Board of Health: June 29, 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.

0:00 Hi, Elaine. We see you, Elaine. I know you’re going to be on mute too. Yes. I see you, yes. Can you see us or no? Ah, so you should just say okay or allow. No. Sure. There you go. And then you just need to unmute yourself. I apologize. What happened, everyone, is that I pressed trying to get rid of James’s little statement and I pressed leave meeting instead of okay. I apologize. So may I nominate the new chairperson or has that already been done while I was waiting?

1:32 No, go right ahead. Now we’re waiting for you. I would like to nominate Dr. Todd Velf-Becker as the chairperson for the coming year. Do I have a second? I would like to second that. Any discussion? Yes, the discussion is that he’s done a tremendous job and I think that Joanne’s going to enjoy working with Todd and I appreciate your phone calls, Todd. So I just want to thank you for them. He gives us an update before the meetings. I will do roll call. Ms. Hazlitt? In favor? Mrs. Warren? In favor. Dr. Velf-Becker? In favor. And I would just like to say thank you for giving me the opportunity for another year as chair and we’re going to have a great year. We’re going to get back in person and start to get back to what we’ve been doing historically on the Board of Health rather than COVID. That’s exciting to think about that we’re almost there. So thank you again for the vote of confidence for another year and I would like to make a motion to nominate Helene Hazlitt as the vice chair. Can I second that? Yes, please. May I second that? Roll call. Ms. Hazlitt? In favor. Ms. Miller? In favor. Dr. Velf-Becker? In favor. And we historically, Michelle has been what we call the communications officer. I think that we should continue that title and explain do we have a nomination? Yes. I’d like to nominate Ms. Miller as communications officer. I’ll second. Ms. Hazlitt? In favor. Ms. Miller? In favor. Dr. Velf-Becker? In favor. Great.

3:29 Well, that’s great. Well, we had a little bit of a starting but I apologize. That never happened before. So we will start with our agenda which is approving the minutes. Joanne, I would say you abstained from the vote just since you weren’t a member of the Board when these meetings occurred. Blaine, the May 25th meeting. Do you have? Yes, I move the May 25th meetings. I make a motion to accept them as received. I will second. Ms. Hazlitt? In favor. Dr. Velf-Becker? In favor. Ms. Miller? Abstain. Is that correct? Yes. And then the second minutes of the night to approve our June 8th? Yes, I have a discussion about that. There was a correction and we have a revised minutes. So I guess I neglected to look at them until this afternoon. I did look at them but I guess I read them quickly. In the first paragraph after meeting call to order at 7.30 p.m. I don’t have what they were before but I think it said Andrew gave accolades to Michelle Gottlieb and I asked for it to say either the Board and Andrew or Todd, the Board and Andrew. I know Todd. It says Todd, Helene and Andrew gave accolades to Michelle Gottlieb. That’s what I don’t have. Say what it is there. Does that say it the proper way? Todd, Helene and Andrew gave accolades to Michelle Gottlieb who served on the Board for 12 years. Wayne Atchley, retired Public Health Director.

5:18 Yeah, I just initially I don’t think it had everybody’s name or something but I liked the way and that’s what was changed. Todd, Helene and Andrew gave accolades to Michelle Gottlieb. So it is correct. I move that the motions as given to us be approved. All second. Ms. Aislet? In favor. Dr. Balspecker? In favor. Ms. Miller? I have the same. Okay, let me just get my agenda back up. Next thing is the COVID update Andrew. Alright, so we are continuing on with our trend of no cases, which is great. Just a few little updates. We have regular meetings with the state and we talked about breakthrough cases. So breakthrough disease in Massachusetts of COVID. As of June 26, 2021, there have been 4,034 cases of COVID. Among the 4,036,826 vaccinated individuals. That is 0.1% of vaccinated individuals have been diagnosed with COVID-19. Of these cases, 284 of them have been hospitalized. So 7% of vaccine breakthrough cases and 0.007% of vaccinated individuals have been hospitalized.

