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

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

We're coming to you live from the PPE Public Media Center in Bethlehem I'm Brittany Sweeney.

Our guests today include an LVHN doctor who will discuss Covid-19 vaccinations under the state's new guidelines.

Also here is Eastern Mayor Sal Panto Junior.

They'll be joining us in just a few moments.

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

The phone number is 44 8 2 1 0 0 0 8.

Our guests will answer some of your questions live.

Plus, our daily coronavirus updates.

Be sure to sign up for our newsletter.

You can do that at our website coronavirus Lehigh Valley.

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You can find helpful information in English and Spanish.

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

Pennsylvania has expanded eligibility for the Covid-19 vaccine in the initial phase.

Phase 1 A now includes all people age 60, 5 and older.

It also includes younger people with serious health conditions that put them at higher risk of infection.

State health officials made the announcement yesterday to align with the federal recommendations.

We'll have much more on this later in today's show.

Today, the State Department of Health reported nearly 6000 new coronavirus cases.

There also were 401 additional deaths.

One of the deadliest days in months.

The updated numbers bring the PA totals to nearly 785,000 cases.

And 19,800 and 68 deaths and she's led Pennsylvania's response to the coronavirus crisis since the beginning.

But Dr Rachel Levine is moving on.

President Joe Biden has nominated Pennsylvania's health secretary to be his assistant secretary of health.

Governor Tom Wolf said Levine has worked tireless Lee to protect public health.

He expects to make an announcement regarding Levines replacement later in the week.

It's time now to meet our guests for the day.

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

He leads a popular lyrics, a branch of the Health Network that uses population health data to better manage health care.

I'd also like to welcome Easton Mayor Sal Panta Junior.

He won a sixth term in 2019 and has held leadership positions with the Pennsylvania Municipal League and the National League of Cities.

Managing through this pandemic has been among the greatest challenges of his time in office.

Thank you both so much for joining us today.

Mayor Panto, we will be with you in just a few minutes.

Absolutely, gentlemen.

But in the meantime, Dr Murphy, I'd like to start with you.

Yesterday the state expanded eligibility for the very first phase of Covid-19 vaccine distribute.

It will move millions to the front of the line.

But there are issues with that here.

Cindy Findlay, deputy health secretary who leads the state's vaccine task force.

There are more than 3.5 million Pennsylvanians that are now in Phase 1, a of our vaccine plan.

We must have patience as the amount of vaccine available in Pennsylvania and the nation remains limited.

We want to ensure that the vaccine is provided to Pennsylvanians in a way that is ethical, equitable, and efficient, which is why we are taking this phased approach.

We are asking all Pennsylvanians to know when it is your turn.

This way we can make sure our most vulnerable residents can get vaccinated now, Dr Murphy.

It's great that so many people are eligible now, but what about the supply of vaccine?

It just doesn't seem like there's enough right now to go around.

It's quite right.

Brittany, it's kind of like lining all participants in a marathon equally along the starting line.

But not having and starting one leg to drop to get things started.

We've been anticipating this day for quite some time since vaccines start to come online, knowing the cadence that the government and the CBS CDC had laid out for us.

So here in Lehigh Valley, of course, the first phase of 1A was to inoculate those health care workers who are on the front lines and their supporting staff and then to anticipate it.

You know the one be the one CS and the like.

And what the government's done now has has increased and collapsed.

Those different groupings into one one unit, as it were.

But that said, to your very good point, we're challenged not by so much the ability to know who these individuals are in.

In phase one A but to be able to get them scheduled in a way that is in an in line with the proportion of the vaccine that's delivered.

So as of right now, we've been anticipating scheduling of the 75 year olds and just the 65 pluses and those with co-morbidities.

But just as of last night, a little bit of a curve ball was thrown to us by virtue of the fact that while we had been anticipating that there would be storehouses of the second doses vaccine.

Remember the Pfizer vaccines and the maturing vaccines require two doses.

We were advised that those storehouses do not exist so that we have to reapportion.

