Hello and welcome to PBS39 and WLVT community update on Coronavirus.

It's presented by Capital Blue Cross and brought to you with help from our community partner Lehigh Valley Health Network.

We are coming to you live from the Public Media Center in Bethlehem.

I'm Brittany Sweeney.

Our guests today include a doctor we've relied on for advice and perspective throughout this pandemic.

Also with us is the founder of a community group helping Allentown families as kids head back to in-person classes for the very first time in over a year.

Our guests will join us in just a moment.

If you have a question, please give us a call.

The phone number is four eight four eight two one zero zero zero eight.

We'll answer some of your questions live.

Plus four daily coronavirus updates.

Be sure to sign up for our newsletter.

You can do that at our website coronavirus Lehigh Valley.

Dog.

You can find helpful information there in both English and Spanish.

Now let's take a look to today's top headlines.

The State Department of Health today reported vaccine providers have given more than 7.1 million vaccine doses.

Fifth among all states in total numbers, more than 43% of eligible Pennsylvanians have gotten at least first dose, a two day total of 5675 new cases and 29 more deaths.

Bring the overall Pennsylvania case count to 1.1 million and 25,600 90 total deaths.

Today, Governor Tom Wolf received his first dose of the Moderna vaccine.

Wolf received shots at the Family First Health Center in York.

Wolf said he hoped to set an example for those still considering whether to get vaccinated.

Wolf said he encourages all eligible Pennsylvanians, everyone 16 and up to schedule an appointment with a vaccine provider as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, across the country, half of all adults have gotten at least one Covid-19 shot.

milestone yesterday.

The CDC says almost 130 million people have rolled up their sleeves, almost 84 million or about 32% of the adult population have been fully vaccinated.

Testing remains a vital element in the fight against Covid-19 and a free walk and drive through testing site is now available this week in Easton.

You can be tested from nine am to six pm through Friday at Life Church in the 4400 block of Northampton Street, up to 450 tests can be administered each day.

The free tests at Life Church are made possible through the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

Let's meet our guests for the day.

Dr Robert Murphy is executive Vice President and chief physician executive Lehigh Valley Health Network.

He's been a great resource for us for information.

Melissa Tavarez is founder and director of the UNAIDS Foundation and a nonprofit group that works to bridge the gaps for underserved communities in the Allentown area.

Thank you both so much for joining us today.

Yamli.

So we will be with you in just a few minutes.

We're going to begin with Dr Murphy.

Dr Murphy, as always, thank you so much for being here.

Always gets better every time I spent time with you.

Brittany, thank you for having me.

Yes.

It's great to have you.

And Doctor, we've talked before about vaccine supply and availability, but it seems like we've really turned a corner here.

Your own network vaccinating over 9000 people in one day last week.

So here's where we start.

How are you feeling about the amount of vaccine and appointments available in our region?

And across Pennsylvania as a whole right now?

Pretty darn good.

It's good to I mean, it's simple, right?

The math is starting to work in our favor.

Supply is supply is while not quite bountiful, is it?

Now at least consistent?

We have the ability to now with the governor opening up the state, we have the ability to start scheduling people across our catchment area and across the Commonwealth.

So there's a there's now an ability to project and have a reasonable insight into how many shots and arms we're going to get.

So it's a very good place to be now.

Compared to where we were in the past when you and talked.

So I was just going to say just a couple of weeks ago, there were frustration Lyons about the amount of vaccine that was coming in when supply was coming in.

Have you seen any hold ups like that in recent weeks?

No, it's been it's been it's been adequate as you say, we reached a record last week of 9200 doses in our network across our various vaccination sites.

So that's really wonderful.

And again, we are on pace to keep that 36,000 first and second doses a week that we committed to.

So that's wonderful.

We are in a bit of an inflection point.

Interestingly enough, it was good to see the governor getting vaccinated because now we're actually as we've opened up our appointment schedules who are now looking at our vaccine being a little more plentiful, but the willingness to engage in having those vaccines starting to lag behind the first time.

Dr Murphy, a big a big population, the underserved communities, communities of color, some of these folks who are homebound, these are some of the people who have not yet been vaccinated.

Are you making headway in getting the vaccine to those people, to reaching out to those communities, to making sure that you're bringing vaccines to them?

What's Lehigh Valley Health Network doing on that Gamma Well, happily, thanks to the partnership with folks like Mr Virus and her foundation as much as others in our community, we've taken this mission very seriously at LVHN.

So from the very onset we began to look at giving a proportion of the vaccine which was proportional to the folks who weren't able to get to one of our major vaccination sites recognizing that health begins at home.

So we were very out in front with bringing vaccine to the folks in Kongregate senior living facilities when that was permissible.

We're among the first to do that.

We've been able to to use that in site and use that logistic and operational science to begin to bring that to to our friends and our community brethren in places that don't traditionally access health care as readily.

