Hello and welcome to PBS39 and WLVT.

Community update Long coronavirus.

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

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

Our guests today include a specialist in maternal fetal medicine from LVHN and we'll also be joined by the leader of the Allentown Health Bureau.

They'll be with us in just a moment.

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

The phone numbers for 4 8 2 1 0 0 0 8. your questions live.er some ofP Plus for daily coronavirus updates, be sure to sign up for our newsletter.

You can do that at our website coronavirus Lehigh Valley .org.

You can find helpful information in English.

And Spanish.

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

Word from Harrisburg just a couple of hours ago, Pennsylvania will Luzerne restrictions on restaurants and other businesses like gyms and casinos and also increase gathering limits.

The new rules take effect April 4th.

Restaurants may resume bar service, sell alcohol without the purchase of food and raise indoor dining capacity from 50 to 75% for those that self-serve defi theaters, casinos, gyms and malls also can move to 75% occupancy.

Governor Tom Wolf also will revise maximum occupancy for indoor and outdoor events 25% of indoor regardless of venue size and 50% for outdoor venues.

Wolf says the changes are being made thanks to declining case counts and increased vaccination rates.

Today, the state Health Department reported nearly 3.7 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine have been administered through yesterday.

That includes more than 1.2 million people who are now fully vaccinated.

The state reported a two day total of over 3300 new coronavirus cases and 14 new deaths.

That brings the totals for Pennsylvania since last March to more than 960,000 cases and 24,500 87 deaths.

Appointments were going fast this afternoon after Lehigh Valley Health Network announced another drive through clinic at Dorney Park.

This one will be held Wednesday starting at 8am Up to 4000 people will be vaccinated.

The largest group to date appointments are required and we're being made today through the My LVHN portal and by phone at 1 8 3 3 5 8 4 6 2 8 3 Governor Wolf says over 50 thousand school workers have vaccinated in the first week since shots have been made available to them.

This morning, the governor toward an intermediate unit vaccination site in Reading.

He spoke with those administering shots and those getting them.

Pennsylvania has reserved its entire shipment of the single dose.

Johnson and Johnson vaccine for school employees who were added to the Phase 1 priority group.

Last week, the state received more than 94,000 JNJ doses.

The Parkland School District in Lehigh County is the latest to offer expanded in-person learning.

Starting April 12, Parkland's elementary schools will increase to four days of in-person instruction up from the current two day hybrid model.

For now, there is no change to the middle school and high school schedules.

Parkland's 100% online program will continue to operate for those who wish to continue remote learning.

It is time now to meet our guests for the day.

Dr William scores.

The is an obstetrician and specialist in maternal fetal medicine.

Although also with us again today is Vicki Kistler, the Allentown health director.

Thank you both so much for joining us.

Vicki, we'll be with you in just a few moments.

We're going to begin with Dr Scores.

Doctor, thank you so much for joining us.

There's a lot of questions out there about vaccine safety and pregnancy.

So let's actually start there.

Is the vaccine recommended for women who are pregnant or when's the best time for women expecting or wanting to get pregnant to get that vaccine Gamma So in your original trials, pregnancy was exclusion criteria for testing.

So you don't have definitive data for pregnancy.

So therefore, I'm sort of a shared decision between your obstetrician and the patient herself.

We do have information on about 30,000 people so far.

There are trials currently under way and people have self-reported to the CDC and to the vaccine adverse events reporting system in in those there have not been any significantly increased amount of adverse reactions or events in people who receive the vaccine when they are written.

One of the issues that's important to realize is that pregnancy itself is a risk factor for complications from the Covid virus itself.

It's about a three fold increase in the risk of having an addition intensive care unit.

The risk of death is increased in pregnant women who contract and have serious symptoms from the Covid virus.

So it's a balance between the potential risks and no risks of the contracting.

The disease itself.

Sure, for those who are pregnant and looking to get the vaccine and may be interested and get the vaccine or trying to weigh whether they should or should not get it.

Is it so much the vaccine itself or is it the symptoms that vaccine can cause?

