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- Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and County Mayor Lee Harris tonight on Behind The Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us as we continue to do the show remotely.

I am pleased to be joined tonight by Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland.

Mayor Strickland, thanks for being here.

- Thank you.

- Along with Shelby County, Mayor Lee Harris, Mayor Harris, thanks for being here.

- Great to be here, thanks.

- And Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

Obviously we'll talk mostly about COVID and vaccinations and where we are with that.

But I we'll try to get into some of the other issues are going on.

I mean, the world continues in many ways, good and bad.

But starting in, I guess, maybe I'll go to you first, Mayor Harris with, from your point of view.

You both are on the Shelby County Task Force.

Much of the ultimate authority lies with the Shelby County Health Department with Alisa Haushalter.

But you're on that task force and obviously both of you have big influence and big voices on how things are being handled.

And what more can Shelby County do right now given all the constraints and all the complications and all the difficulties we shall say of the federal rollout.

What more can Memphis and Shelby County do to speed up the rate of vaccinations?

- Well, I think the rate of vaccination is mostly a function of vaccine supply, and I think that that is a function of the national supply chain.

So we've really got to get more of that supply released out into the states and ultimately at the local level.

I think that's happening.

We've heard some encouraging remarks from the incoming administration, the Biden administration, that they will release all available doses.

There was some practice and pattern of holding back some of the doses so that you could be in a place to do some of those second doses.

At the federal level they would hold back some of those.

And so the Biden administration has announced that they're gonna release all of that.

So, the more you can free up that blockage in the national supply chain, the more to the benefit of all of us.

So I think that's really important at the same time.

We're always working to make sure we identify populations that are vulnerable and where the uptake in terms of vaccine is low.

And we know that, you know, through survey data and through some of the things we learned through national lessons.

And the way you kind of increase and expand opportunity for uptake in those communities, I think it's through floating locations.

So we're always trying to work to identify floating locations.

We're not quite there yet because, mass vaccination has not happened.

In Shelby County, vaccination is limited to very discrete categories, healthcare workers, a few above 75 and first responders.

And so for the time being a lot of our vaccination efforts are, at the fairgrounds location.

But as we expand, we'll have floating locations that are in the communities where uptake is low or where there are vulnerable populations that are gonna need a little bit more effort to make sure that they get a shot in the arm.

- And we are recording this on Thursday morning and just yesterday the current administration, the Trump administration, changed some of the recommended guidelines to bring that number down, to not hold back the second doses, and to go to adults under 65 and above as well as all adults with any sort of certain at-risk conditions.

And even today later, today on Thursday, the Biden ministration is gonna do a big announcement of what it's going to recommend when it come in.

So I probably over the Mayor Harris's shoulder.

there is, it's actually a web address, shelby.community and people really should go to that often.

I assume you all would agree with me because it is so, it's changing so much.

And shelby.community does have a lot of information the health department site about who's eligible, where to get shots, appointments, and so on.

Let me bring in Mayor Strickland.

For you, if you could sit down, if you could get 10 minutes with incoming president Biden and his COVID team, what would you recommend they do?

- But the same thing Mayor Harris was was talking about.

Operation Warp Speed did a really good job of helping the pharmaceutical companies create a vaccine in record time.

But we need to put some speed into Warp Speed with respect to vaccination distribution.

That's the problem.

That's the number one problem, not only in Memphis, in Shelby County, in Tennessee, but our whole country.

I've spoken to Commissioner Piercey with the State Department of Health.

And basically they're giving us the, she's requesting the maximum amount of vaccine she can from the federal government.

She's distributing it fairly across the state.

It's just, we don't have enough.

And that goes for the Shelby County Health Department, to our hospitals and to our pharmacies.

Those are the three groups that we're doing now.

There is a small issue, we need to and we're working on it to help the pharmacies more quickly vaccinate our nursing homes and so forth.

Bottom line is the hospitals have vaccinations to vaccinate their employees and some affiliated medical personnel.

The health department is working on the first responders, probably some healthcare workers.

And now they're just beginning to folks, 75 and older.

The pharmacies have the exclusive on those senior populations, although the health department is now helping them.

And there's been a little, it's been a little slow on the uptake because it's just more difficult to vaccinate going to nursing homes.

'Cause the other locations, the public is going to the vaccination.

There at the nursing homes, you're going to them.

It just takes more effort.

So the health department and our task force is trying to help the pharmacies but overall, it's a supply issue.

- Do we have, I'll stay with you Mayor Strickland, and then I'll go to Bill.

But do we have enough people?

We've seen in other communities, they don't have enough people to give the shots.