So we now have a community based vaccine clinics that LVHN servicing.

We have 20 clinics that are scheduled to begin operation between mid-April and June that will administer both first and second doses.

And just recently with being able to roll out our mobile vaccine units, we've delivered about 3200 doses, first doses that is into community that haven't been able to to access the vaccination through the more traditional modems.

Has this helps health networks find more creative ways to get to those communities at this point and moving forward beyond the coronavirus pandemic Gamma I mean, you make you make an excellent point, Brittny.

So so if we are really to transition into the next generation of health care, it's not going to be delivering health care to people when they are in hospitals, in hospital beds, in intensive care units for us to do the best job to serve the communities, that's to serve all members of the community, whether they are insured, uninsured, whether they live in suburbs or whether they live in inner city areas.

And the way we do that is by is by gaining trust and by gaining access to people where they live and being able to deliver not only just acute health care but also health care that is preventative care and often often boils down to simple what we call the social determinants of health.

Know the disparity in food, the disparity in medication, the disparity in education, the more we can do as health care providers by seeing ourselves as being the kind of the Senator Casey point of the community that has these resources to help distribute to the community and in no short measure, those that are underserved traditionally the better we do as a community.

Sure.

Health care as we know it definitely will not look the same as we move away from this pandemic.

Let's get back to the vaccines and Muhlenberg college poll last week suggested nearly one in three Pennsylvanians have no plans to get vaccinated.

Does that sound about right from what you're hearing and what do you say to those people who just are not going to get the vaccine Gamma Yeah, it's that's a distressing statistic.

And that's where we're starting to see maybe with a leveling off of the demand curve here.

You know, it's it's daunting.

You know, these vaccine are all being administered by the FDA under an emergency provision.

So it's recognizing that the stress to our nation allowed us to to bring these vaccines into the population.

And quick, quickly.

And there's some traditional issues with that.

Right.

So there's some people who are looking at this and saying, well, I'm not quite sure of the science because we are able to to come from a point of last March having no vaccine and a pandemic that was bringing our country to its knees to having vaccine and under one full calendar year year.

And what I would say is that's not something that happened overnight.

It's happened after decades of research into the Marnay platform and our ability to to utilize that to address this particular this particular virus.

So there's that on the one part, the other is, you know, the issue that some some members of our population utilizing their right to individual choice seem to see this as a political statement, which as a scientist, a physician and a member of a community would would support Dr Fauci and all the other other members of the health care community that would say this simply is not the case.

I mean, you mentioned 1.1 million cases in Pennsylvania that there's no conspiracy.

That's actual science.

And unfortunately, a high proportion of folks have died in the states.

Not to say around the world.

So so this is real and that the third point of this is that for us as a society to do well, to get people back to jobs and to get our society back on pace is we have to reach that that term that we're using herd immunity and one in three people won't quite get us there.

And then my last point would be again, which is why our partnership with them is the virus and members of the community such as she represents is that there's a health disparity either because of the lack of trust or lack of ability to connect with people where they live.

And that's something that I think we are at least in our community, starting to make the turn on which you know, which gives me great, great pleasure and pride to be able to say that where we are investing the resources, we are meeting people where they need to be seen and we are coming to them in the spirit of we're trying to understand your vision and your needs as opposed to saying this is how we see it come to us, I think that message carries a lot of weight.

So there's four basic pieces around that.

That question you asked and each of them are important in their own right.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

You could give us your perspective on the effectiveness of the vaccine.

Just last week, there were reports of nearly 6000 breakthrough cases of people who were vaccinated.

But then contracted the virus.

What do we make of that Gamma That's the science of a virus.

The issue the issue, Brittany, I think this is something that society doesn't quite you know, when they take a deep breath and think about this, vaccines don't make a population immune.

Right?

So even when we got the flu vaccine before the pandemic virus.

Right.

People would still get a cold.

They just get it less and they get it less often.

What we can say is the vaccine against the coronavirus.

They are all university.

They are all incredibly effective at mitigating the severity of the disease and the fatality that goes with the disease.

Folks that have gotten the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccine, they don't die and they don't get very, very sick.

And this is where the herd immunity concept becomes so important.

So so just because you get the vaccine doesn't mean that you won't be a carrier.

It doesn't mean that when you go to church or you go to a family gathering that you won't be able to transmit that disease to folks who have not been vaccinated.

The only way for us to move forward is to get herd immunity, which is, you know, depending who you listen to.

But roughly about three quarters of the population to 80% or better who are immune so that although they may catch the disease, they won't be able to get get very, very sick from it.

And they won't die.

And those who are getting vaccinated, some people report having side effects, but side effects aren't necessarily a bad thing.

Correct Gamma Yeah, it's kind of it's kind of one of those things.

It's it's a blessing in disguise in some ways.

