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

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

We are coming to you live from the public Media Center in Bethlehem.

I'm Brittany Sweeney.

Our guests today include a hospital administrator who's not ready just yet to declare an end to the pandemic.

And with the weather warming up, we'll speak with the State Fish and Game Commission about the readiness of state parks and waterways for the season.

Our guests will be with us in just a few minutes.

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

The phone number is Fauci four eight two one zero zero zero eight.

We'll answer some of your questions live.

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

Now, you can do that at our website coronavirus Lehigh Valley dog you can find helpful information there in both English and Spanish.

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

The department of Health says more than 9.3 million vaccinations have been given in Pennsylvania.

About 4 million people are now fully vaccinated.

That's 46% of the population aged 18 and up to the state reported 2179 coronavirus cases and 52 more deaths to date, a total of 26,600 59 Pennsylvanians have died from Covid-19, the Lehigh Valley's biggest health networks say they are ready to inoculate younger teens as soon as possible.

A federal advisory committee this afternoon gave approval of Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine for children as young as 12.

St Luke's University Health Network says it's ready to give shots to children now at the Anderson campus.

If the CDC now that the CDC has given its blessing, Lehigh Valley Health Network has plans to accept 12 to 15-year-olds starting tomorrow at clinics because of this CDC approval dat's than the USPI deaths in tumbled to an average of 600 per day, the lowest level in 10 months.

Confirmed infections, meanwhile, have fallen to about 38,000 per day on average, their lowest mark since mid-September.

Cases have plummeted 85% from a peak of more than a quarter million a day.

In early January.

Let's meet our guests for the day.

Dr Robert Murphy is a regular on the show here.

He's provided guidance throughout the pandemic and we'll talk to him about some of the promising headlines that we're seeing throughout the region and country Mark.

Mike Parker is a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Fish and Game Commission.

This is shaping up to be a very busy spring and summer season.

Thank you both so much for joining us.

Mike, we're going to be with you in just a little bit.

We're going to begin today with Dr Murphy as always, Dr Murphy, thank you so much for joining us.

Albright.

And it's always great to be with you.

Thanks for having me.

It's great to have you, Doctor.

The numbers are going down and restrictions are being lifted.

There's a lot to be hopeful right right now that so many signs of positivity you've been cautious, though, before about jumping the gun and saying that we are back to quote unquote normal.

We all want some kind of sense of that.

What do you think?

Are we almost there?

What more do we need to do to really push us over the edge and get back to what we knew before this pandemic?

Well, Brittany, I hate to be a boring kind of guy because you know how I like to make a ratings soar, but I'm going to say the same thing.

We are approaching a new normal, but by no means are we at a normal, you know, President Biden said his goal for vaccination or the population by July 4th is 60%.

That's well below what we know.

The numbers that are needed for herd immunity.

And while you know it's encouraging to see the state opening up this week, we also heard the statistics that you just cited.

Only 43% of Pennsylvanians are fully vaccinated.

We still have 2000 cases reported and we still have 50 deaths.

So, you know, wild things are getting much, much better and we all look forward to the warm weather where we can partake of Mr Parker's options for getting outside and fishing and boating and doing all that.

This virus has not gone away.

And the longer the virus persists, the more likelihood of mutants, the more likely that we'll be dealing with this for quite a long time in some form.

So lots to be encouraged about, lots to be hopeful for.

Let's be grateful for us to be cautious.

Absolutely.

Dr Murphy, let me ask you then.

The governor says he wants things to be closer to normal come Memorial Day weekend with many of the restaurants and businesses opening to full capacity.

Then do you think it's too fast Gamma Well, again, it's one of those things that it's it's a risk profile that we working on.

We're working on.

You know, it's obvious that we want to encourage our Commonwealth, the business owners in the Commonwealth to be able to get back to a place where they can make a living and start to contribute to the economy and start to help people feel more like life is normal.

We want that.

But there still has to be some stipulation of fact that we are a nation that has achieved herd immunity as well.