6:55 Unfortunately, 75 have died, 1.9% of vaccine breakthrough cases and 0.002% of vaccinated individuals. So I just wanted to share this with you. So yes, we have seen a very small number of breakthrough cases in Massachusetts. They are occurring, but most of the time it does not result in hospitalization. We had some clarifications that came out of the commissioners office from DECI. And this is clarifying COVID-19 guidance. On Saturday, June 19, Commissioner Riley sent a message to schools and districts clarifying the COVID-19 guidance that DECI released on May 27. The June 19 message states that for the remainder of the school year, masking indoors and maintaining other health and safety guidance, as issued by DECI, is required. For summer programs, masking indoors and maintaining other health and safety guidance is not required, but is encouraged. The DECI summer guidance is in alignment with state guidance encouraging unvaccinated individuals to continue to mask. The Department of Public Health mask advisory advises unvaccinated residents to continue wearing masks in indoor settings when they cannot socially distance. For the fall, at this time, all health and safety guidance, including masking and physical distancing, will be lifted. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will collaborate with the Department of Public Health to issue any additional health and safety recommendations over the summer should they become necessary.

8:36 Obviously, the biggest piece that we’re looking at is this Delta variant. So they’ll continue to fall right along with it. We’ll be looking at infection rates for younger people, obviously people under 12. And then trying to figure out, the state will have to try to figure out what they want to do for a policy or issue some additional guidance for school settings. Any questions on that? I have a couple. Joanne, do you have any? I didn’t want to jump in. The 75 deaths from COVID, that was the primary cause? I would assume that that’s the primary cause, yeah. That sounds interesting. Also, as far as the people under 12, the youngsters under 12 years, do you have any numbers on that? No, I do not have any numbers on that. Because we should be looking at that for the fall. You did say that, but are we able to, we’re always following the governor’s rules, but this is Desi’s regulations, correct? Not the governor’s? Well, so currently, so it talks about that. So currently, we’re under an advisory. So we don’t have any mask orders for schools. It’s not a regulation. It’s not an order. It’s an advisory. So that means that maybe the school department can do what they see is fit?

10:10 That is correct. It wouldn’t be up to us anyhow, but the school department would make a decision before the start of school. That is correct. If they chose to do that. You would hope, you know, remembering that there are variants and the kids under 12 are unvaccinated. You would hope that they would pay attention to that. Well, I think that they might, maybe the school department is hearing you and I have some reservations. Joanne, are you ready to ring in or are you just going to wait and see? Wait and see. No, I just, I’ve just been so cautious that I think that I hope that this, I know the school department because they’ve been doing so well from the beginning that I think that they will continue. But that is, is that Desi guidelines or is that the governor’s guidelines? That’s the question that I’m asking. Those are Desi guidelines, but also, you know, comments about the governor’s guidelines. So the Department of Public Health guidelines. They are okay. Yep. Okay, that’s all that I, so we can revisit that ourselves. Yes. And we could certainly make a recommendation if we felt like it to, if we determined, I should say, if we determined later on. That’s correct. Yeah. Maybe what I would do is when we have our next meeting, I’d like to ask that to be on the agenda. Sure. Or it can be part of our COVID report. We can, we can decide that later.

11:41 Yeah, I know, but I just didn’t want it to come, the meeting happened and then we addressed that part. So thank you for the time. And so as far as vaccinations go, currently, 13,927 individuals are fully vaccinated. That’s 73% of the population. We have 1,897 individuals that are one dose away, which is another 10%. So if all those individuals become receive their second dose, we will have 83% fully vaccinated. Those are great numbers. Obviously, we’d love, you know, I’d love to see 85% on, on Thursday. Everyone that has, that is fully vaccinated can register for vaccine millions. So this is not just for people that are getting newly vaccinated. It’s for everybody that is fully vaccinated. The state will be doing five different drawings. Everything from a million dollars to a large scholarship for people under the age of, I believe it’s 24. So please remember to register for that. To register online with. To register online. Yep. So is that through like the lottery? Mass.gov. Yep. Mass.gov, not the lottery. Correct. Mass.gov.

13:10 Well, good luck to everybody.