Right.

So so personally, I, I was lucky enough to have two Pfizer vaccines and have no side effects whatsoever.

My daughter had had to Pfizer vaccines and complained that her arm hurt a little the next day more than she would have from the vaccines and then some friends and my wife said that when they got the vaccine they got a little headache or felt run down a little the next day.

What some of those reactions are a triggering of the immune system and showing that there's a response.

So while it may be uncomfortable or may make you feel a little a little under the weather for a little bit, that's not a bad thing.

What we looking in medicine are side effects that really have an impact on your life and or we're not foreseen in the clinical trials.

One final question for you, Dr.

If you what about the people who experience delayed reactions when getting the vaccine a couple of days later after the vaccine feeling really run down?

Is that normal as well?

Sure.

I mean, it's when you talk about complications, you talk about an average what to make an average you have to have people are on one side and on the other side.

So so all that in the big picture would come down to what I would say have a day or two because there'll be people have it maybe three days and some people like myself are lucky not to have it at all.

So we talk in terms of averages that gotcha kind of luck of the draw there Dr Robert Murphy from Lehigh Valley Health Network.

As always, thank you so much for your perspective today.

Thank you, Brittany.

And we continue this community update on coronavirus on PBS39.

You can hear the rebroadcasts on the radio tonight at nine 30 on 91 three WLVT.

Now let's bring in our next guest, Yoma Lisa Tavarez leads Unidos Foundation, a group that has helped Allentown area families throughout the pandemic.

Today, a big day, of course, with Allentown elementary school students returning to in-person classes for the very first time since March of last year.

Yeah.

Melissa, welcome.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

Absolutely.

My pleasure.

Now, as someone who knows so many families, what are you hearing today as these kiddos are going back to school?

Back to in-person learning?

Rick, really one of the things that we heard, especially yesterday during our last event where we were distributing backpacks to students and families returning to school today is unknown.

It's just not knowing how the schools were truly prepared to welcome the students back, whether they will be able to have the equipment that they needed, how it was going to feel.

I mean, it's been over 13 months is a really scary time.

And it being that it was the elementary school students returning first is really a trial run for the parents because most most families in Allentown have pretty much an array of student ages or grades in their homes.

So you have the older siblings get to stay home and then kind of listening to how it feels to have their little brothers and sisters return home after school today.

So I'm sure it's a very scary but exciting day as well.

So from what I understand, you have small children as to why this last year has not been easy.

Tell us a little bit about your experience with juggling kids and work and just life in general during a pandemic, a pandemic Gamma I've had a few of these interviews and it's usually the same thing is I don't know how I've been doing it.

It's really hard to give advice.

The reality is just figuring out that it's OK to ask for help.

Anyone, especially once getting vaccinated, being able to have someone come over and just watch the kids for a couple hours and you run out and get a breather.

It's going to be amazing.

But at the beginning it was difficult.

It went from what we considered normal life going to work or going to school Monday through Friday only having the kids 24/7 on the weekends to the world truly just stopping overnight and just learning really how to entertain them was the biggest thing I have a seven and a five year old and they are very rambunctious both so with me it was really just finding different activities, remembering what was it that I was doing before my son started school and getting more craft, getting more activity in our back yard.

All of these little things that we normally take for granted forget to do more often.

All of that had to come back and we definitely have been doing that very often over the last 13, 14 months.

I know all about the energetic kids.

I realized they did not have enough crafts at my house.

I went out and got tons of construction paper and everything you needed to do crafts like I totally hear you on that.

You mentioned an event yesterday that the foundation put on.

Tell us a little bit about more about that and how that came Sure.

So yesterday was our community distribution for fire safe prevent kids as well?

As backpacks for students returning back today in the Allentown school district and for the fire safety prevent kids.

This started this conversation started early last year, very early last year.

And it was because of the fires that continue to happen throughout the city of Allentown and really all over.

But we focus on the city of Allentown because that's where we're based.

We are based in the heart of Allentown and we partnered with the Allentown police department Allentown Fire Department, the city of Allentown, which helped us fund the actual kids and the American red Cross that helped provide education for the families that were receiving the fire safety kits.

And in these kids, again, it was focused about prevention.

So not only did it have education on how to present what a fire would look like to the children, the home to the elderly, individuals that live in your home, but also learning how to use a fire extinguisher, learning how to listen for that in the background.

When you have a smoke detector that's running out of battery, too many families do so.d notP And also the Pfizer case itself, it's fireproof and teaching the families about creating go bag.

So we had these amazing partnerships that really helped us with that.

And since we were already going to have a captive audience, we decided as soon as we heard that the Allentown school district was going to be returning to in person hybrid schooling.

One of the local organizations, self Women's Reentry, reached out and there were like, hey, we would love to give our backpacks or like we're in.

That's one of the biggest things when it comes to needles really providing the community in the moment.

