Board of Health: December 15, 2020

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0:01 All right, we’ll call the meeting to order. All right. So, under Emily, let’s get right to it, Andrew, your COVID update, please. All right, so the Baker-Polido administration announced updates on the Commonwealth’s distribution efforts of the first doses of COVID-19 vaccine, as well as new guidance from the Department of Public Health to help residents celebrate the holidays safely. Monday, the first doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine arrived in the Commonwealth. Four hospitals received 5,850 first doses on Monday. Today, 53,625 more doses have begun to arrive to 17 more hospitals statewide. Pending the approval of Moderna’s Emergency Use Authorization, the Commonwealth, based on federal guidelines, has been told to anticipate 180,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 120,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine. And all the administration expects the Commonwealth to receive 300,000 doses by the end of September. I’m sorry, end of December. Department of Public Health places vaccine orders on behalf of the providers. From there, the vaccine is shipped to the hospital or facility directly from the manufacturer on behalf of the federal government. When vaccinations begin, hospitals report data to DPH and DPH and the command center will

1:35 launch a public dashboard to keep track of immunization administered next week. Individuals with questions about what phase they can be vaccinated and can send an email to the COVID-19 vaccination plan, dash mass at mass.gov for prioritization clarification. You can also go onto the mass.gov website, go to the vaccination, and they’ll show you the three-phase approach that they’re taking. Additionally, CVS and Walgreens will begin vaccinating in nursing homes the week of December 28th under the CDC’s Long-Term Care Pharmacy Partnership Program. Their doses will come from the state’s Pfizer allocation between 40,000 and 60,000 will be shipped to CVS and Walgreens for Massachusetts skilled nursing facilities. December and holiday guidance. Massachusetts residents are advised to limit the risk of exposure to COVID-19 during the holiday activities by following these steps to stop the spread of COVID-19 and prevent deaths. As we enter the December holiday season, residents are urged to follow the public health guidance that we know will keep people safe. This year we asked residents to limit in-person celebrations to household members only, postpone or cancel travel this holiday season. If you do choose to travel, be aware and comply with Massachusetts travel order requirements.

3:09 Follow the current state gathering size limits and sector-specific workplace safety standards. Limit in-person holiday gatherings to only people you live with. Most of virtual holiday dinner with extended family or friends. Prepare foods for family and neighbors and deliver them in a no-contact way. Virtually attend your traditional holiday activities such as a visit with Santa. Consider virtual caroling or reciting. Provide a link to your virtual caroling to the people you want to sing to. View holiday lights from your car with those you live with. Higher risk celebration activities. Any time you gather with others outside of your household, you increase the risk of contracting or spreading illness. All residents are discouraged from gatherings and Massachusetts are subject to gathering size limits. You are risking your health and other health if you host or participate in any in-person festivities, if you or anyone in your household has been diagnosed with COVID-19 and has not completed the isolation period, has symptoms of COVID-19, is waiting for COVID-19 viral test results, may have been exposed to someone with COVID-19 in the last 14 days, or is at increased risk of severe illness from COVID-19 such as older adults or those with certain medical conditions.

4:40 In-person caroling or reciting stay more than 25 feet from the people you are reciting or singing for and wear a mask. Maintain outdoors while caroling. If you visit Santa Claus in person, wear a mask, stay 6 feet from Santa and others while in line and make a reservation for your visit where available. If you and holiday lights outdoors, take a one-way walk with those you live with and maintain distance from others. Other recommendations and guidance. Always wear your mask and watch your distance. Remove your mask only for eating and drinking. For 10 days before and after holiday gatherings, monitor yourself closely for fever and other symptoms of COVID-19, minimize contact with other people, and leave home only for essential services like going to work, buying groceries and appointments with the doctor or other activities like that. Remember not to share food, drink, or any utensils, including serving utensils. Only people with plenty of space if you are actually hosting a party, which we are asking only people to do that with your direct friends. So please remember all of this stuff. If you do have people over, please remember to increase ventilation, open windows and doors. As far as when we talk about the vaccine being administered, there is a three-phase approach. There has been a lot of discussion about the vaccine recently, but we need to remember