They don't have enough people who can put the shots in the arm.

And there's a real concern that once the supply does increase as it looks like it will pretty rapidly, we think and hope over the next month, that there won't be enough people to give shots in some communities.

Does Memphis, Shelby County do we have enough people here?

- We have enough people now.

And that is the issue.

Let's just round numbers.

Let's say we're doing 10,000 shots a week here.

And I think that may be high.

At some point, we're going to have 20,000-25,000 and it's going to really start rolling in.

But this is where the County Health Department and the task force have worked so well together.

We've created a couple ways you can get, number one you can volunteer.

We have a lot of medical personnel, EMS professionals who are volunteering to help with the vaccination.

And then we also have a way they can be hired.

We're working with our nursing schools here in Shelby County, and we have several to get the nursing students to help vaccinate.

So there really is a team effort.

And with the eye on building up toward thousands more vaccinations.

- Right, let me bring in Bill Dries.

- Mayor Harris, the appointment system, I believe started out as being online only.

And of course there are some technology challenges in our city as we saw when school went online here, for the Shelby County School System.. Is Memphis unique in some ways when it comes to this rollout of the vaccine that maybe we're not expected to see in other parts of the country.

- Yeah, we're unique.

And yeah, I was just in a meeting actually with Mayor Strickland even earlier.

And he mentioned one point that bears repeating here, is that we have a lot of healthcare workers here.

So the first phase is healthcare workers, and we're heavily loaded on the healthcare worker in, and compared to some other 21 counties in West Tennessee.

But it's gonna take us quite a time to get through healthcare workers here in Shelby County.

And so that makes us unique.

When you compare that to the other 21 counties in West Tennessee, which have lost hospitals and lost healthcare workers, they can quickly move past that phase and the other categories a little bit more quickly.

At the same time obviously we're a bigger population, more dense population.

We sit on multiple borders and the fact that we sit on multiple borders and our media markets cover a wide range of area, that a lot of people are gonna get their information from Memphis and Shelby County.

And a lot of people are gonna try and get their shots in Memphis and Shelby County to be quite honest as a result of that.

So, no, I think our largeness, it makes us very different.

And so the rollout, I mean, I think that, appointments were just too scarce.

I mean, that's the key piece here, is we just don't have enough appointments.

And so people can make appointments by phone call and they can make appointments by online.

But you're right to say that there was a press release that made a little bit of a distinction there.

I'm not sure how far that press release went but the health department certainly received lots of phone calls for appointments and receive lots of online for appointments.

The problem is there's not enough appointments.

And so the appointments ran out almost immediately within 24 hours.

We had bookings through the month of January.

So that just shows you that, there's a scarcity of vaccine, which works away all the way through the system that we're not just not gonna be able to meet demand until we get more supply.

- Mayor Strickland, as we get some new types of vaccines that maybe don't require below zero storage and only require a single dose, could this get better?

- Oh, there's no doubt.

Not only in the number of vaccines that we can do at the Pipkin building like that, or but also the number of providers that can do.

I know our safety net providers, Christ Community and Church Health they can vaccinate and get it out into the community, a much more diverse, not only populations but locations also.

So the more vaccinations we have, thousands more, the more we can spread it out.

And I know the folks out in east Shelby County are clamoring for sites, but so are, Whitehaven and Frayser and all that kind of stuff.

And when you don't have many vaccinations which we don't have right now, it really makes sense to have one location where you can drive people.

But when we have thousands more, it helps with other providers.

- And Mayor Harris, we were talking about some of these issues beforehand, before we actually started recording the show.

And a change in kind of the complicated way that this vaccine now has to be stored and has to be dealt with.

It is something that has gone into the preparations and something that you've tried to deal with as best as you can.

- No, I think it's a terribly difficult vaccine to administer, at least with respect to the Pfizer vaccine.

And this is just, again, my personal opinion as to that vaccine.

And just thinking globally or nationally about this administration of the vaccine.

Is just going to be real difficult, 'cause the Pfizer vaccine has, the sub zero temperature requirements.

It also degrades very fast when it is put into use.

And so I think communities across the country are gonna have some real serious challenges with that vaccine.

I think there's gonna be significant waste associated with that vaccine.

There's gonna be significant chaos and events of chaos associated with that vaccine, because people will be trying to use that vaccine before it fully degrades and must be thrown away.

So now I think that's a complicating factor.

But as I said and as you've heard, a part of this conversation that it is a game changer if we get new companies coming online with new types of vaccines, that don't have some of those requirements, and maybe even move toward a single dose vaccine.

