Board of Health: December 22, 2020

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0:00 Record 2. Good evening, everybody. It’s been a whole week since our last meeting, but we, of course, have more to talk about. Why don’t we get right into Andrew’s COVID report? And like I say, every week, if there’s public comment, just raise your hand in the side and we will recognize the public at the end of the meeting. Thank you. And also, everybody, please go on mute who is not speaking right now. Thanks. Okay. So today at 1 p.m., Governor Baker announced a temporary executive order and revised COVID-19 measure to reduce the spread of the virus in Massachusetts. Order temporarily applying further capacity restrictions to statewide COVID-19 safety measures. This is COVID order number 59. Okay. So, effective, temporary statewide reduction of capacity limitations and associated rules. Effective at 1201 a.m. on December 26, 2020, and continuing for the period in which this order remains in effect, the statewide capacity limitations for gatherings and events set in COVID-19 order 57, and any capacity limitations set in sector-specific COVID-19 workplace safety rules issued under the authority of COVID-19. So, if the state is required to approve the COVID-19 order number 58, or prior orders are hereby superseded and revised as specified for sectors listed on the table below, the Department of Labor Standards, the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, and any other agency or commission authorized by prior order to issue COVID-19 workplace safety rules such each regulating agency are hereby directed to provide notice to the public and to enterprise subjects to the revised capacity of the state.

1:49 So, some of the, so, sectors, gatherings, adjusting order number 57, revised capacity limits, 10 persons indoors, 25 persons outdoors. So, this is for public, or actually for private property, applies both to private homes and event venues and public spaces. A restaurant, revised capacity, 25% of seating capacity. Workers, staff excluded from occupancy counts applies separately to indoor and outdoor capacity. Close contact personal services, 25%. Workers, staff excluded from occupancy counts. Indoor and outdoor events, 10 persons indoors, 25 person outdoors. Workers, staff excluded from occupancy count. Theaters and performance venues, indoor performance venues remain closed. Movie theaters, 25% and maximum 50 people. Outdoor performances venue, 25% and maximum 25 people. Casinos, 25%. MGC to reissue capacity rules as necessary. Office spaces, 25%. Places of warship, 25%. Workers, staff excluded from occupancy count. Retail businesses, 25%. Workers, staff excluded from occupancy count.

3:26 Driving and flight schools, 25%. Golf facilities, 25%. Applies only to indoor spaces. Libraries, 25%. Operators of lodging, 25%. Applies only to common areas. Arcades and other indoor and outdoor recreation businesses, 25%. Fitness centers and health clubs, 25%. Museums, cultural and historical facilities. Guided tours by vehicles and vessels, 25%. Sectors not otherwise addressed, 25%. Common areas and facilities subject to EEA issued COVID-19 safety rules, 25%. Applies only to indoor spaces and excludes youth and amateur sports facilities. General provisions where no license or permitted capacity allowance is on record and for any enclosed space within a larger facility, occupancy shall be limited to no more than five persons per 1,000 square feet. So this is a pretty large change for us. And yes, this goes into a place this weekend. Except as otherwise noted, the above reference to percentage capacities limits shall apply to facilities maximum per printed occupancy as documented in its occupancy permit or similar license or permit on record with the municipal building department or other municipal record holder. Adjustments to the above table will be published where necessary to facilitate practical applications of the required capacity limitations, except for specified adjustments to capacity limitations.

4:59 All other terms of COVID-19 order number 57 addressing gatherings generally including exceptions and all other sector specific COVID-19 workplace safety rules issued by a regulatory agency in effect as of December 26, 2020 shall continue to apply, including minimum spacing and social distancing requirements. Allowances to exceed maximum capacity limitations shall be available as currently provided in COVID-19 workplace safety rules in order to accommodate public health or public safety considerations or where strict compliance may interfere with a continued delivery of critical services. The capacity limitation specified in this order shall be enforced under the terms of COVID-19 order number 57 when applied to gatherings subject to that order and under the terms of section two of COVID-19 order number 58 when applied to enterprises regulated pursuant to COVID-19 safety rules issued by a regulating agency. Each person over the specified capacity limitation and each individual instance of noncompliance with the requirement of this order or any directives, rules or binding guidance issued to pursuant to this order may be treated as a separate violation. This order is effective at 1201 a.m. on December 26, 2020 and shall remain in effect until 12 noon on January 10, 2021 unless further extended. So he announces today, and like I said, this goes into effect at 1201 on December 26.