Now those individuals whom we had scheduled in anticipation of having a larger amount of vaccine available to allow those individuals who received one dose to use some of the existing stockpile to get their second doses.

So even a further complication as far as the lack of the ability to bring sufficient doses to the valley, but also a lack of of cadence of appropriate doses to make sure that everyone getting both phases of the vaccination.

Absolutely said.

And just so I'm clear, does that mean that the first dose and the second dose are basically the same exact thing, just two doses of the exact same vaccine?

Is that why then there's not enough for everyone to get the first correct?

Correct me if you Pfizer, then you have to have a second dose Pfizer.

If you had a Moderna of the second dose Moderna.

But yes.

OK. Is the communication issue between the feds and the state?

Is it simply a matter of getting more approvals and making more vaccines?

Where is the breakdown here?

Well, I think the breakdown is really understanding inventory and delivery.

So as the example I just said, we were expecting that the second doses of a vaccine for those who received first balances were appropriately stockpiled.

That turns out not to be the case.

So.

So obviously how that impacts our ability to deliver vaccine to those individuals in our communities is severely impacted.

We just don't we're just not able to do that.

So in some ways it's understanding the inventory, the delivery once the decision is made, is actually quite good.

You know, we it comes to us once the announcement is made in the timely fashion and we're able to store the vaccines appropriately and in the appropriate temperature, we thall them to meet the demands of the number of individuals that we have scheduled for any given day.

So so that the actual delivery of the vaccine, once it's in our hands is very highly efficient.

As a matter of fact, some early data shows that we're probably the second most efficient delivery mechanism within the Commonwealth.

Once we have dose in our hands, it's just that we don't know what dose we will expect from day to day or week to week and again as the information came across our desk last night, this morning, plans that we had made expecting the appropriate doses were stockpiled have had to be rolled back over those small.

Sure.

That seems a little bit confusing, maybe frustrating.

What better communication help is that issue, do you think?

Absolutely.

It's it's much more it's much more satisfactory a program if the state knows how much is available, more than a day or two in advance so that we can schedule with some reliability more than one or two days in advance and that those that we do schedule can count upon getting their vaccines that time instead of under the having the potential then havng to cancel and reschedule for lack of availability.

So so appropriate and timely communication is very important when you're taking on an operation of this magnitude.

Sure.

And of course, the guidelines have changed under the new guidelines, people who are now 65 and up their eligible along with younger people with serious medical conditions.

Here's a look at some of the underlying conditions cancer, heart disease, kidney disease, Down's syndrome, sickle cell disease, obesity, pregnancy and smokers are now moved to the first phase ahead of teachers and essential workers.

Doctor, can you tell a little bit about why these changes were made and explain the medical reasons for moving a group like, say, smokers to the front of the line?

Well, you know why?

Why if in the best of all possible worlds, we would just be vaccinating everyone all at once.

Given the limited supply, we have to make the appropriate judgments for who within our population, within our community is most risk.

And you know, this is a viral disease.

So a viral disease, infectious disease.

So folks who are at risk because their immune system is compromised or more at risk to have a bad outcome with a viral disease, folks whose whose other medical conditions might impact their ability to fight the disease like those with diabetes who are high or have higher prone to complications.

Certainly those who are obese, if their respiratory function is compromised know would have a hard time to have the capacity to fight off breathing issues.

And that's the rationale for smokers.

People with chronic lung disease are already compromised.

So when you put a virus of this of significance, it would further compromise their ability to breed and lead to higher mortalities.

So.

So the decision to deliver the vaccine to these most vulnerable people, unfortunately means that we cannot deliver it to folks who are, you know, the remainder of our community.

And while very important in their own right for teaching our children and the like may not be at high risk for an immediate and immediate health issue should they not receive the vaccine.

Absolutely.

And we're getting a lot of questions when callers are calling into this show.

Everyone wants to know what do I do to sign up?

How do I get it?

How do I sign up?

