Hello.

And welcome to PBS39.

And WLVT is 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 yesterday include an LVHN doctor working closely on the rollout of vaccines.

Also here is a college administrator who's getting ready to welcome students back to campus.

We'll meet them in just a few moments.

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.

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 coronavirus.

Lehigh Valley Lee .org.

You can find helpful information in English and Spanish.

Let's take a look at today's top headlines.

The State Department of Health reported more than 9500 New coronavirus cases today, but almost half of them were from backlogged data.

159 deaths were also reported.

The totals for Pennsylvania just over 834,000 cases and 21,400 62 deaths.

A bright spot, though the state also said nearly 900 doses of vaccine have been administered through yesterday.

Bethlehem Catholic is the latest school to shift gears because of Covid-19 cases.

The school switched to remote learning for today and called off all weekend athletic events.

That's because of three positive test results at the school wrestling team activities are suspended through February 3rd.

Plans are to resume in person instruction on Monday.

St Luke's University Health Network announced a milestone.

It has administered its 50 thousandth of vaccination since delivering the first doses to frontline health care workers on December 17th, St Luke's says.

It's a vaccination program run seven days a week and can vaccinate up to 3 thousand people a day from 11 sites across the Greater Lehigh Valley.

The Bethlehem Health Bureau has a new place to vaccinate people.

The Wind Creek Events Center Bethlehem had been using Northeast Middle School and Johnston Hall at Moravian College starting Monday.

All of the city's vaccine clinics will be held at the casino's events center.

A much larger space that the city says will be easier to accommodate the expanded first phase of the vaccine delivery.

Those lucky enough to have an appointment through the Bethlehem Health Bureau should now go to Wind Creek and sit instead of those other two sites.

It's time now to meet our guest for the day, Dr Alex Benjamin has been with us before.

He's the health network's chief infection control and Prevent Officer Jarrar.

Joyce is executive Vice President at the SEALs University.

The Center Valley campus is welcoming back students this weekend for the first time since the pandemics holiday surge.

Thank you both so much for joining us today.

Dr Joyce will be with you in just a few minutes.

I'd like to start today with Dr Benjamin.

Welcome back to the show.

Dr Benjamin LVHN opened a mass vaccination clinic at Dorney Park on Wednesday and vaccinated about a thousand people.

I'm wondering about the logistics of that and how that first day went.

So I think on most accounts, everything went swimmingly, I guess is the right word.

We have plenty of experience from doing our annual influenza vaccination campaigns at Dorney Park.

And so there were a few differences in this event.

You needed an appointment to participate in the drive through.

And of course, with all Covid vaccines so far, you need a 50 minute observation period after vaccination.

But we were able to put together 12 lanes of vaccination.

They were able to enter the observation site without any difficulties.

And I think the I think the estimate on, you know, door to door time or basically getting to the clinic, getting vaccinated and leaving is about 30 minutes.

So all in all, for that test run of a thousand people that went to exceedingly well.

Sure, a thousand people a day.

That's pretty impressive with a drive through a clinic.

I have because it's something that's going to happen every day or how often are you expecting to hold a clinic like this Gamma Well, I think it's hard to tell.

With no shortage of vaccine available to us at this point.

So right now we don't have any other days scheduled for Dorney Park except for the four week follow up for all the people who receive vaccine on Wednesday.

Sure.

And besides Dorney Park, how many other clinics are vaccination sites?

Is LVHN holding right now?

Right now?

Dorney Park is the only one we've had.

Obviously we have a couple counties where we facilities located in.

And so we're looking to add other sort of public venues to start up similar programs there.

Sure.

And if folks are interested in trying to schedule an appointment for future clinics, future vaccination sites, how can they do that?

I know that's a big question right now.

How do I get an appointment right.

So at least Lehigh Valley we leverage what we call my LVHN, which is the electronic medical record portal.

When you sign up for that through the floor through our website, it will notify you when you were certain category or phase of vaccination will be available for scheduling.

