Hello and welcome to PBS39 and WLVT Community Update 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 an LVHN Pulman ologist to discuss allergies and Covid-19.

Also with us is the head of the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation.

Our guests will be with 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.

Five plus four daily coronavirus updates.

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Now, 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 at today's top headlines.

Acting Pennsylvania Health Secretary Alison Bime visited the St Luke's Sacred Heart campus today to applaud St Luke's efforts to vaccinate underserved communities.

St Luke's has partnered with the Muslim Aid Initiative, The Unidos Foundation and Promise Neighborhood of the Lehigh Valley to promote the safety and effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines, Beahm said.

To date, Pennsylvania providers have administered 5.7 million vaccine doses, just over 35% of Pennsylvanians have received a first vaccines and communities of color will be the focus of PBS39 next community conversation.

Join us at seven pm next Thursday, April 15th, as experts and organizers discuss why Covid-19 is affecting eople of color at disproportionate rates and what is being done about at the national, state and local levels.

PBS39 and WLVT 91 threes.

Gen. Ortego will lead the conference.

That's next Thursday, April 15th at seven pm.

Pennsylvania's average number of coronavirus cases has risen by more than half since March.

First, the state today reported 4643 new cases and 48 more deaths.

The seven day average for new cases has risen to more than 4000 per day, up from about 2600 per day.

At the beginning of March.

Hospitalizations have also increased.

Nearly 2400 Pennsylvanians are in the hospital with Covid-19 Pocono Raceway in Monroe County again today.

Was the site of a mass vaccine clinic Lehigh Valley Health Network planned to deliver 3000 first doses of the Moderna vaccine during the drive thru clinic.

It's the second first dose mass clinic at the speedway.

LVHN plans another drive thru clinic at Dorney Park and wild water Kingdom this Saturday.

Appointments for that are full.

LVHN advises folks to keep checking back because of cancelations and possible reallocates Lyons of unused Pocono doses.

Let's meet our guests for the day.

Dr Joseph Schellenberg is associate chief of pulmonary medicine at Lehigh Valley Health Network.

Also here is Mr Don Cunningham, president and CEO of the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation.

Thank you both so much for joining us today.

Mr Cunningham, we will be with you in just a few minutes.

We're going to begin today with Dr Schellenberg.

Doctor, thank you so much for joining.

My pleasure.

Dr.

It's spring and that means allergy season.

Of course, some allergy symptoms are the same as symptoms of the coronavirus and that might be causing some concern or confusion.

Are you finding that at all in your practice?

Well, certainly the potential for confusion is there.

I can't say that I've had patients to mind at this point sort of approach me as it relates to those I'm obviously the milder forms of symptoms that one can obtain from coronavirus or even that any respiratory virus infection, stuffy nose sniffles cough up a mild nature.

Those could occur in both situations.

So I was just going to ask, is there any, you know, AZ way or telltale signs to distinguish, OK, maybe this is just an allergy attack or maybe this is something more serious that I need to either get tested or have a doctor look at this or anything that people should be on the lookout for.

Sure.

I mean, I think first of all, it's on the allergic rhinitis allergy side of things.

I think that first of all, most people who have, quote, suffered with allergies have done so for more than just a few months or a few years.

It's usually a more long standing exposed related condition.

So you and you certainly begin to know protective of a seasonal allergic variant.

What season are the triggers?

You know, me personally, this is the time of year where when the trees are blooming, I do have to make these allergic symptoms.

I then sort of activate my allergy treatment plan and that usually controls things until the trees of the tree has passed.

But so far I think one of those things that once again for people who have experienced none of those symptoms, never had allergies in their life and they acutely have symptoms that are new.

I think that's one area of concern.

I think the biggest thing is to move into what are some symptoms that are not associated allergic rhinitis that are can be clearly associated with the coronavirus and other Birdsboro virus infections and that's sort of more what we call the constitutional system.

