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

It's brought you with help from our community partner Lehigh Valley Health Network.

We're coming to you live from the PBL Public Media Center in Bethlehem.

I'm Brittany Sweeney.

Our guests today include a physician involved in the planning and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines in the Lehigh Valley.

We also have state Senator Lisa Barr Scola.

We'll be meeting them in just a moment.

If you have a question for one of them, you can give us a call.

The phone number is 4 8 4 8 2 1 0 0 0 8.

Our guests will answer some of your questions live.

Plus, for daily coronavirus updates, be sure to sign up for our newsletter.

You can do that at our website.

Carone virus Lehigh Valley .org.

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

Now let's get a look at today's top headlines.

The State Department of Health reported a two day total of nearly 13,000 more coronavirus cases and 186 deaths.

That brings the state total to more than 726,000 cases 17,800 53 Pennsylvanians have died from Covid-19 in Lehigh in Northampton counties.

There have been more than 41,000 cases and 1025 deaths.

Pennsylvania will begin vaccinating people age 75 and older quote soon, according to Health Secretary Dr Rachel Levine.

Essential workers like police officers and teachers also in the next phase of recipients, Levine said.

The state for now remains focussed on vaccinating priority groups of health care workers and residents and staff of long, long term care facilities.

Northampton County is reminding people a drive through Covid-19 testing site remains open at the coordinated health building off Emmerich Boulevard and Bethlehem Township.

Tests are administered Monday through Saturday and you must have a symptom to be eligible.

Participants should bring a photo ID and insurance card results come back in one to two days.

Now let's meet our guests, Dr Alex Benjamin is chief infection control and prevention officer for Lehigh Valley Health Network.

He is intimately involved in the planning and distribution of the vaccine at LVHN.

Also here is Lisa Pascola, a Democrat from Bethlehem.

She has served in the state legislature for 26 years.

More than 20 of them as a senator with a reputation for and dependence.

We thank you both so much for joining us today.

Senator Bob Scola.

We'll be with you in just a moment.

I'd like to start today with Dr Benjamin.

Thank you so much for joining us again.

Absolutely.

Dr Benjamin, we know LVHN has been vaccinating its frontline staff for a couple of weeks now.

Can you update us on how many vaccines have been administered and who's getting them right now?

Sure.

So, you know, the I think the last count that we had as of 2 o'clock was that we have just over 16,000 employees and colleagues vaccinated at this point.

Obviously the bulk of that has been our as you know, the Phase 1 8 people.

So all of our Covid face our patient facing Covid units are critical care personnel.

into the weeds too, to get most of our hospital employees vaccinated.

And that includes, you know, housekeeping, you know, front desk people, people who are not necessarily patient facing as well.

Some very happy to report that.

Great.

So vaccinating, would you say, is going well so far?

Yeah.

I think, you know, given the constraints of how much vaccine we can receive, we're doing I think we're in a really great job of getting vaccine and messaging that out to the appropriate population.

Great.

I want to show you this.

This is a breakdown of the vaccination phases released by the State Department of Health.

It identifies which groups of people are in which stages.

Now, can you talk to us a little bit about this, about the breakdown and maybe some of the larger groups in each of these phases?

Sure.

So phase one areas, as you know, has not changed very much.

And as I mentioned, we have gotten through many of those groups and colleagues remember that is at least from our network standpoint, that is kind of split up to people that are associated or affiliated out to our community, you know, doctors and therapies and dentists and other groups that are not necessarily, you know, affiliated with the network.

But we that, of course, still our Phase 1 a people to be vaccinated are obviously very important and we want to help the Department of Health and that local health bureaus to vaccinate those groups as well.

Phase 1, be I think is the upcoming challenge.

And I think the groups, all of them are very important.

But I think the groups that we are focussing on specifically are the people who are over the age of 75 as well as our first responders certain like I said, I don't want to say that any of those groups are more important han others, but those are two large categories of people that we'll take some definitely more planning to get scheduled.

And then as you get down to Phase 1, see and phase 2, these are much broade categories.

And you know, we plan to get to those groups in due time.

Absolutely.

So has I'll be LVHN begun vaccinating anyone in the one be category first responders like police or firefighters quite yet or do you know when that will happen?

Yes.

So we have been able actually to reach out to the firefighters as well.

As our police personnel.

I think the last count I had was that we have about 2300 individuals and those groups scheduled and we've been able to vaccinate just over 1,100 in that group.

And I want to say that's also done in conjunction with the health bureaus and with our fellow Health Network St Luke's.

Sure.