6:34 I just go right ahead. Okay, I watched it also. One of the questions that was interested me was that someone asked why he wasn’t doing it before Christmas instead of after Christmas. And he said that he wanted people to be able to go to places of worship. And I think that that was very considerate. He didn’t use the fact that he wanted people to be with their family, which he does not want people outside of their household. So I was pleased to hear that his rationale was so that people could worship. So Mobile Eye Case Reporting. So obviously we do our case reporting on Friday. With this holiday coming up, the Department of Public Health is moving their reporting back. So our report will not come out this Friday, but will come out Monday, December 28. And the following week, the state’s doing the exact same thing. So our case count will come out Monday, January 4. I just want to go over Marblehead’s case reporting for last week a little bit. And this was obviously released on Friday, December 18. We have a total number of confirmed cases from the very beginning of 558 cases. On December 11, the case count was 503. Before that, December 4, the total case count was 441. So in that two-week period, we had 117 new cases.

8:09 I take the 117 new cases, and that goes into the total cases by age group from 12-3 to 12-17. So the numbers in the age group technically should usually add up to that total number, the 117, for the two weeks. We also give active cases. Active cases last week was 81. We get active cases directly from Maven, and these are people currently in isolation or cases that have not been closed out in Maven. And so that’s where the active cases come from. Obviously, then we have confirmed deaths. And then we have percent positive rate for testing. And almost likely from… Claire Weeden, can you please mute yourself? Claire Weeden, please mute. Thank you. I’m sorry, Andrew. The percent positive for the test rate comes right from the community data on the mass.gov website. So there was 3,331 COVID tests taken by Marble Ed residents in the last 14 days. 144 of those tests were positive, which gives a positive test rate of 4.32%. It also… the Community Report also gives us the average daily incident rate per 100,000 people. And that was 45 people per day, and that continued to keep us in the yellow category.

9:41 So I just want to make sure everybody’s understanding how we’re doing that, and we will continue to talk about this a little bit later. Obviously, in the report, we also give guidelines for the holidays. So as we enter December holiday season, residents are urged to follow the public health guidance that we know will help keep people safe. Limit in-person celebrations to household members only. Postpone or cancel travel this holiday season. If you do choose to travel, be aware of any and comply with Massachusetts travel order requirements. Follow the current state gathering size limits and sector-specific workplace safety standards.

10:28 Excuse me, do you know if anything’s being done about the London situation, about the airplanes into Boston? I do not know if they’ve changed anything about that.

10:41 Thank you. 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 your home only for essential services, like going to work, buying groceries and appointments with doctors. Or obtain a negative test result for a COVID-19 test on a sample obtained within 72 hours of the celebration. Even with the negative tests, you must be vigilant about masking and distancing when you’re around other individuals who you do not live with. Obviously, if you go to mass.gov, they have a whole other section about doing other things for the holidays. Obviously, mass.gov has a lot of different information. Like I said, they also have the daily case count. So the daily case count obviously comes out towards the end of the day. That will give newly-confirmed cases in the state of Massachusetts. There’s a whole bunch of information. It gives you total case count by age for a pretty large period. So there’s a lot of different information on that website. It also gives you hospital capacity. And it doesn’t break it down exactly into the specific hospitals, but it breaks it down to regional hospitals. There was actually an article, I believe, in the New York Times that talked about each hospital capacity. It had a map of the whole U.S. You could click on a hospital anywhere in the country, and it would actually give you the capacity at that time.

12:23 Vaccinations. Obviously, there’s been a lot of talk about vaccinations. There will continue to be a lot of talk about vaccinations. The Baker-Polito administration announced updates on the Commonwealth’s distribution efforts of the first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, as well as new guidelines for the Department of Public Health to help residents celebrate the holidays safely. Those are the holiday guidelines that I was talking about. On Monday, the first doses of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine arrived in the Commonwealth. Four hospitals received 5,850 first doses on Monday. Now, the Pfizer vaccine has that ultra-cold storage requirement. We won’t be getting the Pfizer vaccine. We will be getting the Moderna because of that cold storage. So you’ll hear us talk about both the Pfizer vaccine and the Moderna vaccine. On Tuesday, 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 guidance, 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 doses. That number might slightly change. It might be down a little bit due to some other issues. But that’s the approximate number that we’re potentially seeing in this beginning.

13:56 DPH places vaccine orders on behalf of the providers. From there, the vaccine is shipped to the hospital or facility directly with the manufacturer on behalf of the federal government. When vaccinations begin, hospitals report data to DPH. And DPH and the command center will launch a public dashboard to keep track of immunizations administered next week. Individuals with questions about the phase that they can be vaccinated can send an email to a COVID-19 vaccine plan. Mass at mass.gov for prioritization clarifications. If you go onto their website, they do have it phased out. Phase one, the idea is that it will be administered between December and February. And they do have a list of people that are potentially going to be getting it during that period of time. Phase two is between February and April. And phase three will be administered between April and June. So I guess the big message from this is even though the vaccine’s out there, no false sense of security yet, we still have to take the same precautions we’ve been taking just because you hear often, oh, there’s a vaccine, I don’t have to worry anymore. That’s not the case at all. That’s correct. Could you repeat that COVID site? So you can go to mass.gov vaccinations. So COVID-19 vaccine plan mass at mass.gov. This is all, you know, if you go to mass.gov COVID-19, there’s all these different boxes that you can get to.