I mean that could be a serious game changer for our community and across the country.

And not only makes it quicker for the health department, for the healthcare systems, for the pharmaceutical companies, I mean, for the pharmacies.

It also makes it more straightforward for doctor offices because that's another missing piece here.

The doctor offices of course can do the COVID tests but they can't really administer a vaccine if their requirements for dispensing it are too high to make it too much trouble for them.

But if you see a single dose vaccine that only requires standard refrigeration, you'll see many more physician offices apply to be in a position to give the vaccine out at their offices.

And that hasn't happened yet.

We're nowhere near that yet.

And one of the reasons why, is because the vaccine is so difficult to handle and they're so strict requirements in terms of the chain of custody with the current vaccines.

- Before we go back, Eric, Mayor Strickland, talk a little bit about the infrastructure that's formed over about the last 10 months to deal with this.

And I might add that it's formed as the conditions have changed pretty radically over that time.

Not only in terms of having a vaccine, but also in terms of who is consulted and who has the authority to make what decisions on this.

- Yeah, but if you have to go all the way back to the beginning, the City legally had much more authority than it does now.

So we could issue our own safer at home orders.

And we started a city task force and then I'm sure the County was doing the same thing.

But it didn't take long before, Mayor Harris and I were talking and our CAOs were talking and we created a joint City/County task force.

And then it grew to some nonprofits who are serving the public.

Remember he had food distribution issues, the schools had a positive case in their kitchen and they just literally just stopped food distribution.

So the task force picked up on it.

And we brought in the food bank and those partners.

Then we brought in healthcare workers and the hospitals.

And this fall before the school year opened, we brought in the schools.

And when I say it's all throughout Shelby County.

so right now, every mayor in our county plus mayors outside of our county are taking part.

Every school district public and private within Shelby County and one or two outside of Shelby County take part.

All the hospitals are represented, including St. Jude, which really doesn't take patients from the outside but they take part.

Nonprofits take part.

And we've been able to accomplish so much.

There's a group working on people, the homeless and those needing shelter.

There's a group working on vaccines.

We had a group working on asymptomatic testing and I've been personally more involved in that one.

And we've been able to, we got about 26 schools right now, public and private in Memphis doing regular asymptomatic testing.

And then we were able to do a bunch of surge testing in December leading up to the holidays, which I think played a role in the surge not being quite as bad.

So, I'm proud of the teamwork that has existed and appreciate the partnership with Mayor Harris.

And I think we've done some good work.

Now we have a long way to go though, this is not over.

And we gotta be say, vigilant, not only the committee and the task force, but the public at large.

- Does that task force communicate with say DeSoto County or any of the Mississippi communities or even Fayette County Tipton County, some of the Shelby County, or excuse me, the Tennessee counties.

Because that's been a real point of tension in some cases that the rules are so different.

And as Mayor Harris was saying, people can ostensibly come from DeSoto County up and get a shot in Shelby County.

How's the communication on those issues?

- I think it's been really good.

We've invited all our suburban neighbors.

The City of West Memphis takes part in almost every single meeting, City of Brownsville does.

Tipton and Fayette have both been invited and will participate.

I think Somerville participates.

And then Mayor Harris has had a separate effort to loop in much of rural West Tennessee.

But they've been invited the task force and they participate.

I'm not sure anyone from Mississippi participates anymore.

- Yeah.

- Let me just - Yeah, go ahead, yeah.

- put that out here, the Mayor of Brownsville.

'Cause our task force is really big and really takes into account perspectives all across our region.

And I'm only shouting out the Mayor of Brownsville because he's a real active participant and he was on the front page of the Washington Post recently.

And so, I take some encouragement that our task force is making national news because we have had a task force member recently on the front page of the Washington Post.

- Yeah, let me stay with you, Mayor Harris.

I think you both have mentioned schools, public and private being part of the task force.

But I mean the biggest school district, Shelby County Schools obviously has been essentially purely virtual.

It's not clear when they will go to even a hybrid approach let alone, fully in person.

Are you worried about loss of learning, kids getting lost in the system?

Just the potential problems of what now, six months, if you include the tail end of last academic year.

A full fall semester and now going into the spring.

Are you worried about the impact on kids and learning?

- Oh, absolutely.

I think this has been an incredibly challenging time for kids and family.

I think the first priority among all the leaders since the beginning of this is, is trying as best we can to mitigate risks and save lives and reduce the hospitals' strain.

But for me personally, right after that is trying to figure out how we can navigate this new terrain for kids and families.

And as you said, they haven't had in-person learning for most kids in Shelby County.