What is it that kind of could be concerning there?

I think that people have legitimate concerns about the fact that we don't have accumulated safety data yet.

However, when we speak of symptoms from the injection itself, which side effects there does not at this point seem to increase in the amount of adverse reactions in pregnant women as opposed to not pregnant women.

Most people experienced a reaction have a sore fever within the first two or three days or receiving vaccine.

Let's talk about Covid-19 and the virus itself.

When pregnant women have Covid-19 and they give birth, can they pass the virus then to that newborn baby Gamma Is it transmitted that way or a different way to babies?

So it's a very good question.

We don't know definitively what the answers to this.

However, there are reports women who have had active Covid virus infection delivered and they did recover a viral particles from the amniotic fluid and from cord blood samples.

These events are rare and not likely to occur, but it is potentially possible for that to happen.

It seems that when maternal antibodies are produced from the information we have available right now, that the mother does pass.

Some of these antibodies onto the fetus and to the newborn.

Shaw and Dr Scores when it comes to babies, have their mother having Covid-19.

How do you treat that situation when the mother gives birth?

If there Covid positive, can they then see the newborn or are they separated or how does that work?

Definitely a scary situation to be in.

You know, so again, some of the passive immunity from Mother Pattinson's on to the baby, at least from the antibody status is if a mother wants to be with her baby, then what we advise is that they were a man's and that they can go ahead and breastfeed their child.

All right.

Let's get back to the vaccine and what we're talking about the vaccine.

If a mother is breastfeeding, are they able to then get vaccinated or should they wait till they're done breastfeeding or does that impact the child at all?

Actually, the vaccine is recommended lactating women.

The vaccines that available currently are the MRA emmaline types and that MRN is actually clear about 10 days, two weeks from your system.

So it doesn't linger for a long period of time.

But it does confer very, very strong immunity to the viral strains you have right now.

Sure.

And if a woman is pregnant, she gets vaccinated.

Are there things she can start to do that she wasn't able to do before?

We're hearing that people get vaccinated can be with other people who are vaccinated without a mask.

Does the same ring true?

For a pregnant woman Gamma It does give them a certain amount of leeway, a little bit more freedom than we've had to have in the hands.

So if you are vaccinated, then you have full immunity.

You certainly can go visit people who are also vaccinated or people who are at low risk in practice.

Some of the public health measures that we've been advocating.

Sure.

And you mentioned trials.

Not a lot of information about vaccine on pregnant women.

Are there trials under way right now that give us a clearer picture about some of the effects of the Covid vaccine on pregnant women.

There are your ongoing trials right now.

And as I mentioned, previously, we have some self reporting on about 30,000 women about adverse events, including hospital admissions, stillbirth center, etc There has been some concern that the vaccine can lead to infertility.

Have you heard that concern and is there any evidence to point that could be true?

So currently we have nothing that indicates that need the with infertility.

associated- Now, this is something I think that's been generated in the media.

But as far as scientific fact goes, we have nothing to indicates that this vaccine is causing fertility.

That's good to hear.

Promising for sure.

Dr Scores, I wanted to ask about visitation in the labor delivery departments.

Right now we know that visitation in many parts of the hospital are being loosened.

The restriction that were in place because of Covid is the same ringing true in labor and delivery.

Yes, it's a matter of fact right now it's a patients coming in labor.

They can have their significant other with them.

And one other visitor through the labor delivery process.

We discourage people from going out and coming back and there is no trading off one person for another.

But they can have two people could be with them to support people during their labor and delivery.

Great.

Dr William Scores from Lehigh Valley Health Network, thank you so much for that information today.

Thank you for having me.

And I want move on now to Pennsylvania's Covid alert app.

Acting Health Secretary LSM Beam's says the free app has been updated to connect users with vaccine information, including where to find providers.

PBS39 and WLVT 91 3 reporter Megan Frank checks the updates and takes a closer look at the apps overall effectiveness.

That's the sound Covid alert makes.

