Board of Health: January 19, 2021

Transcript machine-generated with Whisper speech recognition (the source video has no caption track). No speaker labels; proper names and dollar figures occasionally misheard. Click any timecode to jump to that moment in the source video.

0:01 I will call the meeting to order. Welcome everybody. First item on our agenda is the December 8th minutes. Because they’re executive sessions, we were sent those password protected and I imagine you both have read them. Are you ready to make a motion to approve? Yes, I’ll make a motion to approve the minutes as were sent to Andrea previously. Is there a second? That’s the executive committee session, is that correct? So should we put that in the motion? I’ll make a motion to approve the executive session minutes from December 8th. Second. And Ms. Gottlieb? In favor. Ms. Hazlett? In favor. Dr. Belfbecker? In favor. Great. And Andrew, let’s go to your COVID report please. Alright, so obviously we’ll start with the case reporting. So this week we had a slightly different format with the case reporting. So for January 15th, we have a total of 863 confirmed cases to date. We had at that period of time, we had 89 active cases. And we’re still sitting at 31 deaths. I am waiting the newest kind of round of death reports, death certificates from the town clerk.

1:33 And I will be going through those as soon as I receive them to see if we have any more people that we need to add to the list, unfortunately. Continuing on, you will see that I broke it out into the age groups again, the 0 to 19, 20 to 29. And unfortunately again, the 0 to 19 age group had the largest number of positive cases. This is at least the second, if not third week in a row. And this is a little concerning. We did talk about the UK variant, you know, the variant discovered in the UK a couple weeks ago. And this is why we are a little concerned about the cases continuing to climb in the 0 to 19 age group. The 20 to 29 age group also continues to be a high age group. You know, obviously that age group, you know, loves to hang out with their friends. So we could social gatherings are probably contributing or the major contributor to that age group. After that, it’s kind of evenly well spread. Very often you’ll see pretty high numbers or higher numbers in the 50 to 59 or 60 to 69. Hopefully some of the people have, you know, or people are starting to really change their behavior based on case counts. They shouldn’t have waited this long, but I think that’s hopefully what’s happening with that. Obviously restaurants are reduced capacity. The governor has a lot of orders in place that are hopefully trying to contribute to some of the numbers in certain age groups coming down.

3:06 But not all over the place. So unfortunately our average daily incident rate per 100,000 continues to climb. So that last week was at 59.7. That’s been the highest so far. And unfortunately also at the same time, our percent positive has finally over 5%. With those two groups both being in the red, we are now considered a red community. Unfortunately, you know, this day has come. We are really hoping to avoid it. Obviously people are just unable to change their behavior and where we are today. We will continue to work with our individual on the graphs, trying to reshape them a little bit, taking, you know, examples from other communities or looking at other ideas and how to portray the information. Social gatherings are contributing to these increases. Transmission is occurring in homes as well as in workplaces. So when I talk about social gatherings, a social gathering can be a formal gathering like I inviting people over to my house. It can be an informal gathering where I’m at a sporting event and I see a friend and I go over and talk to them for a period of time. These are all contributing to this. People need to remember that there’s three major things that really help not spread the virus. Wearing a mask, social distancing and washing your hands.

4:37 Those three things really can do a huge amount of effort to combating the virus. So I know everybody gets excited to see their friends. I know it’s been a long time, but please only have people that you live with in your household. Don’t have anybody else coming into your house for parties or gatherings. This virus at this point, once it gets into a home, we are seeing it spread to all community, like all household members. So before, you know, people were able to isolate away from themselves from other household members. At this point, it seems like it’s just once it gets into a household, it is reaching all family members. So please, you really need to think about your social gatherings even if they’re not a formal social gathering. So even stopping to talk to your friend on the street, other gatherings like that are contributing to this. When we talk about workplace gatherings, this is often is very common. You see, you know, working in a restaurant or other places, employees like to gather at times and talk and hang out as an employer or, you know, somebody managing these employees. You need to do the right thing and step in and say, please, we can’t have these social gatherings. They are contributing to the increased cases. Obviously, smoking breaks increases the chances of transmission. You’re taking off your mask, this potential virus sharing at that point. So these are two major areas that we’re seeing a lot of cases in, and we just need to continue to remind people to do the right thing.

6:13 Michelle, did you have a question on that? You’re on mute. I just wanted to jump in with one more piece around that social gathering piece. I know that, you know, over the summer or the fall and the warmer months when our cases were lower, you know, people were having, you know, maybe expanding with their kids to allow like, okay, we can, you know, pod or have a play date, you know, with one or two families. And we can expand that and allow, you know, one or two kids to come into our house and do a play date or do a sleepover. And, you know, we can kind of safely do this. But I think if you’ve seen those graphics where, you know, that family still has those connections where, you know, somebody is out and they’re, you know, the parent is going to work. And then that parent still has social connections, you know, here and there. And you’re not really that you’re not that close pod that you think. And so I would urge people who maybe were having those indoor play dates when our cases were lower, when we didn’t have this extremely transmissible variant in our community to reconsider that practice. Because I think we’re in a very different situation right now. And we need to be like that much more cautious and really not take that risk anymore of even doing those little pods.

7:44 Because those little pods are only pods when people are not going anywhere or seeing anyone. Otherwise, they’re just as dangerous as everything else. The other thing I did add into the report this week is if you can go to the mass.gov website, there’s a daily dashboard. It gives a lot of hospital data. I have included the data for that day from the daily dashboard into it so you can see where we are across the state. But really important, if you look at that Northeast section, we are right on the line of hospital capacity. Yes, hospitals have and still are moving patients around, but we are very close to being at maximum capacity for our hospitals at that time. So that is something that I will continue to show. I would say it is critically important that everybody falls the steps listed below to protect lives and preserve the capacity of our acute care hospitals and other health care systems. Stay home between the hours of 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. Between 5 a.m. and 10 p.m., only leave home to go to work or school or for central needs such as seeking emergency medical care, going to the grocery store or pharmacy, picking up takeout food or receiving deliveries. If you do leave home, practice social distancing by staying six feet away from others and wearing a face covering at all times. Could I just, do you have a break right now?

9:18 Let me finish this and I will go back to you. Don’t have gatherings in your home with anybody outside of your household. Comply with all governor’s orders, including orders requiring face coverings, limiting gatherings and mandatory early closure of businesses. Practice social distancing and avoid touching services frequently touched by others when you are outside of your home. Use remote modes of communication like phone or video chat instead of visiting friends or family. Colleen? Yes, I just wanted to reinforce what you’ve been saying and what Michelle has said. We’ve been at this for 10 months. We’ve been very polite all along. We’ve requested people to do things. We can’t insist, but beyond insisting, I just have to plead with you to do the right thing, as Andrew has laid out. The vaccine is out in the next few months. The next groups of people, phase two, phase three, will be coming along. And you still can’t let your head down until everyone has had their vaccine. This is going to be a long process. It isn’t going to happen overnight. And as you see, it’s even slower than we had hoped it to be. Hopefully it will pick up a little bit in the next month or two. But the vaccine isn’t the end all. It’s going to certainly be a wonderful cure in the long run. But we must do the right thing.