13:17 Is that. That’s it for COVID. Okay. Next item is the Mental Health Task Force update, which, Sondra, let’s get the questions at the very end. That’s on the agenda. But I will just remember to raise your hand again. The Mental Health Task Force update, Joanne, you’ve been going to the meetings, correct? Yes, I have. And do you have, have you met in the last couple weeks, do you have an update for us? I would be happy to share. We had a meeting last night and it was well attended and we were able to discuss some things, some updates. We’ve got Ben Day presented. He met with the Marblehead Female Humane Society to gain their support and is potentially going to be partnering with them towards a grant potentially. And they seemed very intrigued by this opportunity to support the community in this way. We’re looking into speaker series and workshop series, which may be availed through the library, the schools and the Council on Aging. And certainly with promoting mental health in our community, the main goal right now has been to pull together a website that’s working with the town. And Moses Grader and Melissa Kalpowicz are working with technicians, a technician team, to make sure that we have maximized the opportunity to connect with people that are looking to access this information and have a really user friendly site that can be best accessed by the community.

15:07 We talked about back to school, looking at September and the levels of stress for these kids that have had such a difficult year last year and how can we best meet their needs as they go back to school and perhaps we can expect there will be increases in anxiety and concerns for those kids. And so that was something we talked about and we intend to continue to meet through the summer because certainly the mental health concerns in the community aren’t going to be going away anytime soon. And certainly when we think about the younger population, the children, the kids, even kids going back to college, how they’ve had so much disruption and that we can expect that they’re going to have some anxiety with them going back to school. So we talked about more immediate resources that we can pull together to support these members of our community. And we did talk about working with some other stakeholders in the community that are truly perhaps front line for people with mental health challenges in the community. Sometimes, you know, if a family is having a family member suffer from some new mental health symptoms, they may go to their faith, you know, institution of faith and reach out for resources.

16:41 So we are looking into working with our community of faith to make sure that we connect with them and give them the resources that we’re building as tools for them when they have, you know, some of their members come to them. And also, it’s very likely that they have lots of resources that we can leverage as well to make sure that people are connected appropriately with the best resources that we have available. So we’ve been meeting with, so we’ve got some members of our task force and members that are reaching out to the faith community. And they apparently, they don’t meet throughout the summer, but we’re looking to see if we can connect with some of them to build this out more quickly. And with the urgency that it really, I believe, demands. So I think that covered we didn’t have any public participation at the meeting last night, but future activities were, you know, certainly the website is the immediate activity and then future looking down the road at what kind of resources can we bring into the community to support the community and make sure people that are feeling, you know, the challenge with access and this could be a we could present the pathway for people in our community that that are floundering because I think, you know, I know anecdotally, that’s something I’ve heard a great deal of the look at the hospitalizations are, you know, I heard on, you know, on NPR, they were interviewing young people in mental health crisis that are sitting in the

18:27 emergency room for over a week and upwards of 10 days, trying to, you know, get the services that they need. And so with this kind of crisis, as a community, if we can come together and offer resources and point people on the path of availing themselves of these resources, I think it would be a great, great benefit to the community. Great. Do you guys have a next meeting date? Yes, we do. It’s in two weeks. The next meeting is in the summer. My mind stops moving fast, so I slow down. So the 12th is the next meeting. Yes, thank you. 12th at 7pm. Thank you. Yeah, first of all, Joanne, you must tell them that you are the convener of the group and you led a beautiful meeting. Thank you. Thank you. The baton I should mention the baton was was kind of kind of tossed because Michelle was was hoping to be on the meeting and be able to, you know, transition but she’s up in Maine and had apparently the camp where she was. There’s a situation with some kids with some covid. And so she’s been been really busy with that. And so, so at the meeting, I was invited to to start right off and and share the meeting.

20:05 So it was really exciting. And you did a great job. I’d just like to bring attention to this Children’s Friends and Family Services that we received. It’s called Mental Health SOS Summer of Support. The SOS is Summer of Support. It’s a course that’s every Tuesday evening. It began last Tuesday on the 22nd and it was then this evening. And the course is free. There is a meeting ID and a passcode. You don’t have to register. It’s going to go right through September 14th. Tonight they talked about how thoughts affect feelings and behaviors, tips for parents and caregivers, feelings and behaviors. Next week is positive parenting strategies and so on. And it ends up with wrapping around family needs. There’s a lot of topics that people can find very useful. You can find a way to awareness, self-care, managing negative thoughts. I like that topic. Getting ready for school is August 31st. Maybe we should all put that on our calendar. Getting ready for school, what is important? Back to school season will be like no other. So I congratulate the Children’s Friends and Family Services for putting this on. It’s a great agency and we hope that people can take advantage of that. Andrew, are you there?