Sure.

Dr Benjamin, you mentioned the shortage in vaccines being supplied to health care networks likely Ali Health Network.

That has to be very frustrating for someone like you in your position.

Talk to us about some of those frustrations and what you've been facing in terms of getting that vaccine on site.

Yeah, I think at least the network we are, we feel like we have many of our bases covered.

You know, we have vaccination clinics at each of our hospital sites.

We have, of course, mass vaccination plans like Dorney Park and others to come.

We're able to we have a mobile vaccinate unit.

So facilities that require vaccination of their residents in the right phases can be.

We've done vaccination at those sites as well.

And so I feel like we have our we have our bases covered in terms of multiple ways to get vaccine out to the community and really, like I said, as you mentioned, the rate limiting step is the amount of vaccine.

We know that over the past weeks when vaccine has been allocated to us, we've been able to use all of that quite quickly and efficiently.

If you look at the state, the state by counties, Lehigh County is the third has given out the third most number of vaccines in the state and Northampton counties right behind in six.

So our health networks are doing everything we can to use all the vaccine and get them into people's arms as soon as we get them.

SHAW President Biden came out and said in the next three weeks the federal government is going to ramp up distribution to the states with those vaccines.

Have you seen any evidence of that or been given any indication as to how much more you'll be receiving Gamma No, not at this time.

The conversations weekly, you know, in terms of asking our network how much vaccine we are asking for, you know, that includes second dose boosters as well as a first dose boosters.

I think the increase in vaccines may may come in the next couple of weeks.

I'm sort of encouraged by the fact that we think Johnson and Johnson's product will be the third vaccine hopefully to get emergency authorization.

And just adding that to the mix will allow us to increase the supply shore.

And over the last few weeks, we've heard that some of the frustration has been the state doesn't give you more than a week's notice when the vaccines are coming in.

Has that gotten any better as time goes on?

Not currently.

I think we have there's always two discussions about that, right.

Making sure that we get our second doses for people for the Pfizer Moderna products.

And then really it's just a question of how many additional.

How much additional vaccine we can get for first time recipients.

And I think that's where we make the real impact in our communities.

The more vaccine we can get into people first and second doses, the better protected we are.

Sure, When it comes to notice and when you're getting the vaccines in that timeframe, has that been complicated at all and how can that be complicated for providers when you're trying to administer those doses Gamma Well, I think it all boils down scheduling, right.

We know that phase one, a recipient's that population has increased to include many more people.

So the expectation that population is there should be vaccine to support this people.

And unfortunately, I think we're on the frontline of being of having to say, yes, you're a candidate for vaccine, but no, we don't have vaccine available.

That's incredibly frustrating for patients.

Obviously also incredibly frustrating for the networks because as I said, because we have no plans on multiple levels to try to get vaccine out to people.

And I think that's the real challenge.

Sure.

It sounds like LVHN is doing what they can to get people vaccinated.

I want to switch gears here and talk about this latest variant of the coronavirus, the South African variant.

What do you know about this?

Is it more deadly?

Is it more dangerous?

What should the general public know Gamma So, you know, another variant to add to our list of challenges with coronavirus.

So the South African variant as a mutation in its protein structure of the spike protein and that seems to make it more transmissible.

I think one of the unanswered questions or questions that we're trying explore at this time is whether if someone is vaccinated with the current vaccines for Covid, will that protect you against the South African variant?

And I think the studies are under way.

We know that Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson and Johnson, all of the pharmaceutical companies are taking they're the people who have been vaccinated in their clinical trials and testing there.

The serum or the blood from those patients to see if they're able to mount an antibody response against these types of variants.

And so hopefully we'll have more data soon.

I think the most recent example is the Johnson and Johnson data that just came out probably in the last 24 hours suggesting that there was a a lower percentage of people who were protected against a South African variant.

Johnson and Johnson, one of their trial arms or partythe patients is in South Africa.