6:12 to stay vigilant and remember to do our social distancing, our mask wearing. It is going to take a lot of time to vaccinate the required number of people. We need to vaccinate up to 70% of Massachusetts populations before it really becomes effective. Case report. So this week we worked with Kate Thompson and we put out a different style of case report. So we have currently, this is as of 1210 that came out on 1211. So active cases. And please remember an active case is someone currently under isolation. So isolation is a positive person that is currently going to have symptoms and has to stay isolated from everybody else. The number of tests taken by Marblehead residents over the past 14 days was 2,806. The positivity rate of that was 3.85%. Cumulative cases, our total case count up to this point was 503. And we have a total of 31 deaths. We reviewed death certificates almost on a monthly basis. I just got another review from the town clerk, so I’ll be going through those. And if we need to add anybody, we’ll be doing that. New and notable state home advisory effective 11-6, only leave home to go to work,

7:42 school or for essential needs, emergency, medical care, going to the grocery store or pharmacy, picking up takeout, receiving deliveries. Do not gather in your home with those outside of your household. Instead, use remote modes of communication, phone or video chat, comply with the governor’s orders, including those requiring face coverings, limiting gatherings, and mandating early closure of businesses. If you do go outside, avoid touching surfaces frequently, surfaces touched by others, and practice six feet away social distancing and wearing a mask. We also have on there, so we have some new graphs that we put on there to show active cases and the daily incident rate. We also included information for the past two weeks on ages. So when you take a look at the age trends, we do see cases from zero to 19. So for the past 14 days, we had 15 cases on zero to 19. We had 21 cases from 20 to 29. We had seven cases from 30 to 39. We had 15 cases from 40 to 49. We had 21 cases on the 50 to 59. We had 17 cases from 60 to 69, nine cases from 70 to 79, and two cases for 80 plus. We’ve also included the ages of everybody from the beginning or really back to July. And obviously, we wanna try to protect the healthcare system.

9:16 COVID-19 related to hospitalizations and an intensive care unit counts have more than doubled over the past two months. Social gatherings, and we call these informal social gatherings. So informal social gathering can be anything, you’re stopping on the street to talk to your neighbor, and you’re not maintaining the social distancing. And obviously, you need to be in contact, you’re having that conversation for a total of 12 minutes. And please remember, there can be a cumulative time over a 24 hour period. Social gatherings are contributing to increases left unchecked. Current case growth poses risks to the healthcare system. Intervention is needed to preserve hospital capacity. It’s more important than ever to follow guidance from local, state, and federal officials on how to stop the spread of the virus. Obviously, we have a mask mandate currently that pertains to both indoors and outdoors. And we have a current travel advisory. As far as the travel advisory goes, please check into the mask.gov travel advisory regularly as it’s often changing. States come on and off the list regularly. So do your best to stay on that and stay up to date. Case report moving forward, we’ll continue to work with Kate, as she does have a lot of good ideas and shows a lot of good graphs. Does the board have any comments about what we would like to see moving forward or what you’re expecting? Lane Michelle?

10:46 No, go ahead. Go ahead, Lane. I know that Kate’s been working with you and you’ve been sharing that with the board. And some of the pie shaped things that I saw today, I think were a little confusing. I think that giving us some graphs are good. I don’t think that we need as many as she’s developing. Maybe we should have this discussion. Each one of us can give our thoughts to you or you wanna hear it now. But I think less is more is what I think. I like the graphs, I like the age, I like seeing the numbers. And I think two are plenty. And by the way, she’s doing an excellent job and I think it was lovely for her to volunteer to do this. You heard the word volunteer. We do and I know I can see your name here, Kate. If you wanna say anything, you’re welcome to. But we do appreciate all the work you put into this and it really, I think the report last week was really crisp and clear and readable and I think that was great. I also agree with Elaine that going beyond that too much, I think is going to be too much. We don’t want to predict where trends may go because we’re just going with

12:19 the numbers as they are and as they have been. So, Kate, do you wanna, is there anything you wanna, Michelle first and then Katie, you wanna say anything? Yeah, I haven’t had a chance, I believe Kate sent something today and I just had a crazy work day. So I haven’t had a chance to review anything today. So I would like a chance to review those materials before I make any further comments. I’m all for any kind of like past looking analytics and looking at points of time. I’m always a little wary of making too many correlations between interventions that we’ve made, like particular putting up signs because a sign might have gone up one day and then another sign the next day and another sign the next day. So things where we know there’s a fixed point in time, I’m completely comfortable with that, where there’s things where we just need to be careful about an exact date. That’s where I’m a little bit more wary, where I get a little bit more concerned is making the kind of future projections.