While the numbers go down, you know, if you are one of the 50 people that have died, that's a pretty significant event for both you and your family.

So lots to be encouraged about, thankfully.

You know, our restauranteurs and the folks that borne the brunt of this are small business people.

They're among the people who are looking at this with enthusiasm and welcoming it.

But they actually are still posting signs about wearing as and trying to maintain distance.

So, you know, they're taking an appropriate step towards getting back to what might be our new normal.

It seems like it's kind of a delicate balancing act for sure.

I wanted to talk a little bit about this CDC recommendation that came down this afternoon, 12 to 15-year-olds now eligible to get the vaccine.

Will this help in getting to that 70% here in Pennsylvania?

So that we can lift the mask mandate and do more?

Will the kids at this point getting vaccinated help that situation?

Yeah, this is a very encouraging because before when the numbers were we talked about the numbers of 70% or 60%.

The president's last comment, it Warren County kids was counting basically teenagers, adults who have cheves a state of maturity.

So so the kids are often carriers who are asymptomatic carriers.

So by virtue of being able to lower that age of inoculation, you're actually starting to tamp down the transmission vector or that virus.

So it's really, really encouraging news and we know that some of the profiles from mothers and the kids who were just born, the babies carry antibody in utero to two when they're born and the safety profile of the vaccine seemed to be quite good even below 12.

So this is really encouraging news and couldn't come at a better time.

And all the while, the folks in health care are really welcoming this and the major networks here in the Lehigh Valley, including Lehigh Valley Health Network saying they are ready to vaccinate kids.

What did you have to do to get ready for that?

Is there any different steps that you had to take to get your clinics ready for the 12 to 15 age group Gamma Well, I think there's two things is that, you know, one, kids are not just small adults, no kids, no kids.

And they have a different set of expectations.

They have a different set of values.

And so the mass vaccination sites by and large, which we were so efficient and able to deliver vaccine in to the population before, that's not the kind of environment that you would use for a kid.

Kids are most comfortable with their parents.

They're most comfortable in a pediatrician's office that they know and also just a small little piece of just the operational science around kids is that whereas, you know, we had adults wait for 15 minutes for to see the effect of the vaccine.

About half of kids have some sort of, you know, nervous response around getting a vaccination.

So actually the time that it takes to get a child through point the Reading to to leavee- the office, you have to allow for more time, more distance, more recovery.

So it just complicates the issue in a little way.

But again, you know, the children, the future that the folks that we love and so anything we need to do to take care of the Children Valley, we're ready to do.

Dr Murphy, do you expect a big crowd from this age or of the 12 to 15 age group parents bringing their kids to get vaccinated or do you think there's going to be some hesitancy?

More so from this age group than we saw for adults.

What's your kind of theory on all of that?

Well, I think it's I think it's going to be probably proportional to where we stood with adults.

I think that there would potentially be an advantage to us if the timing of this was slightly different part of our strategy at Lehigh Valley Health Network is to actually bring the vaccine to schools.

But because we're running out of time at the end of the school year, we won't be able to do that as a replacement mechanism for Dorney Park.

But I think the citizens of the Commonwealth who understand the need for vaccination, they are as equally concerned about their children's safety.

And given the fact that there's been no untoward results in the child populaion that's been studied prior to letting the Pfizer vaccine be administered to children in in the next day or two in the valley.

I think that's encouraging science and that the early adopters plus those who waited a little bit longer now see that the vaccine profile is very good.

So I think it'll probably parallel and worry a little bit in time of the school year.

We might actually be able to leverage our willingness to be in the schools, even bump that up a little more.

So maybe in the fall we'll be able to to do better by the kids.

The Valley and schools, of course, require some vaccinations to attend class.

Do you think this will be much of the same?

Do you think eventually this will be something that schools require students to get vaccinated for coronaviruses before they start to start the school year?

Yeah, very question.

Great question.

I mean, you're aware that the number of the major universities across the country have made that part of the policy of returning to campus.