So certainly fever, muscle aches, body aches, overwhelming generalized fatigue, shakes and chills and shakes and chills.

Those are all things that would be not usually associated with typical allergic symptoms and would be Mark Knouse for for for coronavirus infection or.

Sure.

And while we're on the topic of allergies, is there any way to tell whether this is going to be a severe or maybe a light allergy season?

Any way to tell Gamma I mean, it's still pretty early.

You know, the last few years when we've had milder winters, the potential is there for sort of a larger bloom.

Obviously, we had a whole lot of snow this year and probably it will result in a sort of slightly shortened, real heavy bloom season.

But you know, there's different allergens that are going to come out as the year goes on in their area.

And certainly, as we know in the spring, as the things begin to bloom, it tends to be more pollen oriented over the summer.

It tends to move into more grass and grass cutting grass exposure as you move into late summer.

That's ragweed and typical hay fever and then sort of moves through.

So it sort of depends.

But initially, like I said, it's I would say it's going to be moderate and it's sort of severity maybe.

But certainly one of the best resources, many sort of weather oriented.

But it's APS or shows or easily accessible weather based information systems will now include air quality and allergen reports as part the report you mentioned this season, of course, I've heard people say it seems like allergy season gets longer every single year.

Is there any truth behind that or is it pretty much the same every year?

Just seems longer when you're suffering from allergies.

No, I think I would say not not meaning to move outside of my area of expertize from a scientific perspective, but in general, warmer climates, longer, longer allergy seasons, you know, so once again, there's been ups and downs in terms of our local regional winter weather.

But once again, if you heavy freezes tend to knock down plant based allergens and so when we don't have those, they're going to be sort of more raging over a more continuous basis.

Makes sense.

Let's talk about the masked mandate.

Of course, we wear masks right now to protect from the coronavirus pandemic.

But is there any truth behind the fact that could also protect us from allergies?

Breathing in pollen, that kind of thing?

Could there be dual benefits here wearing a mask?

I think that's definitely true.

You know something so some of the things that we breathe has to do with the particle size in terms of how big something is, it's going to be able to move into us well.

So we know that standard clock masks that typically wore surgical masks are not the same as that 95 mask.

They do not have the same level of filtration and therefore not quite the same protection.

But I think that in the same way that we've seen that a mask is better than no mask in terms of controlling respiratory droplets.

The same would be said for airborne allergen exposure.

So and just as a side note, for example, we saw almost no influenza this year, none.

And that's probably because we were much more worried about the Covid infection and the ofP mask probably prevented the spread of both.

Sure.

So would you suggest to someone who has severe allergies to wear a mask outside if they are going out, if pollen is something that bothers them?

But exactly.

I think it goes exactly to what you just said.

And that's if you're aware of an allergy, an exposure that is potentially irritating becaus symptoms in you then limiting the exposure is part of that and mask wearing can be part of that plan.

So certainly for patients that I have, you know, they love mowing their lawn, but they know that they're allergic to grass, but they're committed to their lawn lawn that Dan Newhouse.

So you should wear a mask, you know, it may help.

Dr Schellenberg, we have a caller question.

This is from Joanne in Coopersburg.

She says she developed Bell's palsy 18 days after the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine and she's wondering if she could have developed that because of the shot.

Any ideas?

So I'm not aware of any sort of acute inflammatory neuropathies which is what a Bell's palsy is.

So Bell's palsy just for people who aren't sort of inflammation or of the facial are that then affects the nerves, ability to control the facial muscles.

So so often can be associated with sort of so most of the time you don't know why people get them.

They do seem to be more immune system mediated.

So certainly we know that viruses work by being immunogenic.

They're designed to sort of stimulate your immune system.

But I have to say I'm not directly aware of any have any reports of frequent cases of inflammatory Rapides or Bell's palsy related to any of the vaccines.

Dr Schellenberg, thank you for answering that call or question.

I wanted to get back to allergies.

