Cape County medical director sees 'twinkling of light' in coronavirus tunnel

With the recent announcements two promising COVID-19 vaccines are on the horizon, the medical director of the Cape Girardeau County Public Health Center says he’s “starting to see a twinkling of light at the end of the tunnel.”

But Dr. John Russell cautions the “end of the tunnel” is “still a long way off.”

Russell made his remarks Tuesday afternoon during a virtual meeting of the Cape Girardeau County health department’s board of directors. Board members meet online rather than in person because of the increased prevalence of coronavirus throughout the area.

Two pharmaceutical companies — Pfizer and Moderna — have announced results of initial testing that have shown their vaccines appear to be more than 90% effective in preventing the transmission of the COVID-19 virus. Both companies are expected to seek emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration.

“The problem with the Pfizer vaccine is its distribution chain,” Russell said, and explained it requires “ultra cold” storage conditions of minus-70 degrees Fahrenheit to be effective.

“The advantage the Moderna vaccine has is it requires more traditional refrigeration and appears to have a longer life, making it available to a much boarder number of vaccinators such as health centers, physician offices and pharmacies,” he said. “The places you go to get a shot now should be able to handle that particular vaccine.”

Although both vaccines show promising effectiveness, Russell said it will take several months before enough doses can be produced to control the virus.

“As best I can tell, the initial aliquant of the vaccine will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 15 million doses,” he said. “That sounds like a lot, until you realize there are 330 million people in the nation.”

Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two doses, so even if just half the population agrees to be vaccinated, that’s still more than 300 million injections.

“I anticipate we will have significantly more information on vaccine distribution in the next three to four weeks,” Russell told the health board. “I truly believe we’ll see some finality as to when vaccines will be available by the end of the year, but at best we’re probably 90 days from having any vaccine on hand to give to people.”

In addition to the promising news about vaccines, Russell said Regeneron appears to be effective in reducing the severity of the disease, helping reduce the “viral load,” which, in turn, reduces the potential for spreading the virus.

However, the health center’s medical director said its unclear how much Regeneron will be available in Southeast Missouri.

“We will have a limited number of vaccine doses initially and a limited number of Regeneron doses eventually,” he predicted.

Russell’s comments followed an update from health center executive director Jane Wernsman on the county’s coronavirus caseload.

“We have seen our case counts increasing exponentially in the past month, especially the past couple of weeks,” she said.

Cape Girardeau County has averaged 89 new cases a day since early November, including one day with more than 150 new cases of the disease.

As of Tuesday, she said more than 4,500 Cape Girardeau County residents have tested positive for COVID-19 and about 1,000 of them have active cases as of this week. The virus, she said, has claimed the lives of 60 county residents.

“Our positivity rate has reached 26.9%, which is a 10% increase over the previous two-week period,” Wernsman reported. The state’s most recently-reported positivity rate, she said, was 23.5%.

The health department board enacted a mandatory face-mask order in July requiring everyone, with certain exceptions, older than 9 to wear face masks in public places throughout the county.

In October, the board agreed to change the face mask order from a “requirement” to a “strong recommendation” if certain criteria are met. Those criteria include a drop of the county’s coronavirus positivity test rate to below 5% over a two-week span and a rolling average case count of new COVID-19 cases of fewer than 200 for a 14-day period.

The board has also agreed to modify the face-mask order when “a COVID-19 vaccine becomes widely available to the general public or a highly-effective, relatively low-cost COVID-19 therapeutic treatment becomes widely available.”

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