minnesota, but it’s come at the expense of consistency for “hub” sites like Mayo. Dr. Swift says Mayo Clinic received nearly 10,000 vaccine doses a few weeks ago — but last week, just 1,700 showed up. 

“It’s highly variable,” said Dr. Swift. “We get very little notice as to what’s coming to us, sometimes down to even a few days on what’s going to be in the next shipment. It’s definitely an exercise in being flexible.”

Even as the Clinic awaits its next shipment, roughly 3,000 health care workers are scheduled to receive their first vaccine dose in the next week. Some of those workers — and many recipients in the near future — will be part of the third and final Phase 1A priority group, which includes non-patient-facing workers that still have to work on-site, at the hospital. 

That decision has frustrated some residents and lawmakers, who contend that high-risk individuals should be prioritized first. Those high-risk residents, however, were given word of potential relief from the Minnesota Department of Health late Thursday: according to the Star Tribune, health care providers with extra doses in storage will be allowed to immunize people outside of the original priority groups.

Dr. Swift, who sits on Minnesota’s Vaccine Allocation Advisory Group, said the state has been required to follow and interpret guidelines from the CDC — which call for “healthcare personnel,” in a general sense, to receive the first vaccines. Their decision also stemmed from successful practice in administering flu shots — if you’re on the hospital campus, immunization is essential.

“You can bet that the office worker who goes on campus, breathes the same air, eats in the same break room as nurses and doctors, will have the same vaccine requirement as those nurses and doctors — because infectious diseases don’t care what your job title is,” said Dr. Swift. “It just matters whether or not you’re in the same area. If you’re part of the health care team, you need to be protected.”

County, Mayo partner on antibody testing

As Covid-19 vaccinations become more commonplace in Olmsted County, Briggs and his team will be searching to find the “true proportion” of people with immunity against the virus. At this point, roughly 10 percent of Olmsted residents have been immunized, and roughly seven percent have tested positive for it. 

Public Health, though, is interested in finding the proportion of the population that falls into the third category: those who caught the virus, but were asymptomatic and never got a test. Briggs said the county would be partnering with Mayo to offer antibody tests to all county staff, to see if a significant proportion of people have Covid-19 antibodies.

If successful, the study will give Public Health officials a clearer picture of the virus’s prevalence inside the county’s buildings — which can be extrapolated as an estimate for the entire county.

“Our employees live all over the place, they’re from different backgrounds… it’s a pretty representative sample of our county,” said Briggs. “We want to be able to get a firmer estimate of the portion of our population that’s had this virus, and this is a pretty neat project that’ll help us do that.”

Though antibody tests are not publicly available in the same capacity as nasal swab tests, Briggs advised anyone who wishes to get an antibody test to call their doctor to see if one can be administered.

Isaac Jahns is a Rochester native and a 2019 graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism. He reports on politics, business and music for Med City Beat.

Cover photo licensed via Getty