That said, you know, we at LVHN are looking at, you know, how we embed policy to make vaccinate for the coronavirus similar to the flu virus.

And I think you'll see the same thing as we evolve towards the end of the summer and into the flu or whether it's coronavirus since they behave the same.

Our approach, a population to vaccination and vaccination policy is going to have to be the same.

And there's no reason to expect that we will not have to to, you know, to vaccinate regularly and give boosters for the coronaviruses long as you know, as long as we have not achieved herd immunity at the very least capacity limits of sports stadiums are going to the limits are going to end June 11.

This is another big announcement that came this week.

The Eagles are planning full capacity at the link come this fall.

So Dr Murphy, what do you think?

Is that a smart thing to do?

Do you think we're ready by just a few months from now to go back to full capacity fans in the stands watching sports Gamma And do you think safety protocols need to be followed when they're doing at masking that kind of thing?

Yeah, well, again, a difficult choice.

You know, we're a nation of of of rugged individuals.

We're a nation that values personal freedom.

We're a nation that puts, you know, a tremendous amount of social value around Kongregate activities.

So at some point, policy makers are going to make decisions like that.

From a medical point of view, would we perhaps because we want three three foot space maintenance, one 50% Gamma Well, that's that's a decision that's been made already.

The fact is, is how do you operate safely under the situation that has been declared, you know, acceptable by the government and the sports owners and the like.

And that is to say, if you are going to be in an outdoor facility that's good.

That's a first step.

Things are better there than not.

If you are going to be the attending.

However, you know, I would not be far from my mask.

There's no knowing if the person you're going to be sitting next to, you know, in any of these arenas is going to be coughing or sniffling and you don't know what that means.

What virus that is.

You're going to be in line concession lines looking for that hot dog and beer with people that you don't know whether they've been vaccinated or not.

And, you know, certainly, you know, restrooms are nice places that you're shoulder to shoulder with 100 thousand of your best friends.

So within the set of rules we have that we've been allowed to broaden our activities again, the idea that people maintain that personal sense of well-being, that personal sense of what how you handle the virus makes a tremendous impact on you.

Your family and your neighbors just means use common sense again.

So, you know, frequent hand washing maintain as much space as possible.

And if you're if you're shoulder to shoulder people, make sure you wear that mask.

It didn't seem possible a year ago that we'd have to require masks for things like football games just going to the office.

But that's part of our new normal.

Do you think that masking will be something we see in the long run moving forward for four years to come?

To this point?

Well, the way I like to look at it is, you know, we are entering an era where in the world will be the new Japan.

It was very common prior to that to the pandemic for people of the Far East and Japan and China to where masks all the time for various reasons, Luzerne and the like.

And I think it's it's wise for us to just think in terms of this is your handbag, this is your set of eyeglasses.

Or you said a reading glasses at the very least that while you may not have to wear it in all venues, you know, and within family get togethers, in wide open spaces, like Mr Park is going to talk about a little bit, you know, as long as enough of us is vaccinated, then by all means feel free to take a deep breath without cloth.

On the other hand, you know, just a couple of things.

This virus is not going away.

We haven't achieved her immunity.

And look at the advantage that the mask has brought on into other things.

The normal flu is almost unheard of this year.

So by wearing masks and maintaining distance and washing your hands, normal hygiene behaviors, that really took what has been a tremendous disease burden in the United States and particularly the pediatric population essentially eliminated.

Secondarily, folks who have had suffer from allergies.

This is a tremendous pollen season.

What people are wearing masks aren't getting the dosing of pollen as well.

So I think for a number of reasons it's going to be wise for folks to consider keeping that mask near at hand.

And certainly folks like myself are going to be advocating for that until we've reached a higher level of immunity.

Dr Robert Murphy from Lehigh Valley Health Network, as always, thank you so much for your input today.

Always great to be with you, Brittany.

Thank you.

Great to have you.

Have a good day.

And we continue this community update on coronavirus PBS39.