21:45 Is there a way to put this on our website or something like that? Yeah, we can figure out a way to put that up. I think that would be helpful. If you could just send me the information, I can get that up there. Okay, I’ll send it to you. Great. Thank you, Helene. I thought everybody got it. I got it from the Counseling Center, but I might be on another mailing. I’m sorry. Thanks for letting us know, Helene, and thank you, Joanne, for that report. It was a great report. For your first meeting, you are doing awesome. Thank you. That’s a good thing. You said patronizing. I was just… No, I appreciate that. Thank you so much, Todd. So I hope that came across the way. I meant it too, not the way I think it sounded. That would be amazing. Okay. All right, so the Director’s report Andrew, please. All right, so we’ve moved into some summer activities. So water sampling has begun. We’ve been taking the water samples for the last several weeks. We have received… We had two weeks where we had gas house. We’ve all had passing test results, but we had one day of high results out of that swimming spot. But it ultimately passed. Please remember that there’s two large tide cycles that flow through these areas. So we do get two tide changes, so two water changes. But remember to always take caution after a large rate of event.

23:18 If it has not rained for a while, a lot of items get washed down into the ocean. Obviously, all our drains, our storm drains are connected to the ocean. But we will continue to monitor that. So if we do have two days of exceedance or two samples of exceedance, we will post that the beach is closed and that we will contain the sample until we can reopen the beach. So that will continue on through the summer. We take our samples on Wednesdays. The times vary depending on the tide. We have been working on our reporting for the budget, which is called the GFAO reporting. I met with them today to just kind of finalize some stuff. I will finalize the documents over the next couple days and send those out to you guys. But that’s just the documents have our mission statements, all the information that we filled out before that gets tied to the budget for FY22. I also wanted to talk about the town budget. Yes, the town budget. So was there something different than what we do generally? Yes. So this was came back from when we did our goals and our mission statement just before town meeting. This gets incorporated to some of that stuff. I know we filled that out, but I was wondering where it went. So that’s where it went. Do you think we’ll have to have a quick meeting to finalize it once you finish filling it out just before any deadlines or? I don’t think so. You guys can take a look at it. We can talk about you guys can converse with me about what little things that you guys would want to change.

24:52 But we kind of stick to what we had talked about during our meetings and what you guys have approved. It’s just finalize on paper and stuff like that. When is that due? I don’t have an actual deadline for it, but they’re trying to get this back to us pretty soon. So I will set this finalize in the next couple days and get this out to you guys so you can take a look at it. I will be on vacation from July 3rd to the 17th. Obviously, I’m always available by phone. I will be coming back for the police chief’s repart retirement party on July 10th. But if you guys need to reach me, you’ll have to reach me by phone or text message. Occasionally, yes, I’m sure I will be checking email. But please, if you have a question or something, give me a call. Hopefully, we won’t need to call you on your vacation. Yeah, exactly. Transfer station improvements. I met with Dana Wieder the other day of Winter Street to take a look at moving forward with a couple items. We need to finalize the final location for our scale and our scale house. We also talked about completing the swap shed. So they’re in the final process of just taking a look at some of the what we call upfront activities. So the entrance of the gate, how the trough is going to flow, and they’re putting a plan together. Obviously, we wanted to try to stay as much to the original plan as possible.

26:24 But one of the issues is that since the trash pit, the commercial trash pit is still there, the location for the scale and for the scale house has to get moved. The easiest thing for that to do is to be actually moved closer to the street. So they’re taking a look at that. They’re moving some things around. They’re going to keep the grades relatively the same way, making sure that we’re not doing too much grading work because you still have to be able to get to the commercial pit. But then obviously, the plans for the swap shop have been completed as before. And so they’re just trying to pull everything together. So probably by the time I get back from vacation, I will have a set of plans that we can discuss. And moving the scale wouldn’t affect the cap. No, moving the scale will not affect the cap. The scale will be outside of the cap. Next, moving on from that, Article 29 from 2014 is the polystyrene ban. So obviously at the time, we have approval from the town to ban polystyrene for takeout containers and are in establishment containers. Now, when the ban went into effect, the school was given an exemption. So they are still using polystyrene trays in the school system.