See that data come out.

But the decrease in the percentage of people who are protected by the vaccine being lower than the other other virus strains is a little concerning.

Shaw and of course Johnson & Johnson making that announcement that they are coming out with their vaccine.

Can people choose when they go to get vaccinated?

Can people choose which vaccine they want to get when they show up Gamma Well, at least currently with Pfizer and Moderna.

We don't offer a selection to A or B for those for those individual.

It's essentially the same platform Macungie vaccine.

It's two doses.

So in that situation we have not made choosing one over the other because Caesar is essentially the same pot.

There are not really differences contra indications between the two vaccine when the Johnson and Johnson product if that receives emergency authorization, I think because of the vaccine scarcity I think and the efficacy that's been projected by Johnson and Johnson, I think we're still going to say that it's just going to be whatever vaccine is available.

I mean, I know in a typical situation, patients get to choose between the different products.

But I think efficacy wise, all of the three are comparable provide protection.

And so I think if a vaccine is made available or any of the three vaccines are made available, patients taking advantage of that.

SHAW And speaking of vaccines in general, this is the time of year we hear a lot about flu vaccines.

Of course, we're not hearing as much right now because of the coronavirus.

Where do we stand in flu season Gamma So, you know, flu, flu, influenza in the state has activity has been minimal to low and it's been like that for several months now.

We do know that there is probably not as much testing going on for influenza, but I think that's driven by the cases.

If you look at the CDC flu, you know, which is available online, you can see that flu activity throughout the United States is minimal.

So we have not seen any cases I'm aware of in our laboratory testing.

And I think part of that is, is mitigation by what we're doing for it or masking social distancing, practicing good hand hygiene.

There's also the factor of travel, which has basically been negated.

You people aren't traveling at this point to far away distances that may have influenza and bringing that back to the United States.

So I'm very happy about that.

I think we don't know yet the full weather influenza will be a problem later.

But for right now, I'm very happy that we're only dealing with one virus and not to definitely some good news there.

I wanted ask about vaccines and getting those vaccines once again.

A lot of the other states have one centralized system that they're using to get vaccines to everyone.

It seems here NBPA, it's kind of up to different providers.

Everybody's offering something different.

Do you think one centralized, you know, organization tactic would be a little bit easier or better to distribute those vaccines?

Or do you think that Pennsylvania is doing what they need to to get them out there Gamma Well, I certainly think the current the current method rollout vaccine study WISES is showing we're not doing a very good job of getting vaccine out to the population.

There are weekly, weekly measures of how each state is doing in terms of getting vaccine out to its populations and Pennsylvania.

Right.

Now it's 49 in the nation in terms percent of vaccine that they receive, getting that out to their populations.

I mean, that is that's an abysmal metric.

If you look at if you look at a breakdown by county, obviously the counties that are doing best have major health networks involved.

Allegheny County is right out there as well.

Southeastern Pennsylvania Lehigh Northampton, Montgomery, Delaware, Chester Counties and the rest of the state.

It's really a toss up and I think the question was how can we how can we affect that?

How can we improve our delivery of vaccines in areas that don't have major health networks?

But I think that's the real challenge here.

Sure.

One other thing that came out this week, one other piece of information is the fact that it might be a little bit more effective if we were to masks versus one.

Is there anything to back that up?

Any evidence that two masks may be better than one?

Should people start wearing two masks, double masking, if you will, Right.

I don't think there's any science about that.

I think it was referred to as common sense that if one mask is helpful, then maybe two masks are and I think there are a couple things associated with that.

I think if you're worried about the quality of your first mask to the if you're first mask is not a high quality, then of course the second mask may be helpful.

But we don't know if to you know, to high quality mass are better than one high quality mask.

There's still a lot of studies that need to come sort of that.

And then the other question that horse B, does it do to different types of mask improve the efficacy of of the masks themselves.

So lots questions I understand to masks might be better.