So it's a good idea for people to consult with our primary care physician, as we've heard.

But we have some information here.

We want to share with our viewers at Lehigh Valley Health Network.

For now, appointments are required for Covid-19 vaccine.

You can register at my LVHN .org.

They say that's the easiest and quickest way to register.

You don't have to be an LVHN patient to register for the vaccine.

You can also call the phone number is 1 8 3 3 5 8 4 6 2 3.

But LVHN is not making more appointments by phone until it knows additional vaccine is available.

Registering online through my LVHN portal is the best way to assure you get in line for an appointment.

Now St Luke's Health Network has also opened registration.

Now that the guidelines have been expanded again with St Luke's.

You don't have to be a patient there.

You can register online at S L U H and .org slash vaccine.

It's 1 8 6 6 7 8 5 8 5 3 7.

St Luke's is prioritizing vaccine scheduling right now for health care workers.

Nursing home staffers, first responders or people 75 and older.

The Allentown Health Bureau and Bethlehem Health Bureau also are scheduling vaccinated clinics.

Allentown is planning one starting Monday at the Allentown Fairgrounds.

But the city says all available appointments were filled up in just three hours after it was announced today.

Bethlehem will be setting clinics, too.

It says it expects to receive vaccine shipments on a weekly basis and will provide updates when the vaccine is made available.

So, Dr Murphy, this is becoming a familiar response about the availability of vaccine LVHN says it's ready to go with a mass vaccine clinic at Dorney Park.

We learned this afternoon more details about that.

Can you tell us a little bit about that mass vaccination site when it's going to happen?

How it's going to happen and how you'll keep up with those vaccination?

Sure.

Ready?

There was, as you may know, and as many in the valley know, we have pretty expert experience with the ability to provide mass vaccinations.

We do that for the flu season and vaccinate as many eight as a thousand members of our community in a day at these max vaccination events that we have.

So barring on that experience, we're going to set up the same type of of vaccine center at Dorney Park, which is expected to open next Wednesday on the 27th.

But people are scheduling for that.

But where we're slowing down until we know what the availability of vaccine is.

We have similar mass vaccination centers planned in Poconos and also also in Northampton County.

So we plan to set up at least three to start with and have the ability to expand that even more.

We have 39 practices within our practice groups that are ready to go to provide vaccinations to our citizenry.

But again, it's the limiting factor here is the ability to have vaccine put in our hands.

But to your point before I think it's in everyone's best interest in Valley now to to be registering to going online so that we have an expectation of the number of individuals who will be requiring vaccine at any of our given sites and standing by.

So whether the vaccine becomes available, we're able to deliver it in a very efficient, effective cadence.

Shaw.

Dr Murphy, I just want to point out that mass clinic at Dorney Park, even though it's starting next week, that is for people with an appointment only, correct?

Yes, And that's why we're both ourselves in St Luke's Health Network are directing people to get online and schedule appointments because given the limited numbers of doses, we just don't have the availability to to do the 25-year-old grandson of someone who brings their grandparent to a vaccination center because we have other grandparents who are entitled to that vaccine or someone with cancer who needs that vaccine first.

So that's the reason for the scheduling to make sure that we are efficiently delivering the vaccine that we have as fast as we can do it as effectively as we can do it given the stipulations of the phases that the state has directed us to provide vaccine under great some great information.

Dr Robert Murphy, thank you so much for joining us today from Lehigh Valley Health Network.

And we continue this community update on coronavirus PBS39.

You can hear the rebroadcast on the radio tonight at 9:30 on WLVT.

News.

91 three FM Let's bring in our next guest.

Sal Panto has served as mayor of Easton for 22 years.

Total Eastern enjoyed a resurgence under his administration, but the pandemic has dealt a crippling blow.

Mayor, thank you so much for joining us.

I know several steps have been taken to help small businesses.

And we'll talk about that in just a minute.

But can you first give us an idea of how the pandemic has affected or changed your city?

Well, Cressona well, Dr Mark Knouse on in the background.