What is it with allergies in the Lehigh Valley?

I've heard people say that they move to the Lehigh Valley they've never had allergies before and they develop them here.

Is there something that's contributing to that to this region?

Oh, for sure.

You know, we I grew up in Allentown Dublin Lehigh by my whole life.

So when you look around, it's a big bowl.

I mean, we live in a valley.

It's a bowl.

OK, so we're not at elevation.

We're surrounded by mountains and the bottom we're in a bowl.

That's beautiful.

Plenty of plant lives, plenty of blooming specimens.

But the point of all that is that we are essentially constantly exposed to various allergies.

I mentioned previous before.

There's always something around us that could potentially sensitize us from an allergy perspective there.

That's once again the tree blooming grass ragweed in the fall.

We have lots of leaves.

So that leaves start to fall.

We get they get wet.

We get mold, then we get forced indoors in the winter time or when Covid is around.

But we've been indoors a lot more and there's obviously indoor allergens as well that can be dust, cockroaches, other sort of animal dander or animal hair.

So I think it's a combination of factors.

But from the outdoor environment or allergen, we just live in an area that is almost a perfect storm, lots of allergen producing plants in an area that is not the most ventilated, if you will, Makes sense, makes sense when it comes to Covid-19.

I wanted to move on to some coronavirus questions when it comes to Covid-9 the cases are on the rise, but it seems like they are on the rise in younger people.

Do we know why that is Gamma I mean, I think unfortunately that's mostly still Covid fatigue.

I think that we sort of have in general, understandably as a population we have loosened our behaviors to a significant degree and by doing so the virus will spread more easily.

Of course, there's the added concern over these new variants which are the coronavirus variants have a greater ability to spread through a biologic characteristics.

So I think that's a combination of factors.

I think there's been some newer virus mutations in association with not as strict behavior in terms of the behavioral modifications we can do to reduce exposure risk.

And what are some of the problems you're seeing in patients who are coming in through your office who are suffering from Covid-19?

So we've now you know, it's unfortunately going on for over a year.

So we've seen a variety of patients who have thankfully fully recovered and those are people who were talking very seriously ill.

I mean, people on ventilators for weeks, you know, protracted hospitalization.

And thank goodness we've seen those some of those people reach full functional recovery.

Some of those people have not.

And sometimes that's related to the virus itself.

But many times that's really due to the fact that you've been ill for so long that the muscle weakness and the conditioning and other sort of complications of protracted hospitalization begin to set in.

I've we've seen some people who the sort of the inflammatory changes in their lungs can take months for them to fully resolve.

There is some concern and we haven't really figured out the whys and hows of people who will have residual lung scarring as a result of their previous infection.

And these are all things that we're trying to learn as we gather information and data as to how both identify and treat these people for them to have their best or optimal outcome of course, millions of people getting vaccinated at this point.

What cases are still on the rise?

Is there any indication showing that the vaccines are helping in any way?

And if so, how do you kind of measure that Gamma Yeah, I think there's no doubt in my mind that the vaccines are helping people.

I think that we're seeing, though, certainly when you look at our government and our health care network, it basically took the plan of protecting the most vulnerable buffers.

So, you know, getting to elderly folks, particularly nursing facilities, those people came into the hospital a lot in the very beginning.

Unfortunately, because of their age and other medical problems there there their mortality from the virus was much higher than younger age groups.

And we're not seeing that as much.

You guys, because we protected those people.

And so I think that as we begin to see the effect of collective protection, we're going to see certainly less dangerous, less lethal manifestations of the disease and then hopefully we'll be left with this is something that you'll still it's still going to spread.

It's still going to move around.

But it's not likely to kill you.

I mean, that's what we want.

Absolutely.

That's definitely what we want.

Dr Joseph Schellenberg from Lehigh Valley Health Network, thank you so much for joining us.

Today.

My pleasure.

And we continue this community update on coronavirus on PBS's 39.