27:58 We’ve talked to the school. We were really hoping that the school would, you know, really make a motion to say that they were getting rid of that. The school committee has not made a motion to say they were definitely getting rid of that. The school committee has said that they are leaving it up to Dr. Bikke to do that. But obviously, everything is based on budget. So we are concerned that the school will not be moving forward with removing polystyrene trays from the school system. And I wanted to point out that in the original article, the Board of Health, so 157-13 regulation, the Board of Health may adopt and periodically amend rules and regulations to effectuate the purpose of this bylaw prior to the adoption of subsequent amendments to the rules and regulations. If any, the Board of Health shall hold a public hearing. Notice of the time, place of the hearing, and of the subject matter sufficient for identification shall be published in the newspaper of general circulation in the town. Once in each of two successive weeks, the first publication to be not less than 14 days before the day of the hearing. A copy of the adopted regulation shall be made available at the office of the town clerk and otherwise the man deemed appropriate by the Board of Health. Failure by the Board of Health to probably such rules and regulations shall not have the effect of suspending or invalidating this bylaw. So the way I look at that is that you are allowed to amend that. And if you choose to amend that to say this now is going to take effect in the school system, you can do this.

29:36 So if you’d like to move forward with that, I can talk to town council when I get back from vacation about making sure that she’s in agreement with this. Obviously she wrote this, and we can begin to move forward with that. You could also choose to speak to some members of the school committee and discuss with them that you’re planning to do this. So, you know, but obviously this will be a public hearing. Everything will be out in the open, and people could comment on that at that time. Do you guys have any questions, concerns, or comments on that? I was looking at the wording from the article. I didn’t see specifically that the schools were accepted. Was I just missing that, or was that not? I did not see that either, Todd. I think that might have been a motion on town meeting floor, or I have to talk to Lisa about how that worked exactly, too. I’m very interested and very concerned, and it’s something that the board has been concerned with right along. And it was especially, we all were very concerned, but Michelle’s been bringing it up more and more. But what I don’t understand is if the school department has known that we have been interested in this, why do they continually buy the containers that we don’t wish to have distributed? I would think that by now that they would have done this on their own without us making a directive. But I think to protect ourselves, I think we should vote to go forward with a public meeting, because we can always cancel it, can’t we?

31:16 Let me talk to Lisa, and when I get back, I can finalize the public hearing, and we can come up with a date of when we would want to do it. Is she out of town that you can’t speak with her before you go? No, but it’s not a super pressing piece, so I don’t think she’s going to get to it right away. The reason I think it’s pressing is that I’d like to start the school year off, and have them not say that they’ve got 20,000 trades that we have to use up before they adopt this. That’s the thing that I’m concerned about. But you know me, I’m always, I want to do it yesterday, so that’s just my… So, you know, with that, I think I would suggest that you begin to talk to the school committee and say, hey, we’re moving in this direction. And it takes us two weeks to make a regulation, and we can vote to say that you are not allowed to use those trades. I have talked informally with the superintendent and with someone on the school committee, and they all are amenable to this. I mean, at least that’s what they’ve told me, is that they really are totally willing and wanting to get rid of styrofoam trades. So, you know, to make it official, I think maybe we should push them along a little bit, just because it will get things moving to have this change. I think that what would be the problem is that Mr. Kelleher could be purchasing these and not knowing our feelings or our interests. And I don’t know if he’s gotten a message from the superintendent, but I’m sure he’s doing his ordering or has already done it.

32:53 And then that’s not my concern, is that the things are going to be ordered and they’re going to say they don’t have money to provide for the other trades. And this has been going on for too long.

33:07 Why would everybody, all the adults in the community, not use the polyserin trades and then our kids are using them? I mean, that’s just as absurd. Correct. So, you know, you could go in two different directions. You could say, you know, you would like the chair, the board of health chair, to go and talk with the school committee chair and say, we are ready to do this. We will be holding a public hearing in August and mandating that these are no longer allowed to be used and try to stop that. You know, Bot Pot and I can reach out to the superintendent quickly here to say we’ve discussed this at a public hearing and we are considering this regulation. We would rather not have to go through with it, but we will. But please don’t order any trades because this will be coming very shortly. The other thing is, is that I see that they have 60 days to comply. I mean, that it says in there, where is it? It may not be the school. It doesn’t say the schools, but it says that businesses have 60 days to comply, which would then make it too much after school starts. So the 157.10 list of available alternatives, is that what you’re referring to? I’m referring to where it says they have 60 days to comply. Not later than 60 days following the approval? Yes.