You can hear the rebroadcast on the radio tonight at nine 30 on 91 three WHO VR.

Now let's bring in our next guest, Mike Parker.

Is communications director for the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.

Last summer we saw record numbers of people using parks and waterways, getting into the great outdoors.

Even more expected this year.

Mike, thank you so much for joining us.

What are some of the ways the fish and boat commission is getting ready for the influx of people for the season?

Well, we're trying to maintain the level of service that we experienced the need for beginning last year.

You know, just to just put it into numbers.

We know that you anecdotally we all go to the local park or our state park, go fishing around the lake in our neighborhood.

And we've seen more people there over the past year.

We have sold about 20% more fishing licenses in 2020 that we did compared to 20, 19.

So 20% increase puts us just about at a million fishing licenses across a state which is equal to the number that we saw back when fishing license sales last peaked, which was around the mid 90s.

So the pandemic has certainly sent people into a frenzy of looking for safe, affordable ways to get outdoors, to recreate and fishing and boating have been the top of the list.

Mike, take us back to last or when the pandemic was at the height and fishing boat season was just about to begin or beginning, you saw a big influx of people.

Can you kind of describe to us what you saw and were you prepared for it at that point?

With all of these people coming out and taking advantage of something that was actually open for a change because everything else was closed?

Well, yeah, and this is true.

You know, the timing of it was was really lined up with the OK, so think about this.

We're planning the busiest time of year for the fishing commission in many people's minds is the start of the spring trout season So typically around March 1st of every year is when we start that incredible process of stocking about a thousand waterways across Pennsylvania with 3.2 million trout for people to enjoy.

So we start that process in March and then somewhere around the middle of April for the entire state is when we open up the trout season.

So this month, month and a half goes by and we're out there and people are getting geared up and they're getting ready and excited and all of a sudden we have the pandemic hit.

So I remember March 17th being my last day of work at the office that was about halfway through our trout stocking period.

So very busy time and all the sudden we have new rules.

Typically we rely on volunteers to help us.

If anyone's ever been to a trout stocking, there's a convoy of vehicles that show up with volunteers eager to help us carry buckets of trout down to the creek into the lake and all of a sudden we've got concerns about the health of our staff specifically our drivers who drive these large trout stocking trucks.

We have very few drivers who can operate these vehicles.

And if we were to lose even one of them or two of them to sickness, that could result in the dozens of being stuck.

And so we worked with the governor's office.

We worked with the department Health and followed the CDC guidelines and came up with the idea that we're still going to stock all these crowd, but we're going to do it with just our fishing commission personnel.

We're going to ask the volunteers to stay home and stay safe, give us a better level of contact tracing even that early on in the pandemic, which was still sort of a new thing.

And, you know, with the social distancing, it was a challenge, but we were able to pull it off.

And as you said very early on, people realized what are the things that I can do?

You know, I may not be able to go to the movies any more or take my child to their there their early spring baseball game.

But fishing and boating, they sort of lend themselves to social distancing and spacing.

So a lot of people are looking to get away from crowds anyway when they go fishing the opening day of trout season possibly being the exception to that.

As many people know, we typically have two opening days, one in the southeast part of the state and one for the rest of the state.

And last year, the best thing that we decided after a lot of hard decisions and thoughts that went into this was basically to spring the trout season on everyone on the morning of of of April 7th.

So we woke up at eight o'clock, news release went out and we contacted a lot of folks and trout season was open.

And so that way it encouraged people to go fishing on their they could go fishing immediately, hopefully in their local neighborhood at their local water as opposed to making big plans to travel and get together with other groups across the state and say their typical fishing camp plans that would have brought a lot of people from different areas of the state together with so many people taking to the waterways, there had to be new anglers, new boaters out there.

And I imagine that poses some challenges for you.

What kind of challenges did you face with all of these first timers out on the water?

Well, we did learn that about 25% of the people who bought a fishing license in 2020, we're brand new.

They never bought one before.