15:32 Massachusetts Vaccine Advisory Group. And also, you know, you can learn more about where you fit in with the COVID-19 vaccination distribution timeline. So depending on your age, you know, there’s a whole bunch of different equations that they’ve put into place to put you into the different, the three different phases. Funding. One more question, is that all right? You said we will not be getting the Pfizer, we’ll be getting the Moderna. Who are the we? Are we going to get it at the health department? Could you repeat that? Yes, so local health departments. So, yeah, local communities because we don’t have the capacity for the ultra-cold storage. The Moderna is, can be just stored in a regular, you know, we have a temperature-stamped freezer. That we use. We also have a refrigerator, but it can be stored in the freezer. No, but I want to know if you’re intending to have a clinic or vaccination where you say you’re going to get the product. Yes. So the plan at this point, so our first group of people that we will start to vaccinate will be first responders. Fire, police, EMS. And the plan for that is that we will be doing, we’re talking about either smaller vaccination clinics. You have to do at least 200 people at a time. Or there’s a potential that we could do larger clinics up to 1,000 people.

17:05 There’s a lot of different things that will go into that. We are going to follow the hospital standards where they’re breaking up their employees into two groups. We want to make sure that we can continue to operate. We want to make sure that we don’t have any reactions to the vaccine. And all of a sudden we’re out of employees. So we’ll have two different groups that will be vaccinating, Group A and Group B, on different days. And obviously 21 to 28 days later, they’ll have to receive their second dose. So all those things have to be coordinated. We’re hoping to start to vaccinate people, you know, sometime in January. Hopefully, you know, the second to third week in January. We saw the jig of the question. Yeah. And who will staff that? Tracy and anyone else? Yeah. So obviously, you know, we will be working with other communities. So, you know, usually we work with Marblehead, Swamscot, Salem, sometimes Beverly. It’s potential that will hold a clinic for Swamscot, Marblehead, Salem employees, using our public health nurses and MRC nurses that we often use to staff the clinic, as well as other people to do administration work and stuff like that. Some of the requirements is that we have to make sure that once we vaccinate somebody, it has to get into the system. So it’s a very short period of time to get it into the system.

18:36 So it needs to be in within 24 hours. So if a doctor looks you up, they can see that you have been vaccinated. And you said the second dose is now arranged, not just 21 days, but it’s up to two. So I believe that it was 21 days, but I have seen that, you know, I’ve heard it. It can be as late as 28 days. So I don’t have the document on that exactly yet. We’re also still waiting for the scanning orders to administer the vaccine. And I’m sorry. And we always get standing orders every year for like flu vaccine and stuff like that. That’s something usually that comes from the state government. We put that request in to make sure that we have all those documents beforehand. So we have some of the necessary information. With the flu vaccine, you know, when we have clinics, et cetera, people just, you know, show up and they provide their insurance information or whatever information they need to provide or not provide and they get it anyway. But with this, I’m assuming people are going to need to actually register ahead of time to get it, right? Like they’re not going to just show up. There’s going to need to be a portal or registration site. And who’s going to administer that site? Do you have any information on that? Yeah. So we did, we looked at this, it’s called Promod the other day. It was used down, I believe, Virginia. And so people would preregister on that and we’d actually be able to take that information

20:07 and drop it into the reporting software also so you’re not having to duplicate work. So that just came out. They need to get that up and running in the state of Massachusetts. It’s not up and running yet, but that’s something that hopefully will assist us with the reporting and getting people in queue and stuff like that. I just think it’s wonderful that our first responders are going to be able to get the vaccine sooner than later and in our community, our nearby community. Thank you for the work that you’re doing to do that. Yeah, obviously, you know, we want to make sure it gets out as quickly as possible. We don’t want it sitting in, you know, a warehouse anywhere. It’s really important, you know. And so, yes, that’s our major focus. One of the things, as far as, you know, working forward, obviously we’re seeing a tremendous amount of cases on a, you know, cases on a day-to-day basis. You know, we’re seeing 10 to 12 cases a day at times. So we’re, that’s over the capacity of our local public health nurse as far as contact tracing. So we have been pushing cases to the CTC. And obviously, remember, when we start to go into vaccination mode, we’re going to have to drop away from some of that contact tracing work to be able to administer a vaccine. So we’re going to have to rely on the CTC also. We want to make sure that the system’s working, that we don’t have any issues with that. However, at this point, the system is a little bit maxed out. I believe there’s only a total of 1,800 workers for the CTC. With 5,000 cases coming in at a day, that’s quite a few phone calls that everybody has to make.