If you're near someone who tested positie for coronavirus Joann or dilli a Lafayette College computer science professor says there hasn't been enough adoption for the app to be highly effective.

We're at about 6% of the population of the state, so if you just think about the likelihood that the person you encounter who has Covid is also on this app, it's pretty low still or dilli says features like a symptom tracker and county by county case numbers are useful.

The app also keeps users anonymous.

No one's ever really identified in this system and neither is there.

Locate identified.

And so I think it works very well thought out.

It's why she's rooting for Covid alert to gain more traction.

And that's something the Health Department is working on new upgrades allow users to search for nearby vaccination clinics.

Lindsay Moulden, the health Department's senior advisor for Covid-19 response, says their goal is to reach 1.5 million users over the next few months.

The app is able to not only provide folks statistics on the Covid-19 virus in their area, but also now they're able to be connected for resources to help find out where they might fit in the vaccine distribution and where they might be able to find vaccine providers to make appointments.

Pennsylvania allocated $2 million in federal grant money for the app, which is being spread out over a three year period or delay says she'd like to see the app used beyond Covid-19 if it might be useful in the future for things like the flu or other diseases where we need to do tracking.

If you have questions about the vaccine process but don't have access to the internet, you can call 877 PA Health for PBS39 Community Update on coronavirus.

I'm Megan Frank.

And we continue this community update on coronavirus on PBS39.

You can hear the rebroadcast on the radio tonight at 9 30 on 90 1 3 W VR Now let's bring in our next guest.

Vicki Kistler is Allentown health director.

She has led the effort to vaccinate people, the Allentown Health Bureaus clinics at the Allentown Fairgrounds.

More than 15,000 and counting.

Vicki, thank you so much again for being with us today.

Thank you.

We had our 25,000 mark this path.

So we're 25,000.

Yeah.

You are cruising right along there.

We know vaccine supply has been an issue across Pennsylvania and the nation for that matter.

Are we seeing any improvements there as the health bureau's allotment from the state increasing a little bit?

We've seen a little bit of improvement.

It is still somewhat sporadic, but we have been reassured that whatever vaccine we receive next week will be the same amount consistently over the next three weeks.

So we're just crossing our fingers and hoping for a good allotment next week that will then projected out to be a good allotment for the rest of the month.

Sure.

That was gonna be my next question.

If the allotments ramp up, if you get more and more vaccines, the flow is pretty steady.

Can you sustain that?

You have the infrastructure to continue to give as many shots a day.

Most definitely are infrastructure comfortably with no one standing in a line for more than five minutes takes about 1,100 to 1,300 persons through that process.

But on fortunately we've been averaging maybe 2500 to 3000 doses a week, which means we have two or three good days and either no vaccine on the other two days of the week or simply small second dose vaccination clinics.

So it's our hope that we'll be able to sustain the operation doing at least a thousand a day and ideally five days a week if not more.

Sure.

Vicky, I wanted to address specifically no shows and people who are making these appointments multiple different places and then showing one appointment then not showing up to another.

Are you seeing that happen at the fairgrounds?

You're definitely seeing that happen.

And when you're careful about opening vaccine vials, we're doing OK. We can reserve that vaccine, add more appointments for a subsequent day.

But recently we had one day in particular where we had a large number of no shows at the end of the day and that creates mass havoc because then you've got to quickly get those doses into arms before the vaccine expires.

And we don't want to waste a single drop.

So we are asking people who have registered on multiple sites to please cancel your appointment on all of those sites so it gives someone else a chance to book to book that appointment slot.

Sure.

And in that case, if that does happen, do you have.

Is there a list that you go off of then?

Are you just calling people saying, hey, can you come down and get vaccinated?

How does that work if someone doesn't show up and you need to get that shot into an arm in Lehigh County.

We have a senior call center and we have a large number of folks that are registered with the senior call center that we have not been able to accommodate with an appointment yet.

So what we're doing is we will go to that list first and we will do our best to call those seniors who have pre-registered and ask them if they can somewhat drop everything and come in.

Ideally, if they can, that's great.