13:50 But I haven’t had a chance to look at anything that came in today or last night. I can’t remember what it was. But in general, I really like the new format and I’m really pleased and very appreciative. And I think it was either the last meeting or the meeting before. I don’t know. We meet very frequently. I was all in favor of having somebody come in and help us with some graphs and some better analysis of the data. And this is exactly the kind of thing that I wanted. So very appreciative of it. And I think we’ll just decide it as a board of where to put those parameters. Is there anything? Yeah, hi. I want to take a last time. I just thank you for updating the report last week, Andrea. It helps me at least to see the case counts each week, but then also the case counts relative to the curve and the context and how they compare to where we’ve been. I totally agree with you on not trying to predict the future. I mean, I’m not an epidemiologist. I’m just a person putting things in grass. And that’s tricky for even the people who are experts.

15:23 And I’m honestly just playing with the numbers and seeing what they look like in charts. So the stuff that I’ve sent you guys is like, choose your own adventure. Anything that you think is helpful. Share away and anything that you need, let me know. I do want to point out that there were some slides from eight onward, eight through 12, that were fully, they’re not mine. They’re lifted from the state’s report. So the pie chart, Shellyan, that you’re talking about are the state’s report that they issue every week. And the only thing that I added was information from the Littleton epidemiologist who works with their Board of Health and their school committee to overlay the insight as to what those things are telling us that I found helpful. So, you know, just if there’s anything that I can do, let me know. The one thing that I would, as a community member, ask this group and the board for is some direction on when we go from yellow to red. And I took a stab at trying to create that because it’s two things. It’s the average cases per 100,000 in combination with our positivity rate. So we’re well into the red when it comes to the average cases per 100,000. But we’re not there yet on the second piece, which is the positivity rate. But we are real close.

16:54 So it’s showing those two things and I guess just helping me and maybe the community and maybe departments in the community that need to make decisions, understand what is it going to take. Like, it’s one thing to say Marblehead is yellow. And it’s another thing to say Marblehead is getting pretty close to red and here’s a trajectory that’s going to get us there. This is what it means when we get there. So thank you. Thank you. And again, thanks for all the time you put into this so far because it really is looking great. It is very helpful. We were asked on the spot what we thought and after looking at it for a brief time, I just wanted to give you some feedback. But I thank you so much. My former neighbor. Andrew, I know I’m not running this meeting, but could you respond to that? The yellow versus the red? Yeah. So I had actually run some numbers today that I’m looking for. So obviously, we’re talking about a very small percentage. So we’re at 3.85% for positivity rate. And that’s based on the 2,806 tests that were completed for the past 14 days, divided by the number of positive people that came out of that.

18:25 So there’s 108 positive cases that came out of that, giving us the 3.85%. So there’s two different things that the state does. So obviously, we have a population just under 20,000. But they like to use it in comparison to the 100,000. So that way, you can compare community to community. And so when you start to talk about those numbers, and unfortunately, I don’t know what I’d do with those numbers today, but it’s a pretty… So if you had over those whole tests, over those 2,800 people, you’d need a pretty significant jump to get to that 5%. So you need essentially 500 cases to get you there, compared to the lower number. I’ll keep looking to see if I have those, because I have written all the math out today to take a look at that. To take a look at that. And as we’re doing tests, and in Marblehead, obviously, you’re going to get a huge more cases, or a huge more number of tests, and the potential for positive cases. But overall, Marblehead is doing pretty well. So it’s going to be hard to say if we’re really ever going to get into the red. Yes, Thanksgiving, we had some poor decisions were made. We had a lot of gatherings. We saw a significant increase in case count, but we still had a significant number of tests that were completed over the last two weeks.

19:56 So obviously, as we move into the holidays, and people can… If they continue to gather, we’re going to continue on this upward trend, which we need to get away from. And with this upward trend, obviously, same thing, you’re going to have a huge number of people testing. And so it’s hard to say, are we really going to get to that 5% test rate? I think it’s going to be hard for us to get there. But I can share the numbers with the board when I… Because I had done out the math exactly to show you how many cases you’d really need to hit that 5%. Well, shouldn’t you just divide 500 to 2800? Isn’t that the easier way? No? Oh, there goes Tom. All right, come on. So yeah, you’re comparing yourself like that. So you need to do it the right way and stuff. No, it’s just .05 times 2800, so it’d be 140 cases. Yeah, so 140 cases and we got 108. So we needed another 32 cases to get us to that point. That’s a pretty significant jump for us. But anything is possible. And this is always the hard thing about public health, predicting, are we going to hit that or are we not? And so that’s where in public health, we try to stay away from predictions. Yes, we’re seeing a pretty increased in cases daily. But even now, it’s… Even today’s trend is starting to go down. Yes, it’s going to trend back up due to the holidays and gathering.