34:38 They’re there to stand. Not later than 60 days following the approval here, but the attorney general of the board of health shall adopt a list of available suitable, affordable, biodegradable composite, composable or recyclable list of lists next page. Okay, so alternatives for each product type, which the board of health shall be updated regularly. So that doesn’t have to say that they have 60 days to comply. It says we have 60 days to provide a suitable alternatives. Oh, okay. I’d be happy to speak to the superintendent since, you know, I’m on the reopening committee, which isn’t this, but if you, if you, the two of you have time to do it, go ahead. Well, I think we should decide right now who’s going to speak with him. Okay. Todd, you’re the chair. I’m happy to speak to this written into Sarah Gold. I think that would be fine. I’ll call him this week. All right. And I’ll do, you know, I’ll start talking to Lisa and she can do any research that she needs to do if necessary. And we can start moving quickly on this. Yeah, the only concern I have, as I said, you know, just say it one more time is that if it’s purchasing that’s been done. I think at this point, if it’s been ordered, they could cancel it, but if it starts to get delivered, then we’re in trouble. Correct. Obviously, he can’t, he can’t have anything delivered before July 1st. Otherwise, it’s going to fall into FY21.

36:09 And FY21 ends tomorrow. Well, then we’ve got to work move fast. Yeah. So we can definitely move quickly on that. But, you know, we’ll, we’ll reach out and speak with them both. Sounds good. Thanks. And that’s it. That’s all that I have for the director’s report. Okay, thank you. Before I open it up to the public and I know that Sondra has a question. Is there anything later? Do you want to bring it up? Thank you. Okay. Just the next meeting. Let’s do that last. Okay. So Sondra, did you solve a question? I imagine it was about COVID. Yeah, I just had a quick question. Something that I asked Andrew last time, because you guys had talked about the new DESI guidelines for September. I had asked Andrew kind of where it stands with Board of Health in regards to mandating vaccine. And you had said that was something that was probably going to be discussed this summer, if there was any updates with that. And then my follow up to that was, I know under the governor’s order, he had the authority under the state of emergency to mandate the flu vaccine. If that was something, when you and I had asked this question a couple weeks ago, it was just about COVID, if flu fell underneath that same parameter. So that was a question. And then my only other two follow up questions was about the trace. Is that, is it, because I’ve been on a lot of the Board of Health, I’m not the Board of Health, the school committee meetings where this has been discussed.

37:49 Is it just for the trace, are we also talking packaging as well, of foods? So what do you mean by packaging of foods? I was unaware, you know, because all the foods for this year has been bagged that, you know, one of which I had no idea because my kids get, you know, we send them with their own lunches. But I guess one of the high schoolers that was on the sustainable committee, you know, had brought to the attention that she was concerned about the packaging. They’re using plastic wrap and stuff like that for these lunches to go. Is this recommendation that you guys have, is it just pertaining to the trace or all packaging of food or items for the school? We are just kind of piggybacking on the bylaw that we did at town meeting a couple years ago about styrofoam specifically. Okay, I just wanted clarification, it was just on the trace, because I know that also had come up as well too. Yeah, so it’s expanded polystyrene or, you know, with the name of styrofoam, that’s a generic, non-generic name. So expanded polystyrene shall mean blown polystyrene, polystyrene that has been expanded or blown using a gas-exploding agent into a solid foam and expanded and extruded forms, which are thermoplastic, protochemical materials utilizing a styrene monomer and processed by any number of techniques, including but not limited to fusion of polymer spheres, expandable bead polystyrene,