We did have several instances where it was marginally bad, whether or it was really a last minute.

You have to be here in 15 minutes.

One day we were desperate and we opened the doors of the Allentown farmer's market and yelled We have vaccine and nine fortunate people stepped outside and took it.

But ideally we work through the senior call center list to be able to fill any unfilled slots.

Sure.

Does that come down to you'd rather see those vaccines go into arms than let them go to waste Gamma I'm sure that's the case.

We will definitely get every drug we can into an arm rather than waste a single drop.

It's like gold in our community and we certainly don't want to see any of it go to waste.

Sure.

And who's getting vaccinated?

I know I paid a visit a couple weeks ago, almost a month ago.

Now to your clinic.

A lot of the people I spoke to were coming from the outskirts of the city, not necessarily from Allentown.

So who are you seeing from day coming in, getting vaccinated Gamma And why aren't more people from Allentown?

Do you suspect getting vaccinated?

Well, I'll be honest, it is a bit of a frustrating situation in the state of Pennsylvania.

You cannot limit your vaccine clinics by residency.

So our clinic is open to everyone.

We ask people who register at our clinics kindly not register at the clinic if they have their own health department in their own home town.

What happens is we use more than half of the allocations we're given for Lehigh County seniors through the call center and then the rest of the allocations we post on our website with links and those links go up every Thursday morning or when we have cancellations or extra vaccine delivery.

Unfortunately, what I think is happening is that we have organizations and individuals who have attach notification systems to those lengths, then quickly register as many people as they can and that unfortunately should kind of shut out the slow register.

So we do ask our citizens to register through the call center if they're 65 and older and then we also inform them when we have slots available in the hopes that they can jump on.

But we are drawing a much, much larger group than the city of Allentown.

Great.

Vickie, any idea as to how many calls are coming into that call center on a given day that call center for seniors?

How many vaccine appointments are you making through that?

We have 1,500 seniors in the queue awaiting our next delivery of vaccine.

We are still getting at least a thousand every week or so register in the call center and then get sweat into appointments.

So the call center is still very busy and is still limited to 60 and older Lehigh County residents.

She sure.

I just want to reiterate that phone number for those who need it is 6 108 9 0 7 0 6 9.

Vicki, would you say the demand for an appointment to get vaccinated is as great as it was, say, a month ago?

Is that demand still there?

Definitely.

It is not slacked off at all.

We still have far more individuals, I'm happy to say.

We have so many people who want the vaccine.

We're just hoping that the supply catches up so that their needs can be met.

Sure.

And for those who want to make an appointment, I know you said to call the call centers that the only way they should be making appointment or can go online.

What's the process to make an appointment Gamma Seniors can call the call center.

Other individuals can go online.

And that's Allentown PA clinics .com.

And when the link is live, it means we have appointments available and those who are under 65 but do not have access to the internet for booking or find it hard to book if they can have someone send us an email at clinical communicable disease .com or at Allentown PA .gov.

We will get an email from them and we will call them to schedule them.

So it's clinical wheel disease at Allentown PIAA of wonderful wonderful some great information.

I know a lot of people calling our show day to day looking for ways to get an appointment.

Vicki President Biden said that all adults should be eligible by May 1st for the vaccine.

Is PA ready for that?

That's a lot of people that they'd then open the door to.

Are we ready for that?

Here in the Lehigh Valley and across the state Gamma I'm not sure we're ready for that anywhere, but we're gonna do our best again.

The vaccine supply will dictate whether or not we're ready.

We have many vaccinators.

We have well organized systems.

Our hospital networks have been fantastic stick at delivering vaccine.

We're doing the best we can.

The other in county nuni health departments doing the best they can.

But without vaccine, you know, it just brings us to a whole.

So I believe as vaccine becomes more plentiful, it will find its way to arms and people's needs will be met.

But will that happen by May 1st?

We're all crossing our fingers and hoping that.

Well, yes, for sure.

We have a caller question.

Eeva from Pottersville is asking.

She's saying that she doesn't like shots.