I'd like you said one A and one B have started, but it's less clear as to when the other groups or phases will actually be able to be vaccinated.

Health Secretary Dr Rachel Levine said again today that it could be a while before those people are vaccinated.

Let's take a listen.

I know it is really challenging to have patients, but we must show patients as the amount of vaccine available to Pennsylvanias is still extremely limited and it will take several months before there's enough vaccine available for everyone.

What people can do right now to be prepared for when vaccine is available is please contact your health care provider, make sure your candidate for the vaccine and we must continue our mitigation efforts.

Please wear a mask.

Wash your hands.

Social dist.

Avoid large and small gatherings.

We still must stand united.

To stop the spread this virus, said Dr Benjamin.

Everyone who wants a vaccine is eager to know when that will be, of course.

So can you explain some of the factors at play in state Is that how it works for most people, even if they are in even Phase 2, should they be calling getting on a list now?

Well, I think if you're not part my LVHN if that's I think how we're to notify our community of when, you know, the different phases will be are available to be vaccinated.

OK, so if you are an LVHN patient, you should be signing up and making sure you're part of that network.

And even if you're not part of LVHN but you want to receive your vaccine through our network, you can register that way.

Great.

We have another viewer question.

This is Julia from Downingtown.

She's asking I had the virus.

I recovered last month.

Can I get the virus again?

And I think along those same lines with this question, maybe if you could talk about getting the vaccine after you've had the virus as well.

Right.

So to address the first question, which is whether you can get reinfected, we think that natural immunity from having been infected lasts somewhere on the order of 90 days.

So somewhere after you've been infected and recovered in the 90 day period is a lapse.

It is possible that you could get infected again in terms of the second question, which is when can you get vaccine after you've been infected?

We really feel that you do.

Like I said, you do have natural immunity that probably will last you for somewhere around 90 days.

But as long as you've recovered from your current Covid illness, essentially if you can be out of isolation, you'd be candidate to get vaccinated.

Now we do know sort of anecdotally that people who've had Covid infection recently and then become vaccinated seem to have more of a chance of developing side effects.

And we think that is because the vaccine is boosting your natural immunity and that boosting process may cause you to have more of the reactions like fevers, fatigue, muscle aches, feeling tired.

But we know that is not pure science.

I think that's our observation and it's based on what we know about how the immune system is responding.

Sure.

Along this same lines, Dr Benjamin, are you seeing people that are getting vaccinated, that are having those side effects who haven't had Covid already?

What are you hearing from people who got vaccinated?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think that is what as was described in both the Pfizer Moderna trials, a good percentage of people after even their first vaccination developed, you know, local site reactions which are, you know, redness, pain, swelling at the site of the injection site as well.

Fevers, fatigue, muscle aches, feeling run down.

Typically those resolved within 24 to 48 hours after your vaccination.

And we've also noticed now that people are starting to get their booster shots, their second doses that some people are experiencing those same symptoms again, but seem to recover fairly quickly.

Again, 24 to 48 hours after their injection.

Sure.

Dr -, you mentioned constraints on receiving shipments of the vaccine.

So my question for you then is are you able to keep up with the shipments that you're getting?

Would you be able to possibly vaccinate more people if you got more of these shipments?

Where do you stand all of that?

Yeah, I think you go with the combination of having Pfizer and Moderna vaccines available.

We are prepared to start to vaccinate as many people as we can in terms of receiving vaccines.

So I think each week since the start of our receipt of vaccines, we've been pushing the are pushing for larger and larger quantities of vaccine to be sent to us simply because we know the population is there.

We know that we're getting through our Phase 1 a recipients.

We don't want to leave anybody behind, but we're getting to that overlap period where I think there are less and less 1 8 people to be vaccinated and we know that 1 people are on deck and ready to be vaccinated.

And you know, if we have vaccine, we want to get into people's arms.

Just like Dr Levine said, we don't turn anyone away from a vaccine.

Sure.

We've heard no reports nationwide about vaccine backlogs or vaccines not being used.

Is that an issue or are they issues around here right now?

They certainly are a concern.

And I think as we get towards the end of the day, we want to make sure that there are people around, you know, if someone doesn't show up for their scheduled appointment or like for Pfizer vaccines, if there are extra doses, we want to make sure that there are people who might be available come.

You know, at a moment's notice and we reach out to those populations.

We definitely do not want them to be wasting vaccine.

And we know that because of how readily people are willing to schedule and get vaccinated that, you know, there are arms out there that need that vaccine in when we and we want to get it to.

Sure.