And I think that's a real particular cross to bear for those families that even the high schoolers probably can navigate it the best because, they're digital natives and they communicate a lot across these devices already.

But even there, there's probably mental health concerns really.

I mean, with that population is to be quite honest.

And what I'd really like to see is something in terms of an in-person option for the younger kids because I think that it's really challenging for them to navigate this new digital learning environment.

So the younger kids, those with special needs.

I wish we could have an option for them.

I think I know what the considerations are.

I know that Shelby County Schools are up against some very tough numbers, we all are.

It's a really tough environment.

But yeah my heart is with those families trying to figure out some solutions.

And in particular, saying, if we can shift some of the attention to the special needs kids and the younger kids and figure out if there's a way to give them an option for some in-person learning here soon.

- Right, and obviously Shelby County is a major funder, the funder along with State, Federal and so on, of Shelby County Schools but also the suburban schools.

Does it frustrate you that most of the suburban schools have been able to do some form of hybrid learning while Shelby County has not?

- It doesn't frustrate me.

I think it's a good thing that some schools have been able to open and safely deliver in-person learning.

I think that this has been really tough.

You've seen things that are not great, like opening and closures and quarantines of classrooms and kids.

These are not great.

And these are things that I'm sure no one likes in terms of trying to administer a school year.

But I think that a lot of the municipalities are trying to give an in-person option as safely as possible.

And so I think that's good and I just wish we could expand it to create more in-person option.

And for my money, I think the, probably the place you start is trying to figure out if there's something you can do for those young kids that can't really navigate the devices and the digital environment.

And the special needs kids that it's probably not appropriate for.

- Eric, can I add something there?

- Yeah, please do.

- I totally a hundred percent agree with Mayor Harris there, it'd be great to get these younger students in.

And that's all the more reason we need more vaccinations.

Because we've gotta finish the healthcare workers, we've gotta finish the 75 and olders and then we can get into the teachers.

And maybe once the teachers have been vaccinated, the Shelby County Schools will feel it's safer to start that in-person learning or at least some kind of hybrid system.

But we've got a long way to go.

So we need more vaccinations to get through the healthcare workers and the folks 75 and older.

- Right, let me go back to Bill.

- And Mayor Strickland, to your point, we had Dr. Steven Threlkeld from Baptist Health Care on the program last week.

And he talked about something that I think has kind of maybe receded in public attention and that is testing.

Is testing still important with a vaccine?

- Absolutely.

And we need to get that word out more, I agree with Dr. Threlkeld.

Like I said, we had free asymptomatic testing all through December, and I think we had almost twelve thousand people participate.

Last weekend, we had the same thing and basically fewer than half, our old numbers participated per day.

So we know people wanted the testing going into the holiday but the importance of testing is still there.

So if you have symptoms there's, I don't know, 20 locations or so you can get it.

If you don't have symptoms, every other weekend we're gonna have continue the partnership with Poplar Healthcare, where you can get free testing.

But it's still important because we have months more to go before we have the vaccine widely distributed.

And until then, the vaccination I mean, the disease is just as deadly.

- Mayor Harris, as you may know there's been some talk in the state legislature.

It started last year, of changing the autonomy of the health department in Memphis and the other major cities to make their directives ultimately a decision by the county mayor in that area.

You appoint the county health department director.

Does that legislation represent a significant change as far as you're concerned?

- It really doesn't represent a change in how we operate in Shelby County.

I think the health department, health department leadership and I we're in harness and we agree on the strategy.

And so if there is some subtle change to the law, to shift it from an appointee to the actual elected representative, I don't know that we have a strong opinion one way or another, because it wouldn't change the operation of Shelby County government.

There may be some other things going on in other parts of the state.

I sometimes read about conflict in other parts of the state one way or another between commissioners and the health department or health department and the mayor and so forth.

I don't know if there is any of that substantially here.

And so I don't think it affects us.

But what I would say is, I would really prefer the legislature to talk about what it can do to help support the end of COVID-19.

And so that's talking about strategies around vaccine in my view is talking about things like uniformity across the state.

We still have contact sports going on across our state, and I know people love sports and I know it's not a popular opinion, but, we could put a pause on contact sports.

And we could still play sports.

We could just play more sports that are a little more safe for kids during this environment until we get a little bit past where we are in terms of COVID-19.

So, I think there's plenty for the State to do but politicians flock towards some of the hot button issues and targeting health departments somehow has become a hot button.

And so instead of vaccine administration and contact sports and uniform rules and mask requirements, you're right.

They're probably gonna spend a lot of time talking about the high profile issues and issues that tend to generate news media print and controversy.