10:51 Andrew, would you like to share with the group that we have gotten the professionals to do some of our stats? Yeah, let me just finish up on one little thing. So as far as the reason why we use remote modes of communication like phone or video chat instead of visiting friends or family, we understand that mental health is a real struggle at this point. Like we’ve said, we’ve been in this for 10 months. People feel really isolated. And so these are some tools that can help you from feeling so isolated. Video chats, phone conversations. However, if you do need help with mental issues or any other issues, please make sure you’re aware of the resources at mass.gov. You can always call 211. That’s the information line. It’s also the referral hotline. They have live chats. You can also go onto 211 website. That’s hcppsmass211.org. There’s also a phone number for counseling and support. 888-215-4920. There’s also other emails. But please, we will remember to put these resources on our case report every week because I know mental health issues are always a concern and will always be a concern. Michelle, do you want to kind of cover the question about who assisted us with the graphs this week? Sure. Yes. We had some assistance, and we’ll continue to have assistance from a data science

12:26 who works with University of Washington Seattle Children’s Hospital. And he’s been crunching data for other Massachusetts communities and other… He’s been doing like kind of aggregate data for Massachusetts communities and had offered to do some basic analyses for us and has a long background doing data science first in conservation biology and then moving into the health science data world. And so he’s happy to continue working with us on kind of any variables that we want him to do. The reason that we didn’t have the age range pulled out into a data graph is because the way he’s going to take the data is directly from our Excel spreadsheets and then it kind of automatically goes into the computer and he can crunch the data that way. And Andrew right now has to kind of manually pull those, the age ranges that he does and there’s only kind of so much we can ask him to do, but we’ll be kind of fine-tuning this as we go. That was only the first week that we had done it. But yeah, we’re grateful that he’s doing that and it allowed us to have some more creative data visualizations,

14:03 which we know the community has asked for and prefers. And we all agree that this is the way that we should be presenting our data and we will continue to do it. Okay, so two weeks ago I talked about the new variant first identified in the UK and I have some updated information from the state. So unfortunately, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health today, this was from Sunday, January 17th. Today announced that the first case of COVID-19 variant has been detected in Massachusetts. This is the same variant initially discovered in the United Kingdom. The individual developed symptoms in early January and tested positive for COVID-19. A genetic sample was sent to an out-of-state laboratory as part of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, established surveillance process to identify COVID-19 variants. The state public health laboratory was notified last evening of the results. The individual is a Boston resident, a female in her 20s. She had traveled to the United Kingdom and became ill the day after she returned. She had tested negative prior to leaving the UK. The individual was interviewed by contact tracers at the time of initial positive result was received. And close contracts were identified. She’s being re-interviewed by public health officials now that the variant has been identified as the cause of the illness.

15:37 Collaboration with clinical diagnostic laboratories and academic partners. Surveillance consists of genetic sequencing on portions of the COVID-19 positive specimens. Today, the CDC has reported 88 cases from 14 states in the United States that have found this variant. So again, with the messaging from two weeks ago, the best thing for us to do with this variant is to continue to emphasize the importance of wearing a mask, staying at least six feet apart from others, avoiding crowds, ventilating indoor spaces, and washing hands frequently. These are our best tools for preventing the spread of this virus, no matter the strain. So please, we will continue to say this, but this is not new information as far as how to prevent transmission, but we’re just trying to remind everybody that that is really the best way to do it. Like I said, there’s been a lot of discussion about pool testing in the schools. And I just want to kind of cover, so at this point, the public health office has really focused our attention on contact tracing, so case management. Obviously, with the number of cases that we’re receiving every day, we’re overloaded with that. At times, we have no choice but to push cases to the CDC, which is the whole idea behind the community, you know, collaboration, the community tracing collaboration, is that if we get matched out, we can start to push cases to them to assist us.

17:11 But at this time, we have pivoted to work on vaccination. So last week, we actually began to vaccinate first responders. So we held regional or coalition regional clinic with Swamscott, Salem, Danvers, Beverly, and Marblehead to vaccinate our first responders. We held clinics five days last week, two days in Marblehead, Monday and Tuesday in Marblehead, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in Beverly. We held them at the Mass Pass Force. They were able to work with us. It was a special site. And we were able to vaccinate over 700 first responders. Now, there’s a huge amount of time that goes into planning and time dedicated to being there and cleanup and all this stuff. The idea is that we have to leave. We have to come back in 28 days to revaccinate everybody. These sites will be still stood up. We didn’t break them down. So we’re trying to alleviate the work. But right now, our focus has to pivot towards getting everybody vaccinated. So, yes, pool testing can be a good tool in your toolbox to identify cases. But at this time, we don’t have the resources to help the school with the pool testing. So we just want to make sure that people understand that. If there are questions about that, we can try to assist them. But we can’t dedicate employees to be working on those. Once the cases come into Maven, yes, if we have the time and we’re not at surge capacity,

18:46 the idea is that we would be doing the contact tracing. But obviously, the CTC could be helping us with that also. Michelle? Yeah, I mean, I certainly appreciate the rationale behind it and the effort at the state level to fund this. And I’ve been interested in this. And I also appreciate where we are and needing to focus on the vaccine dissemination. But I did I was curious to find out what if anybody knows, I don’t know if Deanna knows the question. I’m assuming that’s nurse Deanna there with us. Is that you, Deanna? I just see Deanna. I don’t know. It is. Okay. Does anybody know what Salem, since they’ve been doing it, and I’m not sure exactly how long they’ve been doing it, but what they have seen in terms of impacts from the numbers once they started doing this. Like, do we have any evidence from Medford, Salem, other communities that have done this in terms of their spread in schools, community spread, like what they’ve seen as a result of implementing this program? So I did talk to my colleagues over in Salem because I was interested to see if they were participating. And they told us the same thing, that they’re at max capacity, and they don’t have anything to do with the pool testing either in Salem, that it’s run by the school department. But Deanna, can you fill us in a little bit about that? What I know about Salem is they are using a different style.