21:28 Is it fair to say though, with the metrics put out by the governor this summer, which are no longer in effect, we would be a red community at this point? Oh yeah. So do the 108 positives, does that take into consideration the testing that’s being done in town now? No, so that was last week. So as we move forward, this week’s will be included in that, as long as everything’s submitted in and it gets loaded into the system. So yeah, all these cases, all these tests that we’re doing this week will be included in that. So we did a testing last Friday? Yeah, we did a testing last Friday. We did a testing today. So as long as all that information is loaded into the system, those numbers should be part of the whole equation. Well, it seems to me that we would get 30 more cases based on the numbers of people being tested. No, so like if you look at the positivity rate, yeah. So if you look at the positivity rate of 3.85, if we tested 300 people, you’re only going to get 3.85 times three. So, you know, that’s our potential. And there’s a waiting room that people are stuck in. Can we hear from Dr. Tom who’s waiting as well? No, but because as I think as Andrew’s pointing out, you’re just going to have more people being tested. So the parameter will no longer be 140.

23:00 So let’s say at that point you have 3,500 or let’s say 4,000, then you would need 200 positives. So it’s a moving target, so to speak, depending on how many get tested. Thank you. Andrew, is this a good time to talk about the testing in town at all? Yeah, so we tested on our first day of testing. We were supposed to test approximately 410 people. We had a few issues. Unfortunately, we had two employees of Cataldo that were unfortunately had to call out sick. We were unable to test everybody that we had registered at that point. If you were unable to get tested, you should have been contacted at this point. Cataldo has offered a couple of different things. You could have come to the testing today to get tested, or if you’re unable to do that, you can still reach out to Cataldo and we can make some special arrangements for you. We want to make sure that everybody that signed up to get tested, we can get them tested. Today, we tested about 384 people. We had additional staff on site, and we’ll continue with that trend. We want to make sure that we have the appropriate number of staff for the appropriate number of people that were coming to the testing site. This morning when I was there, first thing, we got everybody. We really didn’t have a backup in line. Yes, we were able to cue everybody into the temple, cue in there, but we really didn’t have a backup onto Atlantic Ave.

24:32 On Friday, we have another 300 people that are scheduled to test. We believe as long as we have the employees that will be coming from Cataldo, we should have another smooth day. Monday the 21st, we are really ramping things up We have a potential of testing 700 people, and on that day, we will be moving to the high school. The high school is going remote, and we’re going to be using that time to test out our EDS plans, and we’ll be doing obviously with 700 people, we could really have an impact on Atlantic Ave, and we want to try to deflect some of that. We have a plan in place. We’ve worked that with the police department, especially Captain Freeman, who’s been a huge benefit to myself and to the town. About making sure we have good flow and throughput. So we will be trying this out on Monday, 12-21 at the high school, and not at the Temple Emmanuel. We do want to thank the temple very, very much for the contribution to the community. We really couldn’t do this without them, so thank you very much to Temple Emmanuel for doing that. I also want to make sure I thank all my staff. You know, our office is extremely busy at all times. They have to put up with all my demands and all that stuff. I want to thank my staff also. As we will. Andrea, your hands up. Andrew, I’m sorry. How many tactics did you consider a number that tested today? Do you have a number? Today was approximately 384. And how many did you get last Friday when you had the glitches?

26:06 Last Friday was only about 300. Well, that was enough. I mean, it’s enough, but it wasn’t not, you know, we had additional people that we were unable to serve. You had to turn some away again. Well, it’s a service to the community, and I’m glad that we were able to do that. And I want to thank Cataldo. I think that that’s great that they were willing to come into our community and have the people to do it. And I think it’s a terrific service. I mean, obviously testing right now is a huge demand. There’s testing sites all over the state of Massachusetts. If you’re unable to, you know, make a reservation in Marblehead, please go to mass.gov, stop the spread. There’s additional sites in the area that you can do walk-up, drive-through, and stuff like that to make sure that if you need to get tested, you can get tested. Could I ask a question of Andrew? Could you tell us what we’re doing in the community as to what the governor has suggested as far as closing of gymnasiums and other places? I don’t know what we’re doing and not doing. So obviously we have entered. We’re rolling back. We roll back Sunday night into phase three, step one. So the real big difference with that is, you know, reducing gathering limits. So for a lot of indoor facilities, it used to be by occupancy loads.