She's leery of getting the vaccine.

Do you see a lot of people with adverse reactions?

So should she be scared of getting shot?

I'm going to be honest, most people on their first shot will tell us that they may have a soreness in their arm or they may have a little mild discomfort in their arm.

On the second shot, we do have some people who experience 24 to 36 hour feeling of a headache or a little bit of body aches.

Some folks will actually say they get a low grade temperature or they get some chills, but with a dose Tylenol or Motrin, they usually feel just fine within 24 hours.

To me, that far outweighs the consequences of acquiring Covid.

So although there may be a mild side effect to the vaccine, it's well worth what we here folks go through when they actually can contract this virus.

Vicki, along those same lines, if you could just walk us through the vaccinating process for those who don't know, it's not quite as quick as, say, getting a flu shot.

It's getting it's getting close.

We have the registration and you walk through a touchless temperature scanner, you complete a very short consent form that basically asks if you've had another vaccine in the last 14 days or you've ever had a serious reaction to a vaccine or a medication.

And then you step forward to one of the vaccination tables and the vaccine is simply inserted into your arm and then you do have a 15 minute observation period where you sit down at one of our chairs.

We encourage you to register and be safe program.

That's the program that helps the nation track any side effects or adverse reactions.

And after your 15 minutes is up and you're feeling fine, you head out on your way.

So from beginning to end for most people it takes less than a half an hour or wonderful.

Vicki.

You've said that you've been overwhelmed with kindness and patience, people getting the vaccine.

Can you talk to us a little about that?

What have you seen through this process?

A really tense time in the world, let alone here in the Lehigh Valley.

We have had to reschedule or cancel 1786 exact shots for the state smoothing process where they did not have enough second doses to administer Moderna right on its four week deadline.

It didn't create any adverse consequence to the patient.

They just wait an extra week for their second dose.

But it was definitely an inconvenience, especially to those people who had to arrange transportation or who had to miss work.

They were kind.

They were grateful.

We had a 30 snow storm.

We had two ice storms.

We had to Reeth schedule folks in and out and everyone has been wonderful for the most part.

Those on the waiting list are grateful to be scheduled.

And every time we get vaccine, we book in more and more folks.

But overwhelmingly the people that we are seeing just breathe a sigh of relief that they do feel now that they can be safe around their grandchildren or that they can go to visit their families that they haven't done in a long time as long as their families vaccinated and their kids have taken social distancing precautions and they just leave us smiling.

And it's so great to see that because there hasn't been a lot smiles over the last year or so Covid.

So it's nice to see those smiles coming back there really hasn't.

So that is definitely a positive sign there.

Vicki, for do you have any tips for people who are looking to make an appointment?

Is there a specific day they should be logging on or that they should call and a time that they should be calling to make sure that they're able to book that appointment Thursday mornings at 9:00 between 9 and 9:30.

Our links go live with however many appointments we have.

The senior call center, as I said, moves about a thousand of them a week off that waitlist the hospitals please register in my LVHN and in my St Luke's.

Also the retail pharmacies contact the pharmacies that may be vaccinating.

But again, if you've scheduled an appointment and you're going for that shot, please cancel the other appointments so that you can take them.

Vicki, before we let you go today, there's other websites that claim to connect people with vaccines.

Do you use any of those websites or is your website the best way to make an appointment, not use other websites?

And we do encourage people not to ever share their personal information with websites that are not familiar to them because we have had some stories of folks being sent to strange places in an attempt to gain their personal information.

So we do encourage people to trust their local hospitals and their health departments to get their vaccines.

Great.

Vicki Kessler from the Allentown Health Bureau.

Thank you so much for joining us today with all that great information.

And we 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 9:30 those same nights on WLVT News.

We'll be back Wednesday at 4:00 to compare St Patrick's Day business this year with last year as we were just beginning a state wide shutdown.

You can call with a question the phone numbers for 4 8 2 1 0 0 0 8 4 PBS39 WLVT News.

I'm Brittany Sweeney Stacee.