21:39 If you do not hear from somebody, please be patient. It can take, you know, 24 to 48 hours. And they’ve kind of had to decide who’s going to get a phone call, what information we can give them quickly. You know, we’re not able to do these large cluster work at this point. We’re often having to hand the paperwork over to individuals, you know, establishments to do their own documents and get that back to us. So, you know, this is all the different things that we have to do. And yes, we want the vaccine to be rolled out as quickly as possible. So we do at times have to shift gears a little bit from dealing with cases on a day-to-day basis, but also trying to make sure that we can get the vaccinations and the clinics up and running. One of the other big, you know, and obviously we’ve had testing over the last two weeks. We tested approximately 1,600 people in the last two weeks using Cataldo. And that was another big piece that everybody was looking for. There’s quite a bit of testing across the state. If you’re unable to get tested at one of our test sites, please go to mass.gov. There’s also Stop the Spread and Where to Get Tested. So there’s a testing site portal that will show you a map of Massachusetts. There’s quite a few testing locations close by, so everybody should be able to get tested in a timely manner. So we’re not going to continue any more testing with Cataldo? So, unfortunately, with the way the CARES Act was spelled out was that the CARES Act funding ended December 30th.

23:16 So we couldn’t spend any money after that. And also with the demand that everybody had, Cataldo only had those four dates for us. So they were not able to offer any additional dates at that time.

23:32 As far as the CARES Act funding, like I said, it was scheduled to expire on December 30th. There is a bill that has passed Congress, and this is called the Phase 4.0 registration, responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. We understand that the current draft of the bill passed by the U.S. Congress would extend the deadline for the Coronavirus Relief Fund for one year to December 31st, 2021. The legislation still needs to be signed by the President, so we are cautious but encouraged by the news. And obviously, as soon as this is finally signed, we’ll hear about this. As far as funding for the Health Department, so we would have, if the bill is signed, that would allow an additional $30,000 to be rolled into 2021. We have also received an additional state allocation for COVID for 2021 that expires on June 30th, and that’s a total of $18,000. So we could have as much as $48,000 if everything is signed, but at least we have that $18,000, and that will allow my employees, my public health nurse, my inspector, to continue to work full-time. Wonderful. But as soon as we hear more information on that, I will let you know. And that’s it at this point for the COVID update.

25:06 Thank you. I see that Sondra Callahan, you’ve had your hand raised for a while. Is this pertinent to Andrew’s report, or we’re going to have a discussion with the public at the end? It is, but Andrew could also touch base. There was a couple of things he mentioned, but I can also, it can be addressed at the end as well. Okay, we’ll call you. You’re first on the list. That’s fine, thank you. Helene, do you have a reopening committee meeting? Yes, I do. And Andrew was there. So last week I had someone looking over my shoulder, namely the superintendent. Today I have the director looking over my shoulder. It’s his report, so I took notes. So who wants, you want to give it, Andrew? No, go right in. So I’m going to take words out of his mouth, but he can correct me. The major thrust for this meeting was that you talk about where we go from now until through the first week we get back from vacation. So there are several different areas that were addressed. The first area was the parents’ concern about identifying individuals, both faculty or staff too, because other staff members and students. And Andrew explained that those names should not be given. There was one faculty member’s name was given in the summer, early late summer, because that person had requested it, but it was really against the, even at that time, against the advice of the director of public health, so in our department.

26:50 So there are several reasons, mainly certainly HIPAA, but there’s also, because we are doing so well, we don’t need to get people excited. We are going to keep the six foot away distancing, and that’s why we are doing well, and we will not shut the schools down until we get into the red, and I imagine it was stated that it was for three weeks, but that could change. Everything has been and continues to be a moving target, but because we’re six feet, and we are doing very well in the classroom, as I’ve said before, most of the spread is not from the school, it’s from outside of school. And as the absentee rate increases, that’s going to be something else that we will be looking at, both staff and students, because there’s just a limited amount of substitutes around, and they have luckily found several more, but when we can’t have the classes conducted by teachers, then our teachers are people that are teaching the class, they will have to reassess on that, and all the decisions have been made on the health and safety of the students and the teachers.

28:24 And I think I did mention, but I’ve got it noted here, that Andrew did say that things change on a day-to-day basis. It’s also that there were some things that go building by building, so things can change from one building to the next. The other, we went into the sports about transmission and about practice, and the last Thursday, practice began, and it was going to continue this week, the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday during the remote week, and it’s going to continue during vacation week and the week after school break when there is vacation. When a person is infected, the entire athletic group, whether it’s basketball or hockey, gymnastics, or the swimming, they will all have to go into quarantine. So, Andrew also stressed through this that the schools need to make their decision, the Board of Health is making recommendations, we’re acting as an advisory. The school committee and the superintendent looked to us for advice, they would really like us to make more decisions for them, but we are acting and should act as an advisory.