20:17 They’re using sputum, so they’re spitting, so that they give a sample once. And then when something positive comes out in that first pool test, they don’t need to recollect a specimen. So they still have enough sputum left over. Our situation would be very different. People would be tested, and then they would have to come back if they ended up being in the positive pool test. Another thing that I’ve spoken to, another public health nurse, and she spoke of how difficult it is in Salem, and that I don’t know if it’s working well or not, but I know that it’s an awful lot of work, and it’s very difficult to get the cases into Maven and such. And that’s one of my concerns for Marblehead. I just don’t feel like in all the research I’ve done on the situation that would be our pool testing, that the reward would be there. I just don’t know. I don’t think that all that work is worth the small reward we would get. Deanna, it’s Elaine. I was going to give it a thought of my report. Why don’t you tell them that the strain that it would have on the nursing staff, and also that this is only going to be available through DESI for six weeks, and then there’s going to be a cost involved. Could you elaborate on that? Yes. DESI is going to pay for it for six weeks, and then after those six weeks, it’s going to be paid for by the town. In the situation they have, they would like us to have BioNEXT Now available, and we did not opt in to have BioNEXT Now, and so we don’t even have that in place.

21:51 So we’d have to have that in place to be able to participate in this pool testing. We do not have nursing staff to do this. There would have to be all new staff hired to do this, because we just can’t. I’m running on threads myself, because I’m a COVID person. I’m also the high school nurse, and 80 percent of my day is spent COVID phone calls, and COVID emails. So we just can’t do it. It would have to be all new staff people. And would you explain it? It’s a different demographic, Ted? Do you want to just for that? Well, for me, I’m in the car, and I don’t have what I wrote down this morning in the email, but what I will say is I just don’t think it’s for our demographic, because in Marblehead, we do have families that do go and get tested when we ask them to and give them direction, and we have great access to testing. There are very few barriers for people who live in Marblehead to get tests. I do think this is better suited for bigger towns where they have more difficulty having access to testing and such. I’m sorry to put you on the spot, but you’re here, and I was going to be saying your words, so thank you for that, Biena. No, you’re not putting me on the spot. I’m going to be really verbal about this, because I just don’t think it’s for us. Thank you. You’re welcome. Andrew? So then getting into vaccination. So obviously, with the announcement of vaccination, we have received a tremendous amount of phone calls. When will I get vaccinated and all this? So we want to make sure people understand that if you go to mass.gov,

23:24 vaccine information, they all will continue to update the information. We are currently in phase one. We have to follow the orders of the Mass Department of Public Health with who we are allowed to vaccinate at the time. We hope to continue with this as long as the vaccine is available, and that is something that the Mass Department of Public Health is interested in for us to continue on and such for us. But I will, you know, I have put together a frequently asked questions about COVID-19 vaccine in Marblehead. Does the town of Marblehead have a plan to vaccinate Marblehead residents? Yes, the town of Marblehead follows the Massachusetts COVID-19 vaccination plan, which can be found at mass.gov, info details, Massachusetts COVID-19 vaccine information. Where will vaccinations occur? The Massachusetts vaccination plans calls for a large network of vaccinators to deliver vaccine to all our residents. Local public health departments will be just one piece of a larger network of vaccinators, which will include hospitals, primary care providers, ambulance services, community health centers, pharmacies, as well as state-sponsored mass vaccination sites. Many of these sites will be activated at later phases of the vaccination effort when larger segments of the population become eligible. The federal government provides the vaccine itself at no cost

24:55 and requires insurance companies to cover the cost of administration with no co-pays or balanced billing. There is no cost advantage to being vaccinated in a public clinic instead of a doctor’s office or pharmacy. So residents should feel free to seek out vaccination at any of the available locations. So that’s some really important information. When can I get vaccinated? That brings you back to that website. So kind of where we are in COVID vaccination phase one timing. So obviously COVID facing healthcare workers, that began at the beginning of December. That will continue to run until all those people have been vaccinated. Long-term care facilities, that began at the end of December. And that will continue to run until other groups, you know, until they are completed. First responders, fire, EMS, and police. That began last week, so the second week in January. At this point, you know, we have completed what we need to do for this area. So we’ll begin to look at other different groups that need to be vaccinated. Congregate care settings, correctional institutions, and shelters. That will also begin potentially this week or next week. After that comes home-based healthcare workers. Home-based healthcare workers are kind of a unique group because they don’t always go to a hospital.

26:27 So we want to make sure that we try to capture them as possible. There is potential that if we will be holding clinics for this group, if vaccines available to us to get to them. Then the next last group in phase one is non-COVID facing healthcare workers. And same thing, these two groups are at the beginning of February. And obviously, we can only vaccinate people once we have the vaccine. I can’t start to facilitate and have these big, you know, list of people that need to get vaccine. And I can’t create the list until I have the vaccine itself. So how will you find out when it’s your turn to be vaccinated? Obviously, the town will post updated information on public vaccine clinics on the town’s website, Marblehead Health Department Facebook page, and the Marblehead Police Facebook page. We’ll also share information with MHTV so they can post information there. Obviously, really, you know, we’re going to continue to push you back to mass.gov so you can get a lot of information. You know, there’s a tremendous amount of information on mass.gov, COVID, Michelle. I know that some communities, and, you know, don’t shoot me for saying this, just say no if you don’t like this idea. Some communities are doing, like, have like a quick survey where, that they send out, and this may be too much work,

28:01 but like, where the community, where it goes out to everybody so that they, you know, they fill it out so that you know, like, who’s in, you know, so I fill it out. I click off what age range I’m in, whether I have, and I know that they can go to the state, but like as a way to increase compliance when the vaccines do come in, so that like I click off my age range and whether I have any high-risk categories, health category, or whatever it is, so that like when we have access or we know that mass, that the commonwealth has vaccines for my age range or whatever, that we as the board of health can quickly shoot out an email to everybody in my age range saying, okay, now it’s time. Like, is there anything we can be doing to proactively target that community? Or is that too much of a burden for our very strapped small department? So because we don’t have, we know exactly when the state’s going to release the vaccine, it’s just too burdensome. We really have to rely on people to follow the websites and look at the announcements when we make them for the different groups. You know, the idea is that we’re not the only sole source to get the vaccine. You know, we want people to get it from multiple locations at the same time. We’re trying to vaccinate as many people at the same time as possible. Andrew, how does that work with the second dose?