27:36 So you’re allowed 50% occupancy. Now you’re reduced down to 40% occupancy. But it’s also reduction in the number of people per 1,000 square feet. So at 50% occupancy, you were also allowed 10 people per 1,000 square feet. And now it’s reduced down to eight people per 1,000 square feet. You know, you obviously still have to maintain, you know, doing your cleaning, your sanitation. You also have to maintain your line. So if people are starting to gather outside your store, you have to make sure that they’re properly distanced and maintained social distancing. Obviously, there’s a lot of sector-specific guidelines. And you need to log on to mass.gov to look at some of these guidelines. They’re also under the Division of Labor Standards and EEA. There’s about 50… Well, there’s probably about 20 different sector-specific guidelines out there at this point. But weren’t there some guidelines about restaurants, more than just the 40% occupancy? There’s guidelines about everything. So obviously, we’ve had… We went from 10 people at a table back down to six. You have 90 minutes at a seat, and you also have to close at a certain time. And have we closed any public facilities, like museums, theaters, gyms, that were opened, or were they not… So we’re not the ones that are closing this. It’s self-certification. So if you’re a business, you’re supposed to be logging on to mass.gov

29:08 at all times to stay up with the local and the most recent orders. Orders. Well, that actually doesn’t answer my question. Like, if I walked up to the wide tomorrow, could I go in there and use their equipment? You can go in there and use their equipment, but you have to have a mask on at all times. And there has to be an attendant there that is watching over to make sure that the equipment’s being cleaned. And same for other facilities in town? And same for other facilities in town. Okay. Actually, the Wise and Salem was a bad example. The JCC. Yes, you’re still allowed to go in there. Thank you. I see that there’s some raised hands. I’m going to open this up to public discussion at the end of our agenda items. Is there anything further in your reporting? No, that’s it. Alain, I know you’ve had a couple of meetings in the last week for reopening committee. The reopening committee met on December 11th, which was last Friday, and then we met December 14th. The topic for both meetings was about before the winter break, the Christmas holiday, and after that. I think that I’m glad that John is here because there were some things that were left up in the

30:38 air, and I know that Kate’s here too, and she was going to write some information for the parents after we met. I have not seen that, so there’s probably more to be added. But the Marblehead Public Schools will be remote the week after this week that we’re in on the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd. Everyone will be remote except for students who have special needs. And the parents that wish them to be in face-to-face. And also, the students that do go face-to-face, those teachers have been offered equipment so that they will feel safe, that they will have more PPE. They’ll have N95s if they wish to have them. They have all been given face shields. They’ve been given gowns and gloves. Or if they haven’t been given them, they’re offered. But I know that they have the face shields. And returning from a break, I think that that was up in the air when we finished our meeting. We discussed whether they were going to return or not. Somebody can fill in after I have a few more things to say. I know that some school systems are returning at all different times. On the day that we were to return, also on the 11th or the 19th.

32:10 But I did ask John that if we were in the red, which we’re told now that Andrew doesn’t think that we will be, that things would be different. But I think that that was something that was discussed. So to recap, the special ed will be going on the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd if the family wishes to send the students. The rest of the school system will be remote. Teachers may come into the building if they want. There are certain situations that teachers feel more comfortable in the building teaching to the remote class. So the only question now is whether they’ll be returning January 4th or at another time. And maybe John, or is the chairman of the school committee here too? One of you could really answer that. John, do you have anything to add? Sure. We sent out correspondence to teachers after the reopening committee meeting on Monday. And then we sent out information to parents today outlining the reopening committee meeting and what Helene is so adeptly covered for the group. We’re going to work with the Board of Health as we have in the past and with Andrew and look at the numbers this Friday because we are going remote, the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd. And while we anticipate that the numbers will continue to climb, if they are not,