And you can hear the rebroadcast on the radio tonight at nine 30 on 91 three WL VR.

Now let's bring in our next guest, Don Cunningham.

Leads the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation.

It's a group responsible for marketing and attracting business and investors to the Lehigh Valley.

Mr Cunningham, thanks again for joining us today.

Thanks for having me.

And I was a as an allergy sufferers, I was fascinated with the doctors interview.

Yes, You had a lot of great things to say today.

Let's start and talk business now.

We're turning the page to business.

I want to start where and when the Lehigh went excuse me when LV DC issued its annual report just a couple of weeks ago, you said economic life will forever be changed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Can you elaborate on that?

What did you mean by that?

Well, I think every time a country goes through something cataclysmic, you never go back to where you started, whether it's an industrial revolution, whether it's a world war, clearly a pandemic.

And what I mean by that is there are certain behaviors that have changed during the pandemic that are likely to begin.

Stay with us.

For example, in office work, many of us have worked remote.

That has changed the outlook on a lot of companies on how much office space they have to lease or they have to build if their employees have to be living close by or if they can work remotely from other location which changes the talent dynamic in the area we were just talking about with health care supply chains which have been global with a lot of products moving over oceans to be assembled or delivered, have there's now an awareness of maybe shortening supply lines and maybe that will help manufacturing and production domestically because of the desire to do things closer to home once these experiences occur and the thinking we're introduced to new ways of thought.

And that's what I mean by we never will go back to exactly as we were before.

Sure.

Of course, that same report found no surprise here that the restaurant and the hospitality and the entertainment side of things really took a hit in 2020.

But there are some businesses that wasn't the case for.

Some businesses actually grew.

Can you tell us about those who did you see thrive during this pandemic when we saw one of the things we do is collect research and data on our own economy and the different Lehigh Valley and then in other markets in other states that we compete with and we compare and contrast ourselves.

And the one thing that really struck us in looking at the data from 2020 and some of it still continues today is that it really was a tale of two different economies.

As you mentioned, as you mentioned, our hospitality, restaurant service sector, anything.

It interacted a lot with customers, was dramatically affected with close outs and a lot of unemployment.

There were some initial unemployment back in March, April and May across other sectors.

But those jobs for the most part came back unemployment disparately.

Younger folks in lower wage folks more than it did older workers and higher wage workers.

And as you made reference to, we have a real dichotomy in the Lehigh Valley market where the biggest challenge for many of our employers right now is finding workers at the same time when there's a lot of public policy focus and a lot of a lot of interest and attention on the unemployed in terms of benefits and stimulus plans and so forth.

Today, the most common interaction we have with our existing employee employer base is that they can't find folks to fill open positions.

So are we talked about that on the show on Monday, that people just aren't there for the jobs, especially in those restaurants?

Are there any big project on the horizon right now?

Well, yes, there are actually.

The interesting thing and this goes to the last question and answer is that are in the Lehigh Valley the manufacturing sector, the lifescience is the industrial, which includes everything from direct to consumer retail to fulfillment and distribution has really not slowed down at all over the last year.

In fact, last year in 2020 we had 41 major projects.

We added 6000 new jobs and for the fifth year in a row the Lehigh Valley was ranked in the top five of metropolitan markets in the Northeast for the number of projects that we had and the only markets that were larger were New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

So for we've been for markets our size, we've been the largest we've had, you know, a lot of a lot of manufacturing, a lot of food and beverage production coming into the Lehigh Valley a lot of specialty advanced manufacturing and most recently a lot of interest in a lot of development in the area of life sciences, medical device manufacturing, medical diagnostics, We've seen some companies expanding like OraSure down on the old Bethlehem steel land, a Follet over in Northampton County just recently.

AP Duvalle, which makes consumer products like deodorant and other personal care products, has moved in from New Jersey.