I think getting people to wear a mask in the first place is probably the highest priority.

So I'm happy with one mask as long people are wearing it consistently.

Great, great information.

Dr Alex Benjamin from Lehigh Valley Health Network, as always, thank you so much for joining us today.

And we continue this community update on coronavirus on PBS39.

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

91 3F.

And we'd also like to invite you to a special presentation next Thursday night at 7:00, I'll host a live interactive community conversate sation Covid-19 Vaccines Fact versus fiction.

We'll ask the experts in an long forum about vaccine delivery and safety, as well as explore issues related to reopening schools and workers rights.

That is next Thursday at 7:00.

Now let's bring in our next guest, Dr Jerry Joice.

Is executive Vice President at the SALES University.

Thank you again so much for joining us today.

Thanks for having me.

Absolutely.

Students are returning to campus for the spring semester.

And Dr Joyce, they were there in the fall before surgeon Casey's brought us peak numbers and infections and hospitals, physicians that holiday surge.

How are you feeling about the new semester and having students back on campus and in the dorms feeling pretty good about if you're at the cells?

We're definitely more prepared, I think, and not realizing everything is 2020 hindsight.

When we started the fall semester, we thought we were in pretty good shape, but we didn't have we don't have a playbook.

You couldn't Google any case studies for opening up a residential college or university and a pandemic.

So we did the best we could back then.

We were at that time just testing on campus symptomatic students.

Then following isolation and quarantine protocols looks vastly different today.

As we get ready to welcome back our students for classes on Monday.

We're going to be we're testing all of our full time students by the end of this weekend.

We'll have tested about a little bit over 2000 students, a total and they'll be ready to start classes on Monday.

So it's very different than it was when we started back in August.

I was just going to say, as students start a new semester, what are some of the other protocols that you've set in place this semester?

To keep students safe Gamma In addition to the return to campus testing, we're going to be doing a 10% of our full population testing per week while we're also testing our athletes who are in season throughout the spring semester as they're allowed to have competition.

And we're going to make sure that we have our we're going to we have not abandon our CDC guidelines on social distancing on the way our classrooms are laid out or dining services.

Those type of things are still in play.

We have created some some conduct policies around students that may have large gatherings and those type of things to make sure that people realize that we need to be serious about mitigating this virus from our campus to keep everyone safe.

We're fortunate to be able to work and get these test results back quickly.

We've partnered with St Luke's University Health Network and they've helped us really be able to open up in a safe manner this semester.

Sure.

Jerry, you said hindsight 2020, of course.

What did you learn in the fall that is helping you keep students safe this spring?

Semester?

Some of the things that we learned were definitely that if we increased the testing of all of the populations, we had a better chance of keeping any spikes in the coronavirus.

Reading to a minimum.

We're isolating students on campus.

We're like we're quarantining students who may have been exposed at local hotels in the area and some students are opting to go home.

We've learned that we've had to be more flexible with our online learning for students who for whatever reason had some health issues or specific situations where they really wanted to learn remotely for the semester.

So we're working with them to make sure that there's not a disruption in their education and they stay on track.

I've already mentioned the increase in conduct policies on campus to make sure that students say safe.

In fact, we were restricting visitors to the campus and visitors to the residence halls.

These are things that we hadn't places we got into the fall, but we weren't sure how that was going to play out because the vast change from how a regular university and our university particularly ran prior to the pandemic.

Sure.

Were there any outbreaks or disruptions in the fall that the school had to handle?

And if so, how did sales university handle those Gamma Actually, there was at the towards the end of the semester, the end of October actually because we finished in November, we finished up early and live on campus and finished on Lyons the last two weeks right around the Halloween weekend.

We saw a spike in cases kind of match the spike.

We were reading in the community in the state of Pennsylvania from several gatherings that occurred which really forced a lot of conversations around student accountability for gathering's.

And so we were abe to handle that spike by you know, we did have we did not maximize our isolation spaces at that point.