29:33 So there, one worry with supply is that people won’t be able to get the second dose because there isn’t enough dose. Is that possible? Or is it, is it set? Like, um. So currently the state is supposed to be holding some vaccine back to make sure that we get our second dose. We’re not so sure that’s totally possible. Um, obviously, so when you get, when you go to a clinic and get your first dose, you should be returning to that clinic to get your second dose. So when you leave the clinic, you will get a vaccination card saying that I received the Moderna vaccine on this date and that you need to return here in 28 days to get your second dose. That’s how clinics should be set up. And, you know, obviously I can’t speak for everyone across the state, but that’s really the way it should be done. Obviously the state has to monitor the allotments or how much vaccine that they have coming in, making sure that we finish off groups before we kind of continue to the next group. Um, one other, um, one other piece. Um, I’ve heard from a couple of community members that, um, have expressed interest in, um, being available in any capacity that we see fit. Um, to volunteer in, you know, if we need assistance in, you know, being available for any kind of clinics or organizing or anything that we need to

31:05 do to help disseminate the vaccine, obviously not give the vaccine. Um, but to do anything for, well, for healthcare providers, certainly. Um, but you know, to, to be available to do anything and organizing level, um, to increase our capacity to be well organized to do this. Um, so what occurred to me is, um, do we see any need? And this isn’t something we need to answer right now is I know we have a long rollout ahead of us, but do we see any need, um, in having, you know, I know we had our transfer station subcommittee, you know, do we have any need to have, um, kind of a, you know, vaccine subcommittee? Would there be any type of value in putting something together? Um, you know, and I know, you know, that, that could work with us. That could be deployed at the ready to help you help the department in ways that, that you and, or we as the board see fit. Now I know that a lot of it is about vaccine, you know, um, red, you know, being available for getting the vaccine and we don’t have a lot of information, but when vaccine becomes available, we’re going to need to be prepared and have people ready. And not all of it needs to be, you know, healthcare providers. I don’t know, making signs, telling people where to go. There’s people who want to be helpful and are willing to volunteer their

32:39 time. So if you want to volunteer your time, you need to sign up for the medical reserve core MRC. Um, and that’s the huge staff that we’re able to pull through. And what that allows us to do is that these are fully vetted volunteers. So they’re going through a coring story process. So we know when we pull in volunteers here, volunteers in, um, that they’re vetted volunteers. So obviously we rely on our staff, other employees in town and other employees from other areas, but we use the medical reserve core all the time at our clinics, but that’s who you need to volunteer with. They provide the groups, they, they coring story everybody, and then we can use these volunteers. Could you tell them how to get to the MRC? I had two people that spoke to me just today about volunteering. Yeah. So I, I, we can add an attachment to the medical reserve core on our website so people can click on that link and get to them. Just Google the medical reserve core in Massachusetts. It will bring you right there to their signup website. And you also are going to put it on our website? Yeah, we can put it on our website. Okay. These are two nurse practitioners that are available. Yeah, that’s great. I mean, that’s, you know, the medical reserve core is not just medical professionals. It’s anybody that wants to be volunteer, but it’s a vetted volunteer through a coring story process. Thank you. Is there, when the broader clinics happen, is it still, do you think it will be just Marblehead or do you think it will be a collaborative with the really damaged other towns as well? Um, we believe it’s probably going to be a collaboration with the other,

34:10 with the five other communities that we have worked with for those past, um, first responders clinics. We might scale it down a little bit where it might just be Swamp Scott, Salem and Marblehead. We’re always thinking of, you know, of Marblehead residents, how far are they willing to go to get vaccinated and stuff like that? Trying to hold clinics as close to home as possible. Well, this time you had a minimum of 200 people, uh, in order to have the clinic, is that going to happen again? That was the maximum. That was the maximum. That was the minimum. No, that was the maximum for the day. Oh, okay. Excuse me. Phone number 631441. If you could please put yourself on mute. It’s a lot of background noise coming from your line. Thank you. Andrew. That’s it for the report. I mean, obviously, does anybody have any questions about different things? Yeah, it looks like there’s one raised hand. First, before we get to that, Michelle and Helene, do you have any further questions? Not on this, but I do have some on the reopening, some statements. Okay, why don’t you go for that? Okay. I’m going to give a brief reopening because Andrew covered a lot of things. Deanna answered some portions. And I think from now on, from what I gather, as long as it continues, Dr. Bucky is going to have minutes sent out. And I think that we’ll have the minutes sent to the board because our

35:41 meetings, the meetings for reopening are on Mondays and we’ve been meeting on Tuesday. So I think we’ll get them in time. They got them right out. Lisa was typing them as we met. And I think that way then you’ll have a time to look at it. And if there’s any questions, we’ll have a time for reopening. Instead of me going over everything, you will have it in hand. And I think that will be a lot easier. We’ll also get it to John and we’ll get it to Tom, if that’s okay, Andrew? Yep. Okay. Thank you. So they talked about the dashboard after they had a long conversation about the pool testing. And you’ve gotten both sides of the story with the pool testing. So I think you’ve gotten enough. And they’re going to update the dashboard on Friday morning with Thursday’s health metrics and the principals of the, it will be inputting that, you know, for each building. So people will be getting that. Then they were discussing some various aspects of the hybrid model. And they went through the various schools, the levels of the schools, the high school, the middle school, the village, and the elementary. Seems, again, people are still happy with where they are. And they definitely are comfortable with the six-foot distance.

37:12 Some people are talking about rotating the cohorts for students to go every day with the cleaning in between. Still having Wednesdays off to have the students remote then. And again, the several principals felt that the half-day hybrid is working. And this, again, was just a discussion. And still it was shared by some families that felt that the cohorts were not getting even education. It seems that the cohort A is getting less days because of the Monday holidays. But as they look at the calendar down through the year, it’s all going to even out. And the principals have been asked to communicate that to their various parents. But then talked about notification. Again, these are things that you’ve heard before that people are concerned about, about notifying when somebody in the class has it. And it’s been stated that it’s a private thing. That if you need to know about it, if you have been exposed, you will get that call to quarantine or to be tested. And that that is where it was left. People talked about how is it that you’re notified if people have lice, which is not really a dangerous thing.

38:45 It’s a nuisance, but it’s not life-threatening. Same with other diseases. And this is something that we are working with through the notification and the contact tracing. So it’s very different. And they underscored the privacy. And that’s about it. So most of it was in discussion, and everything seemed to be pretty good. Oh, very good. Because principals were asked how the reopening was because they went back after the first week that they were remote, where the teachers were absent, and they all felt that it seemed to be right in line with when there’s been school at other times. So everybody is really being responsible in school. It’s when they’re out of school that one of the principals said they can see them walking right out the door. And the minute they walk out the door, the kids take their masks off. They’re also concerned about carpools. The kids jump out of the carpool, maskless. The minute they get on the sidewalk, they put the mask on. Here they are in a close contact, and the principals are usually out on the street greeting the students from their carpools, and that’s what they see. The same with the sports when they get on the buses and they carpool to the various places.