Do you know how far in advance when you're getting shipments, when.

How does that work?

And then are you contacting patients that same week a couple days, a couple weeks out?

How does all that work?

Yeah.

So it's a little bit, you know, sort of they call it a dance.

You know, we put out there that we want X number of vaccine.

We try to build a schedule around that for the following week and weeks based on the number of vaccinators we have available, the number of sites that we can do vaccinations at.

But again, we know that the state is limited in how much they can can offer to us.

So we always try to work with the state in terms of how much vaccine we're getting.

We know that we are promised second doses of vaccine so we worry less about that.

We know we're gonna get those shipments in, but we really focus on how many people can we have a first time vaccine recipients, can we get to.

Sure.

We know children under 16 cannot receive the vaccine.

What other groups are not able to get vaccinated at this time?

There's not a lot of people who are contra indicated come from getting vaccine.

As I mentioned before, we think that people who've had Covid infection recently can rely on their natural immunity.

And certainly if they're in the throes of recovering from their illness, we don't think it's a good idea for them to get vaccinated at this time.

You mentioned the patients children under the age of 16 just because we don't have any study about that.

The other population that I should mention is anyone who's been treated for Covid recently with the monoclonal antibody infusion.

Those people probably have essentially received passive antibodies, synthetic antibodies.

And so we feel like giving you a vaccine at this time sort of is it doesn't provide any extra immunity in that sense.

So we want to be careful of giving vaccine to that population.

Sure.

Chief infection control officer Dr Alex Benjamin from Lehigh Valley Health Network, thank you so much for sharing that information.

With us today.

You're very welcome.

And we continue this community update on coronavirus on PBS.

39, you can catch the rebroadcast on the radio tonight at nine 30 on WLVT.

News.

91 three FM Let's bring in now state Senator Lisa Bass School again.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

Glad to be here.

Senator Bosko, glad to have the Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Association says nearly half of the state's restaurants are in jeopardy of closing permanently this year.

Why hasn't the state and the legislature been able to do more for them?

Well, I.

Look, we're trying as much as we can to help our restaurants and more than just restaurants, gyms, salons, you name it.

The entertainment industry, because they are the ones that have been decimated by restrictions put in place.

And initially we understood because in March, nobody really knew March, April what this virus was all about.

Now we've learned a lot about it.

We've learned how to treat it.

We learned how it's transmitted.

We know a lot more about it.

And so the frustration from the Restaurant and Lodging Association wasn't really back then as much as summertime when to spread as much because people could be outdoors.

So they didn't like the fact that they had indoor limited seating and then the outdoors.

But you see what you put on your screen.

You see that a lot of the restaurants did invest in plexiglass.

They invested it in like - Hailo systems, which were air filtration systems helped kill the virus.

And so they put a lot of money.

Right.

Invest a lot of money to make sure that their restaurant was safe because the last thing they wanted was any patron to get sick or their employees get sick.

And we felt like they did everything possible and that the latest restrictions over the holidays, I think is what really frustrated a lot of us, including lawmakers, because I'm trying myself to look at the data and you know, you have this study saying most of it's coming from household gathering's.

You know, about 74% of the virus is transmitted that way.

And I'm looking like The New York Times, they reported that.

And I see it, though, because as I talked to people, they're also telling me that I know a lot of people that had said they have Covid have told me they got it from their son, came back from college or was a college party before they came home.

You know, all these things are happening.

And you know, two to pick winners and losers in the business community was not something that I do.

And I felt they had a legitimate reason to say, look, we shouldn't have been shut down.

We can operate at 50% capacity.

And I'll also tell you something.

These restaurants know that we just can't open up right there.

They're adults and they know that we can't go to 100% capacity right now considering that we're seeing, you know, more cases in January, although we anticipated it.

So I feel for them and what we need to do is help them.

Although I will tell you they want money to help them because they need to get back to operating.

But that's not their first reason for talking to me.

They Lisa, what we really want is to be able to operate a business and open up that they can't open what now they need the money.

And so what we have to do at the state level is not what we did a couple of months go because the federal government gave us CAIR's money and 1.3 billion of that money went to balance the budget instead of to the businesses that were directly impacted by the shutdown.

So that's very frustrating.

And why voted no on the budget?

What I'm hoping for is in the future with a new CARES Act package, it might come down from the federal government that we can then use that money and give it out to those businesses that were really directly impacted.

And you know, we'll not survive this peanut because we're going on a year now or so many questions.

I just Yardley you're a Democrat who's been critical of the Wolf administration's handling of the restaurants and bars.