So the industrial growth in the Valley really has not has that slowed our biggest concern or interes is getting our downtown, our hospitality, our arts and culture, our restaurants and bars and nightlife back to its full capacity as it's safe again to do that and to return that employment sector to full activity.

Sure.

You mentioned the downtown places like the ANIZDA and Allentown.

How will the work from home Emmaus be impacted?

Impact places like the neighbors and other places that are built to attract businesses?

Yeah, and that's a great question.

I mean, we have a really balanced economy in the Lehigh Valley where we have a good base of corporate office, finance insurance, real estate, professional office and also the industrial sector manufacturing.

But one of the unknowns right now is with the changes to remote work and the leasing of office space.

How is that going to impact us?

One of the opportunities that we see is that potential interest for companies that traditionally have really like to be in the large urban markets like New York or Philadelphia.

Top 20 city may be much more willing to locate in second area cities like Allentown Bethlehem in the east, in our suburb because it's not reliant on public transportation like subways or busses and it's less densely situated.

So it's safer, but right now then on the other side is the maybe the less use of office space because realizing that employees can spend at least some of their week from a home office.

So I think the whole real stay commercial real estate industry Meanwhile, we are employing some marketing strategies to try to attract companies to move into our cities versus staying in larger, denser cities.

Sure.

And along the same lines, places like Amazon, FedEx, they've built large warehouses here in the Lehigh Valley a lot of warehouse is going up across the area.

What do you say to the folks who say, you know, these warehouses don't have quality jobs, they don't pay a good wage Gamma What's your response to them?

Well, a couple of things.

First of all, the term warehouse is very kind of misleading.

I think what people are actually referring to are large horizontal industrial buildings in those buildings that people primarily outside the urban core.

All types of different activities take place.

That's where manufacturing takes place.

And that's actually our second largest sector of the economy.

And the Lehigh Valley, we have more than seven manufacturers employing 34,000 people.

Also in those facilities are very large to direct to consumer e-commerce whenever anybody's ordering on their phone or their iPad and those packages are showing up right at the doorstep.

The Lehigh Valley is a big part of the back economy of the new retail e-commerce and contrary to popular belief right now there is non skilled minimum wage market rate of of more than $15 an hour, most places with benefits, many of them offering signing bonuses because of the demand for employees in the direct to consumer retail market.

So for folks in our economy, that may be our high school diploma or less that want to work hard.

The opportunity is there and we realize that obviously from a land use traffic and truck perspective, there's a downside to that.

But on the positive side, it's creating a lot of economic opportunity and full employment for folks that quite frankly would have nowhere else to go Don.

We only have about a minute left here, but my last question fo you.

You've been in the Valley for pretty much your whole life.

From what I understand.

What have you learned about the Lehigh Valley in the past year?

Well, the one thing I've learned is that our economy today is very balanced.

You know, as you said, I grew up my father was a steel worker.

There was a time when all of our eggs were in the same basket that was heavy manufacture, sharing and ancillary manufacturing.

Today we have four sectors of our economy that have about equal number of employees and output from health care to manufacturing to professional office.

And what we saw in the last year was this balance helps no one's ever recession proof.

But when you have one sector hit hard, when you have another five or six sectors that aren't as affected in your region stays healthy economically.

All right.

Don Cunningham from Lehigh Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation, thank you so much for weighing in on today's show.

You're welcome.

Thanks for having me.

Absolutely.

We want to thank our guests for being with us today.

We want to thank you for joining us for community update on Coronavirus.

We'll be here at 4pm each Monday, Wednesday and Friday on PBS39 and on the radio at nine 30 those same nights on WLVT News.

We'll be back Friday at four with a look at the iron pigs and the much anticipated return of baseball and of course, fans to Coca-Cola Park.

If you have a question, you can leave it at our website, PBS39.org.

On social media or give us a call and leave it there.

The phone number four eight four eight two one zero zero zero eight four PBS39 and WLVT News.

I'm Brittany Sweeney Staci Inez.