Long Lines In Bitter Cold At Lake Co. Testing Site Monday

LAKE COUNTY, IL — Lake County has one of the highest vaccination rates in Illinois, but with omicron cases spiking daily, local health officials are looking for ways to boost that rate even more.

On Monday, the Waukegan Community-Based Testing site, which is run by the Lake County Health Department, again began offering vaccinations as well as testing. The site at 102 W. Water Street closed down its mass vaccination offerings in October as the weather began to get cooler.

With cases on the rise again, vaccinations and testing are harder to come by. The clinic has seen long lines, said Mark Pfister, executive director Lake County Health Department and Community Health Center, during a Tuesday morning Health and Community Services committee meeting.

On Monday, a line ran down to Washington Street, which is about a block away from the clinic. Wait times of up to two hours have been reported in recent weeks.

The Water Street clinic has also increased the number of days that testing will be administered amid a nationwide testing shortage. The site is now open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Saturday.

“The demand is overrunning the potential supply right now. So that should ease, hopefully, as cases drop,” Pfister said.

It’s unclear at this point when that will happen and also unclear how sick people will get from the highly contagious omicron variant, Pfister said. As of Tuesday, there have been more than 106,000 positive COVID cases reported to the health department in Lake County and 1,155 deaths. Pfister said home tests are not counted in this tally.

Meanwhile, local health officials are continuing to look for ways to increase its vaccine rate and testing supply. As hospitals fill up, 90 percent of the people admitted to local hospitals with COVID-19 symptoms have been unvaccinated, according to health officials.

“We are still in a pandemic state, but we will move to an endemic state if we can reduce the number of susceptible people across the world,” Pfister said.

In Lake County, there was a rush at first to vaccinate children ages 5 to 11 years old when vaccinations recently became available to that age group. That number has begun to plateau in the past two weeks, and health officials are urging parents to get their kids in for their shots, Pfister said Tuesday.

Mobile clinics, including at churches, schools and other facilities, have been popular and resulted in hundreds of people being vaccinated at a time, Pfister said. The health department is continuing to set those up regularly.

The health department has also partnered with the College of Lake County to host free walk-in vaccination clinics in the coming days. The first will be held from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Wednesday at the Grayslake campus. Another will be held in Grayslake from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Jan. 14.

A clinic will be held at the Lakeshore Campus, 33 N. Genesee in Waukegan, from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Jan. 13. The Southlake campus, at 1120 S. Milwaukee Avenue in Vernon Hills, will hold a clinic from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Jan. 13.

No insurance cards are needed, and booster shots are also available.

As of Tuesday, 1.13 million doses of vaccines have gone into the arms of Lake County residents. Currently, 64.6 percent of the population is fully vaccinated. On Tuesday, the state surpassed 28,000 deaths from COVID-19.

Visit vaccines.gov to find a vaccine near you.