I again thank our two health Hampton Lehigh Valley.

I couldn't job as well as all our health care workers on the front lines.

We really owe them a debt of gratitude.

As far as into the pandemic for us it had a huge financial blow and you know, to the five and a half million dollars that we were short on remedy, for example, such as the casino which closed its doors, the state theater Crail Experience, which probably get 1.8 to $2 million revenue from them.

They were closed for three months.

So our second quarter check from the casino, which is normally about 350 thousand dollars, was $3,000.

So yes, that has had a big effect.

Plus we had a furlough.

81 employees.

We had to at least help our employees make sure their safety so the personal protective equipment, the ionization machines, the extra plexiglass we put throughout the hall.

And right now we're in shutdown.

We've closed the city down to the public because of the.

That the tremendous surge that's taken place in Northampton County, especially with our own employee family, we've had several that have been tested positive.

So we closed to the public for their safety and for the employees shwarma Mayor Panto, things like the Winter Village, the outdoor skating rink.

They were set up to try to bring people downtown and kind of create some buzz.

There was that effective?

Did that work?

Did it meet expectations?

It was a phenomenal success in the spring when the governor brought us out of the red into the yellow for outdoor dining, we set up our outdoor dining facilities with concrete barriers, etc and we helped.

And that definitely helped with the restaurants.

Unfortunately, our restaurants are busy at night and many of our retailers are still under the old 9 to 5 syndrome and they didn't really get back into being open, so they did benefit from that.

And we hearing from a lot of those small businesses.

So when we did our phase two, what we call our brp business recovery Plan, which was the Winter Village and fortunately we were able to get most that money.

Northampton County Lamont McClure has been extremely helpful in getting the money out onto the streets.

We were able to do that.

We bought the ice skating.

And these are things we looked at long term.

We will have every year now we won't have to worry about where that money will come from next year.

the tents or huts that we call and we're looking forward to having the winter market again next year without Covid.

We could do a much better job.

Sure.

What are some of the other measures taken to provide relief to city merchants during all of this?

Well, we've done a number of things to the merchants and the residents, but the merchants we did have the under the CARES Act.

We did have work with the county and we work with the Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce and we provided some of the money to give grants and no interest loans to some of our businesses.

But it certainly wasn't enough.

Many of our businesses, small businesses are hurting as a small business owner myself for 28 years.

I know that it's just very difficult when the banks are still asking for your mortgage and your utility company.

So your utilities.

It's very difficult to do that when you not open.

Sure.

You mentioned the state theater earlier.

One of the gems of Easton.

It's been closed for some time now.

Do you think it'll make it through?

Well, the State Theater the good news is the community really loves the theater and had responded well to there to thumbdrive were the end of the year.

We also feel very confident, comfortable with.

And we appropriated $40,000 to then because we think it's really important.

Our restaurant industry started because of people coming downtown to shows and they were coming downtown at night.

So that makes it really important for an urban community like Easton, Bethlehem and Allentown to get visitors at night.

It's easier to get to during the day when at night they have this perception that it's, you know, dark, dirty, dingy and crime-ridden.

And that's not true at anywhere from cities.

But the State Theater was able to help us overcome that perception.

So the restaurants blossomed today.

We have a great we're a great culinary destination.

Sure.

Another big part, Easton's economy is Lafayette College students will be coming back to campus very soon.

Is there any concern about communities spread with the community spread being substantial right now?

We've had a number of conversations.

It's great to have a college that when you're a college town like Allentown Dublin Eastern, you sort of come back in late August when the students come back, you know, in Easton is like 20 900 students without them now has a lot more.

But we see that impact, especially our local businesses, whether the your college or downtown or even the Westword.

We get a lot of college students who frequent them.

And they've been missed.

But we also know that coming back is it is a problem.

But they've had a number of community meetings.

The college has had a number of committee meetings and we've had a number of meetings with them that I know they're going to be very careful and their students will be very careful as well.

So it's it's no different.