33:46 we will reassess. But we figured it was better to inform people now for planning purposes that we would likely return in remote. But if we look in the numbers this week are 125, and we look at the numbers January 1st, and they’re 40, then that would give us license to say, you know what, returning remote doesn’t make good sense. But if the numbers are 250, then we’ll say, well, that makes good sense to have pivoted toward remote. We figured that a lot of these decisions are made reactionarily in that, okay, we’re going remote, and teachers and families and students didn’t have time to adequately prepare, and that the transition from remote learning to in-person is easier than if families are anticipating returning in-person, and we say we’re going remote. So that’s kind of the decision-making process behind that. We continue to work with Andrew and the Board, and we very much appreciate Helene’s participation in the reopening committee. Thanks. It’s my pleasure, and I’ve enjoyed it. We’re glad you’re serving for us.

35:05 Before you open anything up, if you’re going to go to the committee, I’d like to just say something that we neglected, or I feel that was neglected last meeting. Were you going to speak for the community to have questions? Go ahead. Thank you, first. Go ahead. I just feel that we heard from a constituent, a resident last week, Jody Smith. She gave us a lot of suggestions, and she had some concerns. She offered to help in any way, and I know that it’s very difficult for us to take people from the outside, even though that we were short-handed, but it’s very difficult to bring people on at this time when we’re in the thick of it. I just want to thank her for her concern and for offering her suggestions, and for wanting to help in any way. Jody, we appreciate you and all the citizens of the community that are trying to do the right thing. Thank you very much. I feel that we were a little bit remiss last week, but we were rushing into executive sessions, and I just have to say that. Yes, I agree. Thank you. We know that you have plans, as we discussed, or as you discussed, to submit some pieces to the reporter, et cetera, and we’re fully supportive of those efforts, and look forward to helping you in whatever way that you can do that.

36:36 We are supportive of those efforts while we keep our eye on the pieces that we need to do with the board, but we fully support those efforts. Wonderful. Thank you. I will be in touch with board members for quotes, for upcoming articles and letters to the editor in support of positive peer pressure to get people to behave in safe ways. So, thank you. And maybe I’d just like to add on to that, just give a little bit more of my soapbox, but I really can’t stress enough that we’ve been working on this weekly, daily as a board, and we always submit like once a month, and once every three weeks, and here we’ve been meeting every week except for maybe two meetings that we haven’t met every week since March, and we’re very diligent about this, and we just wish that the community as a whole, generally, everyone is wonderful. There’s just a few people that have the need to do things that they’re not safe, and people around them aren’t safe, and we just hope that with this season coming, if they hear what’s happening with the schools and other people that what their behavior is, the schools depend on what the entire community’s behavior is in the next few weeks.

38:07 So, we have a couple raised hands, and I’ll just address you, whoever raises first. So, Sondra Callahan, did you have a question?

38:18 Yes, I do. I have just two quick questions, guys. Very, very grateful as a community member that you guys ended up doing screening, especially as a health care provider. I don’t have the opportunity to get tested unless I go to a site. So, I did go this past Friday. I just wanted to find out if Andrew can comment. I know there was a lot of glitches in regards to lack of testers, but also glitches where I had an 8 o’clock appointment and did wait two hours in line. I don’t know if that was a scheduling glitch, and if so, has that been addressed for people that are going to go back and have appointments this week? And then, if you can verify, the plan is how many testers there will be, and then I just have a follow-up question to a different question. I’ll just let you answer to those two things. Yeah, so when you went, we only had a total of like four employees, two testers, and then two people that were doing data management, and it was supposed to be essentially seven people from the company. So, you had at least two people that called out. So, today, we did not have the scheduling issue. We had a lot of people that showed up really early the first day, and maybe there was a little bit of a scheduling glitch, where we heard a lot of people say, I had an 8 o’clock, I had an 8 o’clock, so there was quite a few people. Today, we did not see that problem, so we believe that has been ironed out, or that that wasn’t associated to the second day of the testing. So, we’re hoping that we have another smooth day on Friday. Good to hear.

39:48 I think it was great. My follow-up question, which I didn’t have until Helene had mentioned something, and I don’t know if you guys can answer to this. She just mentioned about the reopening committee that the kids that are high risk there are going in next week, that the teachers are going to be offered N95s, and I’m just curious to know why that is, and was that a recommendation from the Board of Health? It was not a recommendation from the Board of Health, but I think Dr. Bucky should speak to that.