Yes, exactly.

You have the photo right there and they're absolutely amazing in it.

And Brenda and it was really just providing that backpack with a sleeve for their laptops.

Many of the students received a laptop from the schools but did not receive carryback.

So it was very, very important for us understanding excited children and very energetic children that they need somewhere safe to carry their equipment because that Fauci would be too great for our families to take on if one of their children were to drop their laptop on their way to school today.

So it was just a very, very important cause to make sure that we covered yesterday.

So I looked like you had a really successful event and nothing new to the only Doce foundation you collected PPE last year during the pandemic to give to families in the community.

What was the response like to all of that when you collected those materials that were really in demand and needed at that time?

Absolutely.

So it really started.

You know, we were kind of doing both things at once.

So we did the laptops to bridge that technology gap that we were experiencing experiencing here and BioNTech school district adsorb today.

We have actually reached 281 families with laptops from books as well as some were with hotspots to be able to get online, be able to continue their education and have the technology and access that they need to be able to continue their school year.

Last year and then of course start the school year.

And then the other part was PPE and we actually distributed to over 15 different organizations on mask's shields, hand sanitizer.

And we distributed over 15,000 pieces of PPE in a matter of I think was like three months.

It all started right at the beginning of April and it continued all the way through about July one.

The larger networks were able to access PPE for their employees.

Then it became a little bit easier for us organizations to get it as well.

But it was a great response.

Again, 15 thousand piece of PPE between masks, shields, gowns, everything that we could possibly receive and pass on forward.

We did.

And one of the places that we actually had to donate, I believe, was two or three times was Phoebe Ministries.

They were really struggling with having PPE in their facilities and the numbers were just rising immensely.

So we were very, very happy and just excited to be able to help with that because the numbers the elderly community were really scary, especially at the beginning of the pandemic.

Normally it seems like you're doing a huge, great job and the Allentown School District, what are some of the challenges you've seen there compared to other school districts?

What is Allentown face that other schools may not with Allentown school district?

I mean, overall, it's just how big of a school district that is.

I mean, we are the third largest city in the state of Pennsylvania and with our school districts servicing over 17,000 students every year, at least over the last couple of years, And that number OraSure continues to rise.

It's money not coming in because we don't meet the targets.

We don't meet the numbers.

But the reality is and just like Dr Murphy touched on is those social determinants.

It's focusing on the fact that when there's a child that's going hungry, they're not going to show up to school excited about doing classwork.

They are hungry.

So it's understanding that there are many other needs that are happening in our community that are very, very just not eing addressed.

We'll just put it that way.

They're not being addressed in a way that is helping our communities move forward in the best way possible.

So that's one of the things that will need those not only work collectively with other organizations, but also collect the information from the community itself, learning what the needs are and working to provide assist and provide innovative ways to address in a long term way, not just an immediate fix, but providing ways, for example, assisting with entering employment or getting buying a home, fixing their credit, whatever referrals we can potentially do.

You know, like the laptops when we gave the laptops last year, they were gifts.

We were not asking the families to return them because it was very important for us to understand that some of them were going to break and having that burden for the family to have to replace it or return it, we don't want to have to do that.

It's here's what you need in this moment.

Take care of it and next time around, if we can help you again, we will do so.

And really it's just again addressing underlying issues, underlying needs in a way that is going to be ongoing and teaching the families how to pass that forward.

One of the things that we do, I mean and we focus on that is whatever donation you receive from us, we encourage you that whatever you have that you can pass forward, you do the same for someone else.

So we call it spreading human kindness.

And one of the ways that we do that is with our mini library and pantry level.

They get that there are books, there's PPE toiletries and food available for our community free of charge.

24 hours a day and we refill it every single day.

That goes to show the food deserts that exist in our community such a wonderful resource.

Yoma Lisa.

And while we're talking about Schuylkill, I just want to make sure I mention this reminder remote students can pick up, grab and go meals every weekday at any school in the Allentown school district.

The meals are available from 8:00 in the morning until two 30 in the afternoon at all school buildings.

And on Friday, all students, remote and in-person learners will get a weekend meal bag, the grab and go meal pick up schedule went into effect today.

Melissa, I have one quick question for you of one event coming up in June.

Can you give us quick details on that Gamma Yes.

So Humankind Day is going to be at Executive Education Academy on Union Boulevard here in Allentown.

Anyone is able to support.

So please just visit our website to learn more about we are really excited to have the community come out and receive summertime toys for their children.

They transition out of school and into summer months.

Our website is WLVT w Macungie fund .org Yoma Lesa Tavera, thank you so much for joining us today.

We really appreciate it.

And we thank you for joining us for community update on Coronavirus will be back here on Wednesday.

That'll do it for PBS39 and WLVT.

Our news.

I'm Brittany Sweeney CDC.