A population.

We haven't ourself trying to convince people that mask wearing is important even after the Vecsey and Bootable will encouragers or Lafayette College soon to do the same thing.

We might get more adherence to the policy from then because the college has been requiring on campus.

Great.

I want to switch gears here for just a moment.

Today, of course, the inauguration of Joe Biden, a Democrat like yourself.

He took the presidential oath just a little while.

Go at an historic moment for sure.

We want to know about your expectations for the new administer oration.

My expectations were heard.

President Biden are no different than the work of President Trump or President Bush or President Clinton or any president United States, their leader.

And we owe them support.

And so they chose proved us that they don't deserve our support.

I would look at an infrastructure bill to help our people get back to good, sustainable family sustaining jobs and improve our infrastructure from a Class D that the American engineers have rated us to maybe at least a beer and a but you know, many of our bridges and tunnels not in the shape they should be.

It's certainly not the route broadband support to all communities, not just urban centers.

But what about the rural areas that aren't getting it with 30% of people in the city of E-A that don't have broadband access to the internet.

So would students getting more and more of their education online?

You know how important that is.

So things I'm looking for are just a calmness, just toning down the rhetoric.

I think would be a very helpful for the country itself, a man that he has tremendous challenges.

Dr Murphy referred to the lack of supply of the vaccine.

Yeah, we have we're fortunately Lehigh Valley.

We have health care's in systems that can get that out to us, but they have to have it.

So his goal of 100 million vaccinations, 100 days.

God bless them.

I think it's an animal goal.

I just hope we can reach it because we need it and hopefully we can do that and the first and second quarter so that by the third quarter people feel comfortable getting back out into the community.

We need then they need to get out of the house.

And I think the whole tenor of society will will come down once people get back to some sense of normalcy.

Sure, sure.

And let's bring back to Easton before we go.

Today is not a wealthy town.

Seniors, young families struggling through this coronavirus pandemic.

What's the message that you have for them during this hard time for everyone or messages?

We're trying to help everyone.

You know, we've done away with Deer Lake these and things like that.

We've extended during the height of pandemic.

It was the spring, but it really is today.

But during the spring week we forego all of our deadlines and postpone them.

My message is to wear your mask, wash your hands in socially distance.

Our medical community, our scientists are telling us that works.

So why not do it?

What is the big deal?

Let's protect one another.

And I think once we do that, we can get out of this surge and out of this pandemic a lot faster.

Sure.

And before we go, what's being done for those nonprofits, the shelters right now who also are struggling or what are the resources available?

That's a good thank you, Renee.

I was a great suggests.

You know, we have more and more people that are becoming homeless, almost homeless when evictions start happening again.

We'll be presenting this city council probably the first meeting of February.

Our proposal to put about another 300 thousand dollars to homeless shelters and temporary housing in the city.

It's a national issue.

It's an issue that we want to deal with locally.

But we don't have the wherewithal to do that.

So what we do is nothing more than a Band-Aid.

So I think working with groups like the Chamber of Commerce and Lehigh Economic Dolma Corporation bringing those goods salable jobs, family sustaining jobs Valley is really important for that for that low moderate income family who doesn't want to lose their home, who wants to work the homeless that we have, we need it.

We need to help them, but they also need to help themselves.

You that and take care of themselves are commandments.

If they're going to litter and throw their waste around.

We need to correct that.

They do need to be good abiding citizens that are that are clean and safe and make the community clinics create Mayor Sal Panto Junior Easton.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

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

And we want to thank you for joining us for community update on coronavirus.

We'll be here at 4pm each Monday, Wednesday and Friday PBS39 and on the radio at 9:00 30 those same nights on WLVT News.

We'll be back Friday at 4:00 with a medical expert from LVHN as well as a representative of AARP to help seniors navigate vaccine registration.

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

The phone number is 4 8 4 8 2 1 0 0 0 8 4 PBS39 and WLVT News.

I'm Brittany Sweeney.

Stay safe.