So along with fishing and boating, there's a lot of education you can go to and specifically we saw a huge amount, about a 40% increase in the number of people kayaking.

You go to any waterway if anyone knows kayaking.

At first of all, it's almost impossible to buy one at a store.

They're in such demand right now and you definitely saw more people at the boat launches.

The problem with that is a lot of people have never been out on the water before.

So with fishing a couple of concerns.

Number one, are they familiar with the regulations?

Do they you know, do they understand that there are seasons and krill Middleport they have to abide by and things like littering too?

You know, folks don't understand that.

We actually have lots of private properties that are opened through the generosity of landowners, the public fishing and boating.

But when folks aren't respectful or leave trash behind or somehow damage by pulling in and pulling your vehicle into someone's yard or whatever, that they're not used to this sort of that sportsman's ticket, then the private landowner is more likely to remove their property from public access, which is no good for any of us as far as the boating goes, we're most concerned about safety.

Life jackets are a big deal.

We had 11 boating fatalities in in 2019.

Excuse me, 2020 and not a single one of those victims was wearing a life jacket in so far in 2021 we've had three boating related fatalities across Pennsylvania and again, none of them were wearing life jackets.

The statistics prove that if you take basic boating safety courses, learn about your water advance, novices should start off on slow moving water like a lake or a pond before moving in to a faster moving water such as a creek or a stream.

But most, most where the most important thing where the life jacket, it'll keep your yourself afloat.

People say I'm a good swimmer, I don't need a life jacket but believe me, if you're going kayaking, you're going to get wet.

If you fall in, it might hit your head on a rock.

in in in the creek and all of a- sudden the even the best swimmers are struggling in moving water.

It's a whole different story.

So we say wear your life jacket all the time.

It seems like such a simple task, but it can save your life.

Are there safety courses that people can take advantage of and if so, where can they find them?

Yeah, there are some basic boating safety courses.

So if you're going to operate both, it's 25 horsepower or more.

And again, it's not as easy to get into motorboating as it is the paddling.

So we see a lot more folks who are out there paddling.

Those folks don't require any sort of registration, but you do need a launch permit if you want to use those public access areas.

You also want to check out a basic boating safety course which you can do free online or you can pay a small fee and you'll be issued a boating safety certificate, which is good for your lifetime.

But that's good for both your unpowered boats and your powerboats.

And it also transfers between states for those people who are maybe taking their boat down onto the Chesapeake Bay or, you know, to New Jersey bordering bordering states.

So, you know, they transfer like that.

But yes, go to our website, Fish and boat .com.

I think it's people often surprised it's that simple.

But Pennsylvania must have been first on the list when it came up with great fishing, boating, fishing and boating websites because it's fish and boat .com and just look up some basic boating safety information.

We have a section there all about boating and I'll remind people that it's very timely that we're talking because April 20 second to April 28th right before the Memorial Day weekend is National Safe Boating Week.

So we look for people to pay attention as we kick off the boating season.

We want people to make sure that they're going and being prepared before they head out on the water like you mentioned, an influx, an increase in licenses, the launch permit sales and also the angler license sales.

So what are you going to do with all those extra funds Gamma Well, there's a good question because it seems as if it's a lot of extra funds is all of a sudden we have lots of money coming into the fishing boat commission.

I can assure you that we're not all getting raises or new vehicles or things like that.

You know, to put it in perspective, the price of the fishing license hasn't changed in 15 years.

So the price of a fishing license has been the same for a around $32.

If you get your fishing license and your annual trout permit, that price hasn't changed since Ben Roethlisberger was a rookie with the Steelers.

So that's a good way to kind of put the timeline there that people can understand a lot of our programs.

A, I'm sorry to take you off.

Unfortunately, we don't have enough time to visit the website, get all of the information and where that lifeguard, Mike Parker from the Fish and Boat Commission, thank you so much for joining us.

And we want to thank you for watching community update on coronavirus for PBS39 and WLVT our news.

I'm Brittany Sweeney CDC.