40:17 They’re just not, they’re very, very respectful in schools, but they are not cautious when they’re out of the building. And I don’t know how we can say it any louder or clearer. And we’re all speaking English, and I think that it just has to be heated, and we’ve got to get through this, and it’s still going to be several months, and it is the winter, and we’re going to be in close contact with those people that we have to be in close contact with, and we’ve got to continue to do what we’re supposed to do. So thank you. So I think that if, as long as the minutes are going to continue, we will have them, because my job is to go to the reopening committee, give any information that I’m asked, that the board would, I represent the board, it’s not my own personal opinion, it’s whatever the board is, whatever their interests are. And I think that, as I said, I think that Andrew, if there’s been something that comes up that I can bring to the board, and then if I have information to bring back to us that we want to discuss, and I think this way we’ll have it, and we’ll have it in front of us, and we’ll be able to ask the questions. As soon as the minutes are stopping, then I’ll get back to giving more of a report like this. Thank you. I will continue to go to the meeting, so,

41:49 and that’s all I want you to know. Let me get to, Michelle, do you have anything further? No. So, Cassey, you’ve been raising your hand for a while. Hi, thank you. So I just have a quick question about the pool testing. I understand that the Board of Health is a tiny Board of Health, and you don’t have the resources, but what resources do you need? Because, as Michelle said, we have got medical professionals and clerical professionals who would willingly volunteer, but they need to know exactly what you need to make this happen. And my other question is, I understand that the state is paying for six weeks of pool testing. Are we obligated to continue with this after the six weeks? Because it seems to me in six weeks, hopefully, fingers crossed, the vaccine program will be up and running. And if we can just get through the next six weeks, we have a really good chance of getting ahead of the virus. So those were my questions. The pool testing, obviously, it’s a lot of data management, and then you’re contacting all the individuals that were in that pool to have them come back, and if there was a positive in that pool, all those individuals have to come back for retesting. And then once you have all that data on the positive cases, the positive cases have to be put into Maven,

43:20 and all the questions have to be asked. And then once it goes into Maven, obviously, it gets to the health departments, but all that information has to get into the computer before it comes to us. So it’s mostly clerical help that you need? You would really have to, you know, but that’s a lot. So think about the number of tests that are being conducted on a daily, you know, on a weekly basis, and then the potential of all the phone calls and the follow-up and all that stuff. Yeah, but, okay. When you say have to come back to be retested, I was under the impression that samples were kept aside so that people wouldn’t have to come back. They would, for example, just like test half of the sample. So the other half would be available for retesting. Is that not the way it works? That was not the way it was explained to me. Diana, do you want to talk about this? My understanding is that the first pool is a PCR test. If there’s a positive person in that, then you have to come back and they have to be retested, and that gets broken out into an antigen test. And then, obviously, we don’t accept antigen tests, but, Diana, do you want to, you spoke with them, do you want to explain exactly how the program that you guys are buying into works? It’s nasal swab. So I believe it is nasal swab. And for nasal swab, there’s been no literature in the webinar that I saw or the slides that states that it would have enough sample left over for the second round to figure out who the positive is

44:51 or the positives. So there would be the fact that they need to all come back and they all need to have an antigen test. And antigen tests are not specific to COVID-19. They’re a SARS test. So that doesn’t always give us a true positive. It’s just quite a few hoops to jump through to actually finally get the result that you’re looking for, which is very time-consuming and will be a lot of clerical work. And how many tests total in this pool testing do they do? So if you do pool testing, they’re saying between 10 and 25 per pool. But you’re talking about we have seven schools, six schools. I always forget because Bell is gone, and I just don’t keep it in my head every day. But you’ve got those schools. You’d be doing this in the schools by the end of the week, so Thursdays. If you do the BioNEXT now and you call back 25 people, or depending on what we decide to take for the number on the pool, the BioNEXT now is a test that people have to give. It’s another nasal swab, and each of those take 15 minutes for results. So when I did out the math, if you had one nurse or one person doing that, that’s over 375 minutes of work when you’re just talking about swabbing 25 people. Deanna, quick question. If a sample comes back positive, are all of the people in that sample presumed positive until they’ve tested negative?

46:25 So when a sample goes out in this kind of testing, it’s one PCR test that all of the 25, if we use 25 people, all 25 people’s swab gets to be put into one PCR test. They then spin out that test, and then that test says, oh, there’s a positive. So then you have to call them all back to be retested because they don’t know who the positive is, or if there’s more than one. So then you retest all those people in that one specific pool with an antigen test, which as I already said is not specific to COVID-19, it’s just specific to SARS illnesses. And then you have to figure out who antigen test, who’s antigen test would come back positive, and then they have to go get a PCR test after that. Oh. Oh, it does come to symptoms. Could I address one other thing that was mentioned? Yeah. Six weeks from now is the end of February, and if you look on the chart that the Board of Health has put out, the three phases, phase one is December through February. So we’re still in phase one. It would know is near being ahead of the game. And phase two begins in February. It goes through April. And then phase three is when the general population is getting the vaccine through June, and we still haven’t been talking about the students. Yeah. There’s no plan for kids at this point. So, there we go. We’re no is near the end. So, even if you had an army of people to help with this,

47:59 it’s still not feasible. Well, you said the six weeks was going to be all over. That’s not the case at all. No, Helene, that’s not what I said. But even with an army of volunteers to help with the pool testing, it still isn’t really feasible for our schools. I think that’s more of a school committee question than a Board of Health question. And I just want to add, we do not have BioNEXT now in our schools. And you have to have BioNEXT now to be able to be eligible for the pool testing. And BioNEXT now is there’s trainings, there’s equipment, and you have to have people all trained and caught up to speed on that. So, that would mean the pool testing would be even further away than reality because we don’t even have BioNEXT now. And BioNEXT now is also very difficult to come by. Supplies are in shortage. So, that could push this off for even longer. I just want everyone to understand that there’s a lot of moving parts. It’s quite complex. Yeah, it seems like it. Thank you very much for answering my questions. Appreciate this. Sarah, your hand is raised. Yes, I have two questions. I apologize if this is something I missed in the first few minutes. So, it was either today or yesterday where the seat approved the parents of medically fragile children to move into phase one, viewing them as caregivers. Will the town be including them in any of their clinics in phase one or no?

49:32 We only will be including them if we get word from the state that they’re part of the system and if we are vaccinating that group. So, as long as you’re including that group, yeah, we’re not going to pick and choose. It’s for us to receive the information from the state to say, this is phase one group, your group. See, if we’re going to vaccinate that group, yes, you can be part of that. Okay, my understanding is to be declarified as that. Your child’s health care provider has to put you on that list. We don’t have that information, so yeah. Okay. And then my other question is, now that we have confirmed cases of the more contagious strain in the Boston area, at the state level at those meetings you go to weekly, Andrew, has there been any discussion of changing contact tracing guidelines if or when it becomes more prevalent? No, because it doesn’t change anything. So, a contact’s still a contact. So, you know, 10 to 15 minutes, less than six feet. You know, that 15-minute contact could be, you know, three, five-minute contacts over a 24-hour period. So, it doesn’t change any guidelines for a contact. Okay, even though that strain is further away than six feet, doesn’t it? Not the paperwork that I have. Okay, all right. Thank you for answering both those questions. Again, my understanding is that even with the more contagious strain, masks, hand-washing, and all the standard precautions we’ve been telling people to take all along are still effective to stop it.

