What a year it's been for Pierce County Public Health.

Public Health Director AZ Snyder tipped her hat to her department's staff at the Board of Health meeting last Wednesday.

'I did send out an email last night on the one-year anniversary of our first case of COVID-19, the second case in Wisconsin, to all the staff at the Health Department. They're incredible. They've done an incredible job over the past year,' said Snyder. 'They've sacrificed a lot personally, and they wake up every day with smiles on their faces and they still volunteer for extra tasks. They comfort each other. They're still incredibly kind and empathetic to angry people who call them. I'm just in awe of the Public Health staff.'

Snyder noted that two new staffers have recently joined the team. COVID-19 has made finalizing budget numbers from last year difficult.

'Our 2020 financials are not yet final. We still have some straggling expenses and revenues that are coming in,' Snyder said. 'As you know, we've talked about this several times, we underspent in several programs, including prenatal care coordination and others. That was simply because we weren't able to complete all of the activities that we normally would with COVID going on.'

Some programs are expected to kick back into gear as this year progresses.

'We will pick up spending on some of those projects in the second half of the year, I would expect,' she said.

From the standpoint of COVID-19, things are looking up in Pierce County.

'I am really excited to share that we are in the yellow for the Harvard model of cases for the last seven days. I never thought I'd see yellow again, so that has been incredible,' said Snyder. 'We had only 25 new probably and confirmed cases last week, which is the smallest number of cases we've seen in a week since the first week of September. We are extremely pleased. We are seeing some outbreaks in some of our higher ed and K-12 school settings that we are trying very hard to control. We are very concerned about some of what we're hearing mourned spring break plans and worried how that might potentially impact the schools. We're trying to put out messaging with the schools about what is higher risk travel versus lower risk travel.'

People are asked to quarantine when they return home if they engaged in 'high risk travel.'

'We'll know in a couple weeks how spring break impacts our K through 12 schools,' said Snyder.

She said Public Health, like everyone else, is reviewing new Centers for Disease Control guidance.

'The guidance is complicated if you read it, and I'm having a hard time digesting it myself and figuring out how we're going to communicate that to the public,' she said. 'Basically, what it says is if you are fully vaccinating and fully vaccinated means it's been more than two weeks since your series of vaccines, you can get together in a small gathering with one other household who is vaccinated or unvaccinated without wearing masks or social distancing.

'We are still discouraging vaccinated people from gathering in large or medium group settings, and it is still required that people wear masks and socially distancing in public spaces.'

There appears to be a light at the end of the tunnel.

'Overall, it's really good news, and we're on the way to recovery in our community,' said Snyder.

All schools in the county will have been vaccinated by Friday, March 19.

Spring Valley and Prescott School districts are complete, all of their teachers have been offered vaccines and all of their school staff. We will be doing half of the River Falls School District this weekend on Saturday and the other half on Tuesday the 16th. We will be doing all of Ellsworth on Thursday. We will be splitting up Plum City and Elmwood with some other health departments. Pepin County kindly agreed to go to Plum city on the 19th and vaccinate their small staff, and we did send Elmwood to Menomonie, and Dunn County will be vaccinating them this week.'

UW-River Falls staff will be vaccinated on March 23 and 25th at the Belkin Center.

We'll be hosting two large clinics to get through 800 of their staff,' said Snyder.

Public Health is working to be ready for new groups of people who will be eligible to be vaccinated soon.

'We don't know what April is going to bring. We know that there's going to be an announcement this week of who the new eligible population will be,' she said of the announcement made by the state at the end of last week. 'We are starting to gear up for more public facing open points of dispensing for people with underlying health conditions.'

Snyder said that many people are not able to get vaccines through health care providers, which means Public Health has to be ready with vaccination clinics.

'It's not any fault of the health systems, but a lot of times they haven't gotten enough vaccine,' Snyder said. 'So, it is really important that Pierce County Public Health offer public vaccine clinics as long as needed because people aren't going to be able to consistently access vaccine through their providers.'

Board of Health members expressed appreciation to Snyder and her department for guiding the county through the pandemic.

'The statement that this departments work has made this situation the most manageable and livable and productive and helpful it can be is entirely true. On this anniversary, I'd like to stay thank you to this department for everything it has done.'

A chorus rang out in the virtual meeting.

'A job well done.'

'Here, here!'