39:28 injection molding, form molding, and extrusion-blown molding, extruded foam polystyrene, sometimes called styrofoam, a Dow Chemical Company trademark form of polystyrene foam. Prepared food shall mean any food or beverage prepared on the restaurant and or retail food establishments premises using any cooking or food preparation technique. Prepared food shall not include any raw, uncooked meat, fish, or eggs, unless provided for consumption without further food preparation. Prepared food may be eaten on or off the food establishment premises, restaurant. Shall mean any establishment which serves food or consumption whether on or off the premises and which may also maintain tables for the use of its customers. Retail food establishments shall mean any establishment which sells food for consumption off the premises, including but not limited to grocery stores, theaters, and all other food service establishments not included in the definition of a restaurant in this section. Thank you for that. So any follow-up to the question about COVID vaccine or flu vaccine? Because I know that it’s, you know, I was on the reopening committee, so I, you know, we all know how, unfortunately, you guys kind of got stuck in the middle where school kept coming back, you know, back to you guys for guidance. And I just wasn’t sure, you know, where that you had said that there’s a possibility that Board of Health has some ability to mandate. I’m just curious.

41:05 So we would really, you know, so we would be looking for the state to set guidelines across across the whole state, rather than having kind of a checkerboard pattern of different rules and regulations around COVID in the state of Massachusetts. Obviously, you’re seeing quite a few number of colleges mandate COVID vaccines for the fall. Now, we will see, obviously, there’s gonna be a lot of discussion about that, you know, not necessarily at the state level, but across the state. The state’s gonna then take a look at that and see what the conversations are like and say, all right, do we want to bring this down to the next level of elementary schools? And if they did the COVID vaccine, I would, I would assume that they’re gonna say flu vaccine as well. Okay. That’s what I was just I was just looking for because they clearly are already deciding that they’re not doing anything. They’re getting rid of all the precautions and which means that the school districts themselves are it sounds like they’re gonna have the ability to make their own decisions and implement them. So I was just curious. And then one last question. I just I’m curious if you have any details, Andrew, about the 75 that cast that were vaccinated. Yeah, demographics on that, like any age groups or anything or just the 73% that are fully vaccinated. No, no, no, no, of the of the 75 individuals that died that were fully vaccinated. No, I don’t have any. They don’t give us any details. Yeah, that’s all. Yeah. So we don’t know if they have any underlying health conditions. Are they immunocompromised? Are they elderly? No, we do not have any, you know, there might be a very common condition.

42:39 There might be a common thread between that. Yeah, I don’t know what vaccine they received when they received it. How long after they received the vaccine did they become positive again. And unfortunately, with a lot of the testing going away, we are our surveillance is is a lot less so we’re going to not be picking up on these cases as much. You know, I’ve been vaccinated for COVID. I might, for whatever reason, pick up COVID again. I might be asymptomatic, but I’m not testing on a regular basis. So I could be, you know, just I’m gonna fly right underneath the radar. Yeah. Did you have something? Yeah. You just knew yourself. Tom, you’re on mute. A note of clarification. Can you tell me. This one is original article was. So the data was came. It’s not an article. What was it? It’s the town meeting was. Oh, the town meeting article or the data about COVID. No, no, I’m back to, I’m sorry, back to the power siren ban. 2014. And it was an article at town meeting was it. Yep, article 29. Great. I too was interested in those 75 deaths. But like, as you said, listening all the, all the things that could concern those deaths whether you know the age, if they had had the vaccine what vaccine, I guess it would be a lot to find out but I was curious about whether there was or underlying illnesses and such so if you ever come across that that would be helpful.

44:34 I’m sure there’s individuals that are looking at all that data. You know, they just haven’t gone through it all and pushed it to a point where they want to show it to us. Okay. Todd, we were going to talk about the date meeting but I have some new business. If you don’t mind. Okay, go for it. My new business is I think that we should make accommodation to the police chief who was retiring this coming Friday on his retirement for all that he has done to maintain the his job and maintain the public’s health. And I would like to make that publicly I’d like to see it in form of emotion. And then maybe we could send him a note from the Board of Health if you don’t mind. This communication. Yeah. That would be my pleasure. We send accommodations to the police chief on his retirement and congratulate him on all that he’s done to maintain the public’s health. Join the second. I second. Miss Hazelet. In favor. Miss Miller. In favor. Dr. Belfbecker. So a little side note so you know Bob and I, you know, Bob was a tremendous help during COVID. We spoke multiple times every day. And actually Bob’s daughter was my son’s substitute teacher in elementary school during COVID. And at one point, his daughter was speaking to my son he’s like, or she said, Do you know your father and my father speak more than we do every day.