29:59 So, I think that that’s the way it’s going to go, and that’s what Andrew has expressed to them. There was a very large discussion on the imbalance between cohort A and cohort B throughout the various levels of the school. At each level, the elementary school principals, the village school principal, and the vet school, and the high school all weighed in on this. And the bottom line is that because of the snow day, it seems that most of the schools are seeing one or two days that cohort A has one or two days less than cohort B. And it seems to cause a lot of discussion within the school system, outside of the school department, but I guess there were many questions and many concerns. It seems that it’s going to even out by the end of the year, I may not be by the term, because they want to gain another, cohort B is going to gain another day with Martin Luther King Day, and it seemed to amaze me that that’s off the record that there was a concern that one, that there was a contest that one had more school time than the other.

31:37 Food service was interesting, because the menu this week was the same. Students could go pick up their parents, and families could pick up their meals. Again, it’s for everyone. It’s not just for people that are getting free and reduced lunches. Everyone that’s part of the school system can get that. Next week, they’re going to do what they call bulk meals, that you can pick the meals up during vacation and also during the remote week. You can pick them up on, I think on Wednesday, they said, that’s, I’m unclear, and I was going to look into it, and I just didn’t read the paper or read the school website, because that’s, I don’t know where these bulk meals, I do know where they’re going to be picked up at the regular place. But I’m not quite sure, but you get them all at once on one day for the whole week. I think that’s it. Oh, just one good thing, because the superintendent was very impressed with a particular student in the fourth grade, who wrote a thank you note to him for the snow day. And he was very pleased that he heard a nice thing, and it sort of made teaching and being in that field made them have a very good feeling.

33:12 She wrote, thank you so much for a snow day, an old fashioned snow day, and I’m just being a little more brief because it was longer, an old fashioned snow day and a time to have hot chocolate. So he feels that he was able to give the school department and the student body and the teachers a gift by having no school. But obviously it was a very big snowstorm, and there was no really decision, but he had made, really he had thought about it prior to that, and they were appreciative. So with that, I am done, and they are going to meet every Monday, I got a schedule, we are going to meet every Monday until the end of school. I’ve got a, maybe beyond, but I’ve got, for the first time, I’ve got advanced dates, and they go right through June. And just to add on to that a little bit, for the sports and the guidelines for the quarantine or isolation, we follow department public health sector specific guidance for sports on quarantine and isolation. So it’s not that we’re making up different rules for the high school, we are following the guidelines established by the Mass Department of Public Health. Food security, food security is a lot of discussion around food security, especially in the schools and outside the schools. If you’re concerned about food, please go to mafoodsecurityatmass.gov.

34:50 What about our own food bank? Obviously we have a marble head food bank that you can go to, there’s some other establishments, your religious organizations are often helping out with food insecurities. And if you have any questions regarding food insecurities, please contact our office also. If you need some help finding your way through some of these websites. So do I get an A- or a B-plus? A- Thanks for that report, Helene. Thanks for your continued attendance at these meetings. As I always say, it’s my pleasure. Okay. So, Sandra, do you want to ask your question or make your comment? Yes, quick thing. And Andrew, this might be something that- can you just explain to me, when we’re looking at the dashboard for Massachusetts, what is the difference between the COVID case count versus the positive case count? My understanding is they’re weeding out some people that are double, you know, that maybe gets tested on a Wednesday and there’s a delay, they get, you know, inpatient, they get tested again. So I guess my question is, what’s our real case count? Is it the actual case count or- Are you asking for Marblehead or for the state? Marblehead, Marblehead. I’m just talking about the town, you know, the breakdown of where it gives us, you know, column one, I think it’s our total number, you know, since March.

36:22 And then it goes, I think, 14, you know, COVID case count for 14 days and then, you know, and then it’s like several columns over that we have the positive case count. My understanding is it’s the weeding out of double positives or maybe the reallocation of, you know, maybe someone that got tested positive, maybe in like, you know, a college kid that got tested positive in Springfield was under quarantine and maybe then moved or relocated to Marblehead. Is that why we’re seeing differences in the numbers? So really when you looked at the confirmed cases, so you have a confirmed case total for the week. So this past week was 558. And then below that you have like a December 11 count of 503. Oh, I’m sorry, Andrea, you’re referring to the one that Marblehead puts out? Are we talking about the- Oh, okay, I’m sorry. I’m talking about the dashboard one that comes to the community list, the entire whatever, 300 and something communities. We have the one that Mass puts out and then has Marblehead listed. So that’s the community data? Yes, yes. So they pull their data on a different date than we do. So they pull their data Wednesday morning. So their data and our data are never going to quite equal each other because of the dates that they pull it. Okay. And then when we go through it, we obviously try to clean the data and make sure that there’s not doubles. Sometimes I have people that when we go through actually and interview the people, they don’t live here.