51:08 It’s more contagious if you don’t take the precautions than people who don’t take the precautions with the other strain. Okay, thank you very much. Yeah, and so what we’re seeing, Sarah, is that it’s going through, in the springtime, people were able to isolate in their homes a little bit easier. And it’s just, you know, unfortunately, that’s not happened as much right now. We see it hit a home, and then all of a sudden it’s hitting everybody in that household. Okay, any other questions? Hey, guys. Yeah, I have a couple questions on the pool testing. So reading through some of the literature today and working with some contacts of mine who are epidemiologists, what I found really interesting about this is that while true asymptomatic spread of this virus is low, the latest source I have here is 3.4%, we know that pre-symptomatic spread is quite high. Meaning people who have COVID-19 and are contagious but have not yet started their symptoms. And that accounts for 48% of cases. So we have a lot of people wandering around contagious but not yet aware that they’re sick, right? And that this latest research, which I did share with the board and the school committee and the superintendent and the health director this morning indicates that catching cases early has a very large impact on spread.

52:45 So the reason I’m sharing that here is that I know that pool testing is being raised as a school issue, but we know that we’ve seen indications that we’re doing a great job on controlling symptomatic cases in the schools. But what we don’t know and really can’t say is whether we’re controlling asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic cases in our schools. That’s what the pool testing is supposed to control and help us identify. And what it does is it helps us get ahead of creating more symptomatic spread in our community. So I guess I’m just I want to know whether the health department agrees that pool testing benefits far more than just the schools. It actually benefits the whole community. So it’s a tool in the toolbox. So yeah, there is some benefits to it. Really, the best thing everybody can do is wear a mask, social distance, don’t hang out with people outside of your family and wash your hands often. That social distancing is a huge key piece to this that we don’t want to forget. And people say, oh, we’re just doing pool testing so I can go about my life and do whatever I want. This is a tool that is helpful for identifying cases, but people need to remember the basics. Yeah, I think the problem is they’re not remembering the basics. We’ve been setting up for 10 months now and we’re seeing our numbers go up. So I think it’s reasonable for us to look at new tools in the toolbox to try to control a trajectory that has no hope of flattening out even.

54:25 Can I make a comment? Yes. Yeah, I mean, I think there’s no no doubt, Kate, in what you’re saying about the asymptomatic spread and and that this is a as an interesting and important tool. And I think what we’re looking at and what we’re hearing right now from from Deanna and from the schools is really about feasibility and capacity and kind of the cost benefit of what we’re going to be able to accomplish and and really what’s feasible for the for the schools to do without without all of the pieces in place to make it happen in terms of the test without the staff in place to make it happen without the resources available to make it happen. After the six weeks, it’s like what what’s just what’s what’s available to to put into place. And are we, you know, do we have do we have the investment available to be able to do this? And I guess where I landed after kind of reading the information that you shared and, you know, having done my own reading and thinking about this was to think, you know, I personally would like to be able to learn a little bit more from some of the other communities that have done this.

56:02 You know, Andrew said that he’d had some conversations I would like to be able to hear more from Salem and hear what they what, and of course that’s not even the same exact model as would be available in Marblehead but I would like to know a little bit more and hear a little bit more about, you know, how it’s been happening. I talked to a fellow board member, the chair from Swam Scott and she’s in the same boat. I mean, she’s concerned about asymptomatic spread we all are, especially as the new variant take hold, but, you know, they’re in the same boat as Marblehead is they are strapped. And I guess we kind of want to learn a little bit more. But we look to the schools, knowing that we don’t have the capacity within our small board. We’re not saying that we don’t agree that asymptomatic spread is important. We’re not saying that the board doesn’t agree that this is important. We’re just recognizing where our capacity is and right now, focus on vaccine rollout is of utmost importance in terms of balancing how we focus our attentions and our plan of attack right now. I’d like to add to that, you know, we hear at the reopening committee every week from Deanna that the spread is not coming from within. It’s coming from outside. So the schools are doing their job. The teachers, the superintendent, the nurses, all the staff, the maintenance staff are working very hard. You know the superintendent’s hired more people outside company.

57:44 They have cut back a little bit, but they’ve got over a dozen people still doing the cleaning and they’re doing their very best. And I can’t stress more. I mean, I think that what’s being asked of us is to do the core family’s work. And I think that they’ve got to do what they have to do at home. And I think that I’m getting a little bit testy and a little bit upset, but I think after 10 months, I have the right to do that. And do what you’re supposed to do at home and don’t put it on the back of the schools or the health department and do the right thing. And we won’t have to worry about spending money on more nurses, getting volunteers, doing our thing. We’re doing everything we can to keep the spread down as far as the health department and the school department. And we’ve hired more people. We’ve bought things that the faculty has all the PPE that they need. The students have their Chromebooks or the faculty does. Everybody has what they need. And the place is clean and sterile and people just have to do what they have to do. Forget about the skiing. Forget about Grandma. I’ve got 12 grandchildren. I haven’t seen them. And it’s sad. I can feel it just like everybody else.

59:16 Halle, can I just say one thing just about, I mean, just to say, I mean, despite all of the efforts that we at the Board of Health do, that the schools are doing, I mean, it is true that we, there is to some extent, we don’t know everything we need to know about asymptomatic spread. And that is true. And even DESI that, you know, has, I’m sure some under reporting about the asymptomatic spread. So there is that. No matter how well everybody’s doing, we don’t have that information. But Andrew made a point earlier that I think it’s important to remember that there is a lot, or maybe Deanna said it, there is a lot more testing going on in this community because of all the traveling and the skiing and the whatever. There’s a lot more testing that is going on asymptomatic testing that is already happening in this community than is perhaps happening in some of those other communities that have already started implementing this that, you know, may be picking up some of the positives that don’t put us in the exact same category as, you know, as some of the communities that have started doing this. That I think was an important point that was raised earlier. Well, I asked Deanna to state that, that we have, our demographics are different. And I think that that’s, but our demographics are so different that people are doing things that they shouldn’t be doing also.

1:00:50 We’re not all, we’re not, we’re not seven and eight people living in two bedroom households, but where they’re doing that in other places, but we’re doing other things instead of that. Can I, can I just finish out the question there, which was, so we agree that asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic spread are an unsolved issue. It’s completely different from the safety protocols that we already have in place in our schools, which are phenomenal. And Deanna and her team are, as I say to her, like, probably once a week, the best thing that’s ever happened to me. But we still have a problem on pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic. So this program, while flawed and tons of work, and probably kind of a struggle, is free to us for six weeks. My question then is back to where Cazzie was. If we have a pool of volunteers, a core of cleared volunteers, can we use them better? Can we use them for other things going on? Can we use them for this pool testing? Can we think about how to use those resources if resources are the only thing standing between us? And I’ll use the term test and learn. Help us figure out how to up our game. Thank you. Sandra, can you? Sorry, guys, but is there a thought on that?