Wolf and Dr Levine say research suggests that restaurants are the virus spreaders.

Have you seen that?

I mean, you kind of touched upon it with just the household spread.

But are you seeing that?

Are you seeing any spread of the virus in restaurants and bars.

to to you are you hearing that from your constituents?

Yeah, no, I'm sorry.

No, I have not seen anything.

In fact, I don't see it from gyms.

I don't see hair salons.

But, you know, think about that then.

Like in March and April, I did reach out to infectious disease doctors locally here in the valley because that's what I cared about the most.

And back then they were saying if you social distance wear masks, wash your hands that certain businesses could operate safely.

And that was even salons back then.

Their hair and nail salon.

So I look at all of this and wonder suspect, why are you picking certain business?

And look, most people are telling me when they were at the mall over the holidays, it was packed.

There were people walking around the malls and they were sometimes not wearing masks.

They were, you know, drinking their coffee or sitting along the side eating hotdogs.

There are people in Lowe's and depots and the big box stores.

It was wall to wall.

Now they were supposed to do 50% capacity in those big stores.

There was no way they were doing 50% capacity.

There was a lot more people in those stores and 50%.

So that's why people are getting a little frustrated because they're seeing that, OK, it's OK to be a big box store.

But heaven forbid if you're in a restaurant that had 50% capacity and you can see that they separated the tables.

I've been to many of them.

I've seen the Plexiglas, the air filtration systems.

And you're so spread apart so that I think your I say a lot to you and most people right now are very frustrated, not understanding the restrictions over the holidays.

As my Shaw Senator Bob Scola in the last session proposed allowing restaurants to keep the 6% sales tax tax that they typically pass on to the state.

Where does that stand in session right now?

Well, I have numerous conversations through my caucus with the governor and Secretary Levine at times.

And I did specifically ask him that question.

I said until we know what's coming down for the federal government, can we help them with the sales tax exemption?

So they wouldn't have remitted to the state.

He said good idea.

Let me look into that.

If that's a possible.

But we would also like to improve or increase a discount to liquor licenses when they purchase wine and spirits and also and beer, but also make easier for restaurants to purchase upfront because a lot of them don't have credit right now.

You know, they have cash on hand, so they need that credit and they're not allowed to do that right now.

But I'm hoping until we get through Covid, everybody gets vaccinated.

We're allowed.

I don't know when that will happen.

Open up more normally that we do these little things to help restaurants right away because some of them are not going to survive.

They just won't.

And me and it's because it's been so long.

And then the other thing I would say is these restaurants, small businesses need some certainty and that's what we as lawmakers have to do and the governor is give them that certainty because they were shut down and allowed to open an asylum shut down again.

And all they keep saying to me is lease.

We can't prepare this way.

You know, you can we have a business plan moving forward.

And that's what on my communication with the governor is right now, we know obviously who's getting out there.

What's our plan so that we could let businesses know with certainty what's going to happen in the future and you know, the last thing I want to see is them shut down again.

And the worst thing that happened, restaurants was a lot of times when they were shut down only a day or two to prepare.

So meanwhile, they bought all the liquor for the weekend.

They bought all the food.

And it's a shame to see how much of that food was destroyed.

There should have been at least a plan to let them operate for a week or two, almost like initially when he shut down certain counties and then it reopened counties.

It was done within a two week period, but some of these mitigations were done.

You have a day or two, even the schools were a little frustrated because they only had a day.

And the parents prepare.

You need to give people time.

And I think maybe that's what we learned when moving forward.

That's the most important thing.

What's done is done.

But moving forward.

And if there's another pandemic or something in the future, we have to learn from what we've done, what our mistakes were and what we did.

Right.

And then look at what other states have done and other countries have done so we can get through this together.

And the last thing I would say is it's going to take Democrats and Republicans working together, get the noise out of the way, especially what's happened in Washington.

You know, we are elected officials that are here to work to help our communities.

And let's not get the politics involved or partisan politics.

We've got to we got clear that noise out and do what we think is right for our commonwealth.

To our senator Russ Schouler, thank you so much for joining us.

Unfortunately, that's all the time we have.

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

We want to thank you for joining us for Community Update Coronavirus will be here at 4pm each Monday, Wednesday and Friday on PBS39.

And on the radio at 9:30 those same nights on W. Al vr News.

We'll be back Wednesday at 4:00 with the story of a family battling a frightening Covid related condition affecting children.

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 numbers 4 8 4 8 2 1 0 0 0 8 4 PBS39 and WLVT news.

I'm Brittany Sweeney.

Stay safe.