37:56 They might be working at a long-term care facility or they’re away at school. So we might move them out. Okay. I’m looking at like, you know, the community one, like I said, they have Marblehead listed. You know, last week we had the 546 and it says case count of 120 for the past 14 days. And then when you go over, look at positive tests, our positive test count was 144. So 144 tests. So there’s 3,331 tests completed and 144 people tested positive. So those are not duplicates, right? Those are true individual tests within a two-week period. Yeah. So that’s within a two-week period. But yes, you can have, you could have duplicates. You could have some errors in there. I don’t know how they actually clean their data for their, for them. We only get the 331. This is the way you get it. We pull it right off of that. Yeah. We don’t even know where they get the number of the 120. Like that just is a raw number they start off with and then it balances out at the end or something. Oh, so they, they do the same thing as we do. So we both use a system called Maven. But so every second that those, that’s changing. So they have two people that sit side by side Wednesday morning and they hit report. And so it takes the report a long time and it comes out with their numbers. And so those are, those are, if I had hit the same time, I should be getting the same report as they do.

39:27 Yeah. We put our, our community numbers for our, for Marblehead on Thursday morning. We try to do the same time every week and we pull our numbers and then we go through it to make sure it’s, we call it cleaning the data and then reporting that on Friday. Okay. So they’re Wednesday, we’re Thursday. And then one follow-up thing that you mentioned, which I know that you talked about a couple of times, contact tracing. It sounds as like Marblehead is, you know, having, and obviously many communities having a hard time keeping up. And that you guys are doing a send out, I guess. What is your understanding? I mean, I know there’s 1800 workers. Is the understanding every positive case that comes into Massachusetts should at least get one attempt of a call out for, for a close contact? Is that the expectation? So if I’m hearing, you’re hearing a lot of mixed things and not from Marblehead, but overall in general. Yeah. That is the idea is that everybody should get a phone call. I do not believe is actually occurring though. Okay. Cause that was what my question was, is a provider we tell a parent, if you didn’t hear from anyone, don’t be worried. But now I’m wondering if that’s the, you know, if that’s the correct, you know, guidance that we should be giving them still now. So you should, you know, you should be hearing from them. It might take 24 to 48 hours at this point. Okay. But the expectation is someone should be reaching out to us either through Marblehead. And then can you just confirm? Cause I’ve also heard that a lot of people are avoiding picking up contract tasting calls. And that’s why we switched the guidance. When you guys are contracting out to the CTC on the caller ID is, does it say TCC contact tracing? Are you aware or cause a lot of people have these robo block calls. I’m wondering if these calls are getting blocked possibly.

41:10 It is possible. They’re getting blocked. We know a lot of people are just unwilling to pick up an unknown number. So even in my office, because we have so many phone calls coming in, we all have cell phones that we’re using at the same time as the office phone. So the public health nurse is probably using her cell phone. So it’s a three three nine number. So it might not be a number that you recognize. The message has tried to be, please pick up numbers that are coming to your phone as it moves through. It might be contact tracing if you have tested in the last couple days. Okay. So we don’t know if the CTC though, if it comes up a caller ID where it says CTC contact tracer. It just, I think it’s an eight six six number, right? Yeah. I believe it’s an eight six six number. And then the one follow up question to that is if someone does not pick up, are the contact tracers leaving them a message saying you need to call us or are they just attempting to call back again later on in the day or the next day? No, they’re just leaving a message and they’re not going to return. They’re not going to call back. Okay. So they are leaving a message saying we are calling to contact you that you have had an exposure. Yep. Okay. I just wanted to clarify that. And that happens from CTC as well too. Correct. Okay. Thank you for that. But you know, but if you do have questions or concerns about patients, you can always call and try to talk to our public health nurse and she’s always able to get in. What happens sometimes when I kick a case over the CTC, I can’t see all the information anymore. What they’re gathering.

42:42 But we can usually pull it back into us and talk, try to talk to that person. If you have concerns, obviously we want to work with the local providers a little bit more. If you have a concern about a patient. Yeah. I haven’t had a concern about a patient, but you know, you hear a parent say, well, I heard that this kid of a kid of a kid and I’m not sure if I should be concerned. So we’re like, so we’ve said to a parent, once, unless you get a confirmation that it’s your best friend and you know, for a fact, there was an exposure. But if it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s you know, word of mouth, I’ve said to them until you hear from a contact tracer, we’re going to assume that they already established that there was not a positive contact. So that’s why I just wanted to find out if the expectation is, you know, that there’s a one phone call going out to a positive test and that there’s a message being left if someone doesn’t pick up. Yep. The other issue that’s where we’re running into is that people are unwilling to give up information. So either a positive case, but they do not want to give us any information or we’re not allowed to talk to anybody in that household. Does that happen often? It doesn’t happen that often, but we have run into it. Okay. And are you guys expecting the parent or the individual to share cell phone numbers or contact numbers or just names? We’re trying to gather as much information as possible so we can contact their contacts. Okay. Michelle, did you have a call? I want to share that. Thanks for sharing that. I get a little bit more of an insight from what you guys are dealing with on that side.