So we still had enough isolation spaces on campus to keep students separated.

We did end up maximizing our hotel spaces and availability.

So we did have students who had to return home for it just happened to work out for the balance of the semester.

So they just left campus early and we were you know, we don't want to make this a any type of strain on families with the cost of education.

So we were appropriating Ruman word for those last couple of weeks.

There.

And what we've done for the opening two to not have a surge of people coming back are students coming back that may be asymptomatic and didn't know it when they arrived.

We gave them advanced warning if they arrive this weekend to move back in the residence halls, but they happen to test positive for the Corona 19 virus that they will do their isolation back at their homes rather than here on campus.

So that we don't overflow at our isolation bases on day one.

We do know that just if we're following the numbers, we will have students that are exposed in some way and we will have to isolate them during the semester.

We just didn't want to start off with day one with not having any isolation spaces should we need them?

So we've made some changes that way.

Cha cha and of course we've heard time and time again that contact tracing is so important to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Do you have contact tracers at the university and who's doing that job that is so important to stopping the spread Gamma I have incredible Covid team that I work with pretty much on an hourly basis at this point arming our main contact serves is a gentleman named Mr Brian McDonald and Brian normally serves as other executive director of International Learning.

But obviously that has been put on hold in higher education because no traveling and I think we were really lucky to be able to switch over to have him cut up our contact tracing.

We also have a full contact tracing team of 12 people.

Should we have a large outbreak Gamma We have to contact trace a lot of people.

We converted are our health center and our assistant dean Wendy carramar.

She has taken over the whole coordination of testing.

She works with Brian on the contact tracing.

We just make sure that we're have all of our ducks in a row, so to speak.

So that should someone come in who's positive and has been around, a number of people were able to get them quarantined as quickly as possible to to further mitigate that spread.

We were very fortunate that our entire fall semester, not one exposure happened in one of our academic spaces.

laid out in a way or our Vice President for campus.

What campus?

Facilities?

Mark Gabonese spent the entire summer pretty much measuring up every possible space on this campus to make sure that we had the 6 foot social distancing.

And so we're really fortunate in that and we know that it doesn't it didn't happen in the classroom.

We're going into the spring semester.

We're hoping that same layout will serve us well for the next several months and hopefully.

Does this is the time of year when a lot of high school seniors are deciding where they should go to school next year and kind of sealing the deal, if you will, I wanted to ask, has this pandemic impacted applications or admissions for to sales universal.

Great question.

Another area overseeing the university is enrolment.

Our applications are ahead of last year at this time.

It's absolutely amazing.

We are still welcoming guests and visitors to campus in a socially distant way.

We even moved our admissions area for recruitment so that it is in a socially distant presentation by our enrolment staff.

Our applications are acceptances as today or ahead of what they were last year before we went into the stay-at-home order and the pandemic really took over the world, especially the United States.

And so we're pretty confident that what we're sharing with our prospective students is that if they want a residential private education, the sales is someplace they should look because we have it set up in a way that they could be safe and successful here.

Sure.

We know the men's and women's basketball teams are playing over the winter season.

What about spring sports?

We have a ton of time, but if you could quickly talk about spring sports this spring sport decisions is kind of still out there.

The conference the MAC conference has not made those decisions were taken a day by day as happy to see that they were able to pull off a basketball season for men and women a little bit different than it was in the past.

And I'm hoping we're able to do that for the rest of our spring sports.

We weren't able to do it for our fall sports, but we're looking to see if maybe we could set some precedents moving forward as we deal with the pandemic.

Wonderful.

Dr Jerry Joice from SALES University, thank you so much for joining us.

Today.

And we want to thank our both of our guests for being here and of course, you for watching community update on coronavirus.

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

We'll be back Monday at 4:00 to discuss the pandemics impact on children and their mental health for PBS39 and WLVT are news.

I'm Brittany Sweeney.

Stay safe.