40:21 I just want to be careful that this is not my meeting, and so I don’t want to get pulled into answering school department-related questions, but I will say that we offered through the reopening committee that if people felt more comfortable and wanted an N95 mask, that we would make that available in addition to additional PPE, that many of the students coming in next week would be students that have a mask exemption, or that require closer contact with staff in terms of hand over hand supports. And so we wanted to kind of think ahead that if those staff members felt more comfortable being afforded additional PPE, we wanted to make that available. Thank you, and I think that you were the best person to answer that question. So Erin? Hi, I was just hoping that you could just briefly clarify what the, it sounded like there was some forthcoming communication that was coming out that I think maybe Kate had worked on. I’m sorry, I was in the waiting room, and I just, I don’t want to have to rehash it, but I just wasn’t sure. Is that coming from the Board of Health or the school department? So we worked on a weekly case report. The case report comes out on Friday, and Kate Thompson has been assisting us this past week, and will continue to work with us for these case reports.

41:54 Okay. But will it be any difference in what we’re already seeing? So the first one came out last Friday, so it’ll be very similar to that. I’m sure we’ll have some new changes this week. Okay. Obviously, you know, there’ll be, you know, we have new holiday guidelines that we’ll be putting in there, or you know, we would suggest to put in there. Maybe some other baseline data that you have not seen, but very similar to what we had last Friday. Okay, thank you. Sarah?

42:31 Sorry. Yeah. I’m right here. Did you have any, or first of all, what was the turnaround time on the testing that Cataldo’s doing? And I apologize if you answered this. I got in a few minutes late. And also, did you get any reports, do you have a sense yet on the positivity rate that was coming out of those tests? So the turnaround time is reported to us by Cataldo of 12 to 48 hours. So generally, on the first, usually you receive a phone call, but you could also receive an email. But depending on what’s coming in for tests, they’re using the Broad Institute. And if the lab is matched out, it’s going to slow the reporting time down.

43:21 Okay. And did you have a percent positivity rate out of those tests or no? We’re not going to calculate a positivity rate just for those tests. Or, okay. But you’re given all those results. It’s not that you have to go back through the same process. Like Cataldo gives those directly to you. Nope. We get those results directly from the Broad Institute, from the lab. They’re entered into Maven, which is our disease surveillance system. And that’s how we get the information.

43:57 Kate, you want to come back on? Yeah. Hi, sorry. Just one really quick thing to be very clear. I’m creating stuff and sending it over to Andrew and to the board to do whatever they want with. So I’m not the expert in this. And I don’t even know if what I’m creating is right. I’m just saying, hey, here’s some ideas. Here’s some ways to show things. Because I do believe that showing data in compelling ways is an incredibly important tool in our toolbox. And controlling this thing. But I just want to be really clear with the community that this is entirely volunteer. And the board didn’t even ask for this. I’m just like, hey, here’s some ideas. And they’re like, thanks. Or go away. I don’t really know. It’s fine. But take it or leave it, guys. Okay. Thanks. We say thanks. Hi, Pam. Pam? Yep. Hi. Oh, hi. Okay. Um, I was actually one of the people that didn’t get tested on Friday. From the email that I got from Cataldo, they were going to reschedule me. But you’re not saying that. I should just show up on Friday or Monday. No, Pam, they will reschedule. They’ll actually offer to come right to your house if you’d like that, to tell you the truth. Oh, I like that.

45:28 So no, you should reach back out to Cataldo and set something up personally for yourself. Okay, because email says we will, as I understand it, we’ll get in touch with you. But that’s not happening. I’ll talk to them. Okay, good. If you have not heard from them, you should definitely reach out to them. I was planning on that. But this works too. Okay, thanks. Thanks. Sorry, somebody just got kicked off and is in the waiting room. I don’t have anybody in the waiting room currently. Okay. Okay. So it looks like if there’s nobody else who wants to ask a question, make a comment. We have our next meeting next Tuesday, back to our normal time of 7.30. And everybody stay safe. Have a good week. Do we have a motion to adjourn? I’ll make a motion to adjourn. And I’ll second it and thank everyone for showing up and coming. It’s nice to see people, even if it’s just the little black and white stick figures or whatever they are. Thank you for coming. And I second it. I’m Ms. Gulab. Ms. Gottlieb. In favor. Ms. Hazeltt. In favor. Dr. Belfucker. In favor. Good night, everybody.