44:14 Yeah, I just, I was just wondering, given that we are talking about data and moving into public participation, I just was wondering, Andrew, if it would make sense for me to mention some of the outreach that I’m doing regarding data visualization. Sounds good. As we had talked about on our last call, we are interested as a board in, and as community members, we’ve heard from many of you that we are continuing to see an interest in sharing more graphs and interesting ways of looking at and understanding the data. And in that interest, we are exploring now trying to seek out some, a student volunteer. We’re trying to find, we have some contacts in the health informatics department. We’re hoping to potentially find somebody in the health informatics department at Northeastern or we have some contacts in the graduate school of public health at Northeastern and

45:45 some other potential volunteer students who might be able to work with us to develop some, you know, very easy to understand basic data visualizations for the trends that we’ve been presenting in basic form, just given our capacity issues in the department. So hopefully we’ll have that together in the next week or so. And just wanted to share that update. And just so people understand, so Tracy and myself will continue to go into Maven to gather the data, but when we share the data to have it, you know, put into spreadsheets or graphs, it’s, you know, there’s no names associated with it. It’s just an Excel spreadsheet with the data. So it’s not like this individual is going into Maven, which is a secure website. Sarah, did you want to? Thanks. I see that you’re signed in under somebody else’s name as well, Todd. I just wanted to tag off of a couple of things that Helene had mentioned quickly. I just wanted to kind of clarify the point about, you know, that the schools are definitely, you know, continuing to make decisions and everything with the guidance of the Board of Health. And it was just kind of this piece that I had reached out to the, our state representative

47:20 at the school committee level. And she had let me know that as far as sports were concerned that the Board of Health does ultimately have that call on them so that they can shut things down, but that the schools will continue to, you know, evaluate it and, you know, make the decisions and work with the Board of Health so that, you know, we’re all sort of on the same page. And then I just wanted to clarify, too, the piece about being in the red for three weeks and that that would close the schools. That piece is actually more related to what is happening at this sport level. Again, is that playing against a team that where the town has been in red for three weeks in a row is where I believe it’s MIAA has stepped in and said that that shouldn’t be happening. So, but we’ve, we can kind of set our own parameters as well with that. And then as it relates to the full school functioning, there is a larger conversation. There was a really great conversation that Helene touched on many of the points from Monday and that the superintendent and the nurses are working on putting together those metrics so that it really isn’t one thing or, you know, I guess the big one thing would be that if there was inter-school transmission, but there it’s really difficult to pinpoint one thing that is going to shut our system down, that it’s going to be really probably a combination of things that just continues to tax the system so that we may have to take

48:55 a step back, kind of like you’re seeing us do this week and then with the possibility of the week after the winter holiday as well. So that, you know, and that the hope is not to have to have a massive shutdown at any point, similar to what we saw last spring. The hope is that, you know, as long as we’re not seeing those transmissions within the schools that we can continue to push forward with the, you know, the occasional improbable pullback to kind of just sort of support the system a little bit better so that we can then continue to push forward. And then one other piece is that just to sort of on Sandra’s questioning about the contact tracing is that the schools are reporting through the nurses that our contact tracing is going quite well. So you know, I completely understand the larger picture on that and how difficult that is, but just to kind of assuage any fears that might pop up about being in classrooms with kids and that concern that’s sort of out there in the broader community that the school nurses are reporting that their contact tracing is going in a positive direction. Could I ask Sarah for clarification on something? Sarah, do you have any information other than me asking people to go on the website about the bulk meals on the food service? So gosh, I’m going to forget what Richard was saying.

50:27 But if they, if anybody had any questions on it, they could always call over to the district office and ask one of them over there for some clarification. But I believe it’s everybody within that system. So everybody within the school system is getting weekly emails with the ability. You know, I’m not sure how it’s going to look for the bulk meals, but the way that it looks in a regular week is that they get to you get to put your student’s name in and then and the their ID number so that it can be billed correctly to, you know, we’re not getting the individuals getting billed, but so that it can go into the system correctly for reimbursement at the, I believe it’s federal level at this point. And then you choose which days and then Richard’s got meals that are options under each day. So I believe that that there’s a pickup tomorrow that that it that the pickup tomorrow is later than what the pickups next week will be because there is school and we do have students and teachers in the buildings tomorrow. So that those pickups for the bulk meals for the remainder of this week is going to be a little bit later so that we clear most of the individuals from the school by the time people are coming in to pick up meals. And then next week, I can’t remember what what date that is. I can I can check that and get that back to you, though, Helene. There was a letter that came out from Richard yesterday that talked about all of this so