46:14 They were in school together every day. But you’re going to miss each other. Oh yeah, I’m definitely gonna miss Bob, you know, he, you know, we had a great relationship he was always there if I needed his help. So, you know, we have a great relationship with the police department. And I look forward to having a new great relationship with the new police chief. So we’re really excited to, you know, welcome Dennis King here. I’ve heard great things from everybody in Salem. So yeah, I’m sad to see Bob leave, but I’m grateful that Dennis King is coming to Marblehead also. It’s going to be a great transition. And I look forward to it. Thank you for bringing that up, Elaine. I was thinking for our next meeting, we would skip July, like we used to, and go right to our second Tuesday, the month. So back to August 10th, I would propose is that work for everybody. If that’s the 10th, that’s the second Tuesday’s August 10th. That would be perfect because I stopped vacation on the 13th. It works for me. And then we can, you know, let’s see how the summer goes. I would say we do that meeting virtual and then try for September back in person with Mary Ali. I would, I would think that would be a good plan. And we can also decide if we want to do a second meeting in August or not at the first meeting. Let’s see what we’re up to. Could we would, would we necessarily have to meet over the styrofoam or any other things that this.

47:50 If there’s some issues or do you think we can hold till the 10th. I think you can probably. I’ll let you know how it goes and what you know, obviously a lot’s going to depend on Todd’s conversation with the superintendent and the chair of the school committee. So we’ll gather all our resources and then Todd can talk to everybody individually. We know who the chair of the school committee is. Sarah Gold is next again. Was Sarah not reelected as a school committee chair? Anything to know? Actually I don’t know the new term. I don’t know. I don’t know either. We’ll find out. The super will know. So if it comes to a public hearing, we can do that as part of our meeting on the 10th. Yep. You just close the public hearing move on to the rest of the meeting. But that has to be posted 14 days in advance. Yes, we can take care of that. Okay. All right, great. Do we have a motion to adjourn? Go ahead, Joanne. Hold on one second. There’s one more question. One quick question, guys. If you’re going to start meeting in person in September, does that mean no more Zooms or it’s public only? So we are trying to figure that out, Sandra. The biggest tech, our biggest challenge is technology. We have, we work with MAPC, which is the Metro Area Planning Council. And we’ve asked them to try to figure this out. Obviously during COVID, we saw a lot more engagement.

49:21 They’re in Zoom, but that’s something that we’re going to take a look at. Obviously it’s ultimately up to the Board of Health if they want to have a hybrid meeting or if they just want to stick to in person. But it’s something that we’re exploring. We can, we can just. I’ve been very fortunate to be able to participate in a lot of the town meetings, especially a Board of Health. You know, it’s my, my clinical interest. So I do appreciate that you guys have done Zoom and I would love for you guys to continue. Otherwise, you know, being a provider, I could never get to your meetings on time in person. So as a public participant, I would greatly encourage you guys to continue that because I think you guys got a lot of public participation when it was Zoom. Okay. Thank you. I guess we can discuss it more at our next meeting. Thank you. From what I understand though, Andrew, isn’t it the fact that whether we, even if we wish to do it, it may not be possible. But do a hybrid? Yes. Didn’t you say because of the, the technical aspect? Yes. The technology aspect is, can be very challenging. You know, the board members. So, you know, there might be a lot of equipment that the town has to invest in. They might have to set up a dedicated meeting room for hybrid meetings, where all the board members and myself are seated and we have headphones on where people can hear us in the audience, but are also speaking into microphones. So it can be challenging.

50:56 I know now the school committee is doing hybrid meetings. So I know that I don’t know if they’re very different from you guys, but they’ve been doing their meetings in person for the past, maybe two months and they’ve been doing it Zoom still. So I don’t, I don’t know if that is helpful at all to know. Yeah. The only, the only difference with that is that they have not had an audience in front of them. They’ve been in person, but everybody else has been hybrid like Zoom. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll consider it more. Figure what’s, what’s doable. Okay. So we have a motion to adjourn. Do you want to do a joint? I wish to adjourn. Second. All right. Miss Aisley. In favor. Miss Miller. In favor. Dr. Bell, Becker. In favor. Have a good fourth, everybody. Yes. Yes. And.