1:02:22 I think that we’ve been talking about this ad nauseam. I don’t know if there’s anything further to add tonight. I’m sorry, Todd, I totally disagree. Ad nauseam is really, I think there’s a lot more people that want to talk about it. Is there, Andrew, do you have any further comments? Not. Okay. I mean, I feel like we’re taking this in and need to think about it. I mean, I gave my opinion that I wanted to hear more from Salem, and I also can’t, I cannot answer with regard to a pool of volunteers. I know, first of all, I know, first of all, the schools need to make decisions around this, and the Board of Health can weigh in and be advisory on that. But I also don’t know protocol-wise in terms of volunteers and what’s, you know, I don’t know what we can do and what we can’t do. So I don’t feel prepared to answer that. And I also would like some more information with regard to how it’s been rolling out in some of the other communities. And that’s something I just don’t have the answer to. Well, we do know that the volunteers need professionals to direct them, and that would mean hiring other people. And we also told tonight that they would have to go through the MRC. So we know two answers about that. Sandra, your question?

1:03:55 Just kind of a comment. You know, yeah, pool testing, I think, would be great. But I think people need to be aware if we’re comparing Marblehead to Salem logistically, the population that we’re serving in Salem, their access to health services, their access to get test testing is obviously a different population than Marblehead. And then we need to have all parents on board. There are some parents that are going to opt out of that. And that’s a whole other discussion that we need to have. And I’m not sure if Andrew can comment to this or Deanna. But logistically, I think it’s I think it would be informative for some of these parents that want to do pool testing. If logistically, they can maybe explain the timeline because there is a pool. I don’t know. Do they plan on, you know, testing once a week? Are those tests going to be done in 24 hours? Because as a provider, I know as much as we have stopped the spread site, some of these sites closed down two hours before the end of the day. We still have issues getting PCR testing. So as much as this looks like a there’s definitely information we can get from it. But we definitely don’t know who’s positive with a PCR test, potentially 72 hours to maybe up to seven days after that initial test. And then we’re looking at possibly quarantining kids that have a false positive. So these are things that we need to be aware of. And that parents need to be aware of, too. So I don’t know if Deanna can even comment logistically if this is something that, you know, parents are open for, you know, what logistically it would look like in regards to a timeframe of who gets tested. When that antigen test is done and then they get sent out to their primary care to get a PCR test that, like I said, if you’re lucky enough, we’ll get a result in 15 minutes.

1:05:34 Otherwise, you’re looking at three to 10 days for that final PCR result. So that was just some stuff to put out there for parents, you know, for me being a parent in the Marblehead School as well, being a provider, you know, treating people with kids right now with COVID. So just some food for thought out there. Yes, Sandra, you’re right. There’s a lot of parts and aspects to it that are difficult like that. Like for us at Marblehead Public Schools, we ask that anyone who has a pending test, no matter what the reason is for that test, we ask for them to stay home and quarantine. So if we were going to have a pool of 10 or 25 people, those people would essentially be asked to stay home to quarantine until we got that pool back. And then when we get the pool back, if there’s a positive, they’ll have to come in and have the Bionx now test. So then they need to go back and quarantine. Well, that’s 15 minutes. But then any of them that come out positive then have to go back and get a PCR test in quarantine. So it will be very disruptive to school community for this to be happening. In theory, then families who are doing everything by the book and following the proper protocols would be penalized as well if their child was in that group. Correct, because it would be randomized. We wouldn’t, you know, it wouldn’t be specific people. It would be randomized. So yes. And I’m just all for the daily health test station, the six foot distancing, the face masks, the hand washing and the disinfecting in the buildings. It’s working for us and I’m knocking on wood. And I feel like it’s going to be working for us until the end. Michelle. Yeah, after let’s let’s continue going through any other comments and questions. I just had something about masks that I wanted to raise, but I want to let other folks speak.

1:07:08 I think everybody there no more raised hands. So if you want to. Yeah, I think I shared something with the board and I just wanted to raise that that I shared with you an article about as the new variant takes hold. You know, some concerns about, you know, and I and I’m hesitant to go too far on this because I don’t want to say you for anything regarding cloth masks. And I want us to all continue to wearing our cloth masks. But, you know, just think about maybe, you know, as we move into February and March and maybe maybe spend a little more time in our next meeting thinking about, I don’t know, you know, encouraging availability or letting people know where they can find access to different, you know, different types of masks. You know, where they’re available, you know, I know maybe Home Depot has KN 95 masks. And I’m not saying this necessarily for the school setting because I don’t know if those are so are probably ill fitting for kids, but maybe for adults. I just I just wanted us to have a conversation about, you know, because I know that there’s talk out there now about, you know, kind of increasing access to, you know, different masks, not just cloth masks.

1:08:43 It’s a sticky issue for me, Michelle, because as a provider, we are constantly struggling to find masks to wear that are medical grade. So I feel like health care providers need to have the priority for these masks, which are still in short supply. So even though they are more effective for community than cloth masks, I think cloth masks have been proven to be better than nothing. And I think that health care, in my opinion, needs to be able to get every mask possibly can get. Yeah, no, 100%. That’s why I wanted to raise it here and have a conversation because if that if that is, you know, still the case and there’s still really shortages and supply issues, then obviously I don’t think it’s anything that we should be we should be encouraging. So, well, the hospitals are at capacity. So when they’re using masks and all in the docs are back at work when they weren’t at work, you know, in March and April. So I think that those are two places they’re needed. I just like to see the people with any masks. Yeah, let’s start with that first. Kimberly I see your hand is raised. Hold on one second, Kimberly. Actually, Michelle, did you want to say anything further? No, that’s fine. Hi, thank you. I think I think the fact that hospitals are getting at capacity is one of the reasons we really do need to think about pool testing. I teach at Salem State University. We’ve been testing our students since campus reopened and I have a colleague there who is actually on the school committee in Salem.

1:10:19 And Thanksgiving, they’ve been doing pooled testing for all their high school students and staff. And they’ve been doing a pilot program for sixth graders. Yes, it’s a saliva test. It’s a different kind of test, but their school board is thinking about signing on to the pooled testing program offered by the state as well with the new test. I understand half of the cases of COVID-19 that they have had in the Salem public school system, they have caught through pool testing. So they, at least my friend on the school board in Salem says that they feel that those tests have absolutely been effective at catching those asymptomatic cases. And with this new, more contagious strain of the virus, I really think we need to start getting creative and thinking about how we can make it happen rather than just focusing on what all of the obstacles are. I understand that the nurses are overwhelmed. So what can we do to get more support, more nurses to do this? I just would really encourage people to think carefully before dismissing this as too hard, or we may find ourselves in a position where schools are shut down entirely again before some of our neighbors. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Elizabeth.