51:57 we can make sure that that’s out there also. Great. Good. Maybe you’ll get it to Tom because he can put it in the report. Yes. Yeah, I can pass it on to Tom. Because I think that’s important. People that need their meals. Yes. And they really need to have that information. Yes. And that information I don’t quote me on this, but it may be also on the back together page. And I can request that that does go on there if it’s not already on there. Richard just breeze through it. It wasn’t it. It’s not your memory, Sarah. It would be it would be Andrews yours and mine and combined. I think we could at least one of us could have come up with bits of it. My memory is pretty poor at this point. Oh, it’s way too much in it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Erin. Hi, Erin. Your hand is up. Thank you all so much for your time and your update. I just wanted to ask, what are we doing to prioritize and get testing for the upcoming month or two? And I know that it’s contingent on funding, but are we ready to roll as soon as the funds are released from the state? And I know, because I mean, clearly testing, everyone knows what we need to do right now at this point, right? Like it’s December, like we know all the rules and everything. And testing is like, to me, the single most important thing we can do to prevent the

53:31 spread in our community. And obviously, the demand for testing far exceeds the supply or the resources that we’ve seen through Cataldo and just the demand for the holiday season. What is the plan to improve upon our testing in the town? So unfortunately, really, it’s dictated by funding. So we were told that we had an allotment from the federal government, and that had to be spent by December 30. So we did our best to try to spend all that money by that time. That’s why we did all those four days. So unfortunately, our federal government has kind of left us in this lurch where they’re saying that the funding that they gave us can be extended to December of next year. My understanding is that there isn’t any additional funding. So if we spent all the money, we’re not going to get it anymore, is my understanding. Now the governor has also, continues to say that he’s trying to increase testing in the state as quickly as possible. He’s telling that we are testing the most number of people in a single day compared to the rest of the country. You know, I agree with you, testing is a great tool. But people also have to remind themselves that it’s your behavior that is really dictating and what you need to do to try to prevent the spread of the disease, you know, the virus. Yeah, I understand.

55:03 They left you guys, everybody in a decision making, um, tickle with, you know, waiting to the last minute to let you know, oh, by the way, we’ll extend the funds. And it’s not final yet either. Okay. Yeah. Did you say there was additional state funding coming? No, only for public health to my department to cover extension of hours for employees, but that’s it. Oh, okay. I understand. All right. Thank you for clarifying. Yep. Thanks. Okay. So I don’t see any more hands raised. I believe that your reports are complete. Let’s talk about our next meeting, which we’re going to be off next week. So did we already, I’m just checking my calendar. Did we already book, I think January, I think we did, didn’t we? January 5th. January 5th, right? That’s what I have. Yeah, me too. Is that a date for you, Michelle? Yeah. And then we’ll, we’ll go from there. Um, we don’t necessarily have to meet every Tuesday, but we should be planning for that contingency. Um, and before we adjourn, I just want to, just want to say that we know as a fact that Thanksgiving was disastrous for the state and the country. And with Christmas and New Year’s coming up, please everybody, just, just remember that this year stinks and next year will be better.

56:35 But we know, we know gatherings raise the rates and, and I hope that everybody just remembers that it’s better to have a rotten time than to get sick. So I hate to, um, Sarah’s raising her hand again. Um, and I, um, I like what she’s giving to her hand or Toby. Oh, she’s saying, yeah, she’s saying yes. That was a thumbs up. Like yes. Yes. Um, I, and I did the same high fives. Um, agreed. Um, I, I meant to say this earlier, but we, um, we promised, um, uh, Jodi that we would mention her, the column that she was doing for the, um, for the reporter. Um, and cause she had to leave the meeting early, but she’s doing the, um, mask up for Marblehead and anybody who’s interested in submitting, um, uh, a picture and a profile regarding the why you’re wearing a mask, um, can contact, um, hmm. I don’t know. We don’t have Jodi’s information. I suppose people can send it to, um, Andrew and he can forward it along to me and I’ll make sure she gets it. Um, or you can send it directly to me. Um, if you have my contact information, Andrea can get that to you, but it’s, um, you, um,

58:11 send information. She’s sharing this through the reporter. They’re going to be doing a story that has pictures of, um, people, um, wearing masks and why you wear a mask. Um, kids can do it. Adults can do it. And, um, she shared it on our last meeting. Um, but explaining why you’re wearing a mask. Um, you know, what, why it’s important to you, um, so that we can continue to send messages of positivity around mask wearing and support, um, prevention, um, and stopping the spread of COVID-19. So I’m sorry. I didn’t mention that earlier because we should have ended with, um, Toby’s, I mean, Todd’s good messaging. Tell them what the joke is. Oh yes. That’s my son. That’s why very, very wise son. You got two TOs in a row and then sometimes you don’t notice the last two minutes. All right. Do we have a motion to adjourn? I’ll make some motion. Okay. Um, Miss Aislett in favor. Miss Gottlieb, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. In favor. Miss Gottlieb. In favor. Dr. Belf Becker. In favor and have happy and safe holidays. Everybody. Good. Thank you.