DeKalb County Public Health Administrator Lisa Gonzalez gave an update on Covid-19 issues along with an overview of other Health Department services at this week’s meeting. Gonzalez said her department moved into “high gear” with the outbreak of the pandemic in March of last year. She said what normally is about 800 disease investigations a year became 12,253 cases of Covid as of October 8th of this year. So far there are 133 deaths in the county due to Covid and the current vaccination rate is over 48% with more than 50,000 people vaccinated. She said the current positivity rate is 2.5% showing a downward trend from last month.
Gonzalez spoke in detail about vaccination trends and the latest immunization guidance. When explaining the statistics, she noted that vaccination rates can be affected by the student population at Northern Illinois University if students used their home address for the vaccine documentation but were counted as DeKalb County residents for the last census. Gonzalez said the same is true for residents owning homes out of state where those addresses were used when people got their shots while vacationing. She said there are currently only two long-term care facilities in the county reporting Covid cases and those are with staff members, not residents. Despite an uptick in student cases when schools resumed in-person classes, Gonzalez said these cases do not seem linked to classroom settings where masks are required but rather to outside school activities. Gonzalez praised the success of their mass vaccination clinics (mainly held at Northern Illinois University) for helping early on with reaching large numbers of people quickly. The Pfizer booster shot is now available for those having their second shot six months ago or more. These third doses are available for people with certain immune compromising conditions.
Even with the pandemic, Gonzalez explained that there are multiple other services administered by the Health Department for public safety. Multiple clinical services and referrals are handled through the Health Department. They also do health protection services. These include food safety licenses and inspections, water and sewage permits, solid waste and recycling, tattoo and tanning business inspections, and animal control. They are also the county’s official registrar for birth and death certificates.
Gonzalez said specific details and information are available on their website at www.health.dekalbcounty.org or by calling the department at (815) 758-6673.