1:11:49 Yeah, hi. Thank you so much. I have a couple thoughts just listening to all this conversation and also having been on the prior Board of Health meeting. So in that meeting, there was a question about whether there would be testing for the community beyond the four days of testing that was done, I think, in the month of December. And the answer to that was just no. And there was no additional discussion over whether Marblehead could continue to have community testing. And now there’s a discussion around the testing at the schools, which, you know, is a, to Kate’s point, is sort of a community way to start to understand, you know, some of how the spread is happening. And the answer to that seems to also be there just too many obstacles and no. And, you know, as a member of the community, I will say I don’t have children in the schools. So it’s a little bit different for me. But I do find it frustrating that we’re just at this point where we’re not there’s no resources for us to get tested in the town of Marblehead. And I would also just add that I do understand that it’s frustrating for you all as the Board of Health that this seems so simple, like just put your mask on and stay away from people. But on the other hand, it’s not that simple. I think it’s unfair to just sort of dismiss the families in Marblehead who people have to go to work and where people might be living in more cramped situations than what was just a

1:13:31 what was just presented. We’re obviously not in the same situation as Salem and Lynn, but I think it’s unfair to kind of dismiss that and say, well, we just don’t have that problem in Marblehead. And so we’ll allow for these things to happen in Salem and in Lynn, and we’ll just kind of, you know, go about our business and please wear your masks. And it’s just I really hope that we can get to a point where there is some level of further testing and understanding the spread and how it’s happening in our community. And I would also finally say that it’s hard for me to believe that without any data on what’s happening in our schools, that there’s no spread in the schools. Like it’s just I don’t that just doesn’t totally add up given the rise in numbers of young people and all that, you know, and nothing against like I think the schools are doing an amazing job, but I just it’s really hard to kind of connect those dots without seeing any numbers. So I’ll end there. Thank you so much for the time. Thank you. Let me just say one thing quickly. I don’t know if I misunderstood you Elizabeth but I’m nobody on our board had said basically that this is Salem and Lynn’s problem and Marblehead’s different because we all know the virus knows no borders and I don’t think anybody was was saying this is another problem of another demographic. I would I want that to be very clear that nobody was implying that Michelle Gone.

1:15:05 Yeah, I know I don’t I don’t think so I think we were just talking about some of the differences in access to testing, etc. But I think that the I just want to say that with regard to testing at the community level and what we did in at the end of last year was funded through our CARES Act fund and are not doing any more testing was simply a matter of not having access to any more funds. It’s not that we are not committed to or wanting to do any more testing. So just to clarify that that was that’s simply a matter of not having funding to do that. And so and then this is a different pool of funding for the schools through the Commonwealth. So this is like two different separate issues and so just to kind of separate them and and and you know and I know I mean I do agree with you regarding the asymptomatic spread. I think I said earlier in our meeting, I think I think it’s quite true that we really don’t have a full picture of what’s going on. And I’m quite concerned about what’s going to happen over the next couple of months. And I am interested in how we can creatively do our best to to to, you know, to control the spread.

1:16:43 And I and I think we’re going to continue to go up versus down. And I know that we’ve been doing everything we can to encourage mask wearing and distancing and all the things that we continue to do. So I think getting creative and and doing what we can. And if this is one of the solutions and it, you know, I am certainly interested in learning more from some of the other communities, but I also do recognize that even if we decide that this is a smart way to go, you know, capacity issues may may prove to be a barrier. I hope that if, you know, I don’t know if that’s the case. I can’t be the one to answer that. Nor is it unilaterally at all a board situation. This is largely happening within the schools, but I do know that we as a board have a very good relationship with the schools. And if we as a board felt that this was an important way to go, I know that the schools are not going to completely ignore our feelings about this. So I presume we will continue to have some more discussions and Helene sits on the reopening committee and attends those meetings. So I think we hear what some of our community members are saying and we are not taking it lightly. I think we’re listening and hearing what you have to say. But we also understand that, you know, Deanna is sitting there on the front lines of the schools and we also have to really respect her, you know, as being there in the midst of all of this and can’t ignore her very, you know, her reality is being in the middle of all of this.

1:18:34 And she’s the one who really knows what’s happening and the realities of what it would take and what the impact on the schools and the students would be. So we can’t override that either. Sarah, I see your hand is raised again and I think then we will close out public discussion after Sarah’s comment or question. Thank you for letting me sneak in, Todd. One question is where we know that after tomorrow, President Biden has plans for a large rollout of funding. Is there in the back of the answer’s mind, you know, when the town gets its next round of funding, are you thinking that you would be quick to do another round of community testing like you did in December? And also now that we’re in the red, what parameters have to be in place for us to potentially be able to facilitate a stop the spread site or more on the North Shore around us, if not directly in Marblehead? So with federal funding, obviously, you know, we need to wait and see what actually comes out of the federal government, its Massachusetts, and then how they want to allocate the funding out to the different municipalities. Once it hits the municipalities, there’s a general meeting with, you know, people that have needs for COVID money, or you know, CARES Act money to discuss how it’s going to be spent.

1:20:10 As far as, you know, will we be considered a stop the spread site? I don’t believe so, looking at the demographics and what’s around us. Essentially, what Massachusetts is saying at this point is that there’s no reason to have a stop the spread site in Massachusetts when residents in Marblehead, sorry, in Marblehead can easily travel to Salem to their stop the spread site. So they’re not willing to open up stop the spread sites in every community that has high COVID numbers. They’re making sure that there’s easy access to testing facilities, which we do have easy access to testing facilities at this point. That makes sense. Thank you for that description, Andrew. Yep. Thank you. All right, so it’s the 19th, the 26th, you guys want to do next week? It seems like things are moving right along and then we should. Okay, everybody’s free. Michelle. Yeah, could any chance. I have a conflict, and I’m wondering if there’s any chance we could meet earlier, is that at all possible? Yeah, but no, not really. What time did you want to meet? I have a conflict at, I have something at 8pm.

1:21:42 Can we meet at 6? Andrew, does that work for you? Sure, I mean, you know, I won’t have a break, but that’s fine. You will, you won’t have a break. You won’t have a break. Yeah. He needs a break. What if we did it, what if we met at? We just had almost a two and a half hour, an hour and a half meeting, so you just have to remember that too. So if we met at 6.30, it should be out at 8? Hopefully. Would that be better for you? Yeah, it’d be a little bit better. I mean, we could also, because it’ll be just a week, we’ve been two weeks now, why don’t we do 7 o’clock, and we’ll just make sure that we’re an hour long. Yeah. And if it goes a little over, is that? It doesn’t seem like, if that’s 6.30, it might be a compromise, and then we won’t have to worry about the time. I just need for our director’s time too. Yeah, I’m totally fine with that, and if I’m late for my other thing, that’s okay with me. All right, so it’s 7 o’clock next week. 7 o’clock. Thanks. That’s the 26, right? Yep.

1:23:08 We have a motion to adjourn. I’ll second. Miss Aislett. In favor. Miss Gottlieb. In favor. Dr. Belf Becker. In favor. Good night, everybody.