Bloomfield COVID-19 vaccine town hall, December 23, 2020
8:45PM Dec 23, 2020
Speakers:
Keywords:
vaccine
vaccinated
people
question
county
county executive
claremont
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individuals
maya
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immune response
days
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employees
diagnose
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for it. Good afternoon, everybody. I just want to thank everyone for taking time out of their busy schedule to listen to this seminar. This is extremely important as we head into a new phase of this COVID-19 struggle going into 2021 My name is Michael can easier as most of you know. And with me here today we have Dr. Levine balin from Claremont hospital, my Lord Oh, who is the Essex County Health Officer, Karen Moore, who is the township of Bloomfield top officer, and like Fitzpatrick, who is also our town, shape health officer. And we also have our attention administrator Matt Watkins, our Councilwoman Jenny Mendell, Councilman, rich Rockwell and Nick Jono and Ted Campbell. We're going to get started, we'll go through a series of speakers. And then if anybody has any questions, just either raise your hand and there's a tab that allows you to raise your hand or in the chat, just say you want to ask a question, and I will call on you. And we'll go from there. I'm very happy. First up, we have I will let our very own Karen lor Township, a Bluefields health director, give a brief what's going on in Bloomfield, how we're handling COVID and where we're going from here. So Karen.
Hi, Mayor. Hi, everyone, please see well, as the mayor said, this is really an important next step in this whole process and attempting to deal with COVID. I'm really excited that we're finally at this point of having a vaccine and working with the county. What I can tell you is that the county has put tremendous effort effort into coordination and organization with a counselor Bluefield. So Maya is on the call. She'll be talking more about the county efforts. And then also Mike Fitzpatrick, who's on the call. We'll be talking more about the Bloomfield efforts. So thank you.
I will bring in you know, like Karen mentioned, we've had great partnership with Essex County. Our county executive since beginning of March has been on top of this, whether it was testing we were one of the first counties in the state to do our own individual testing. And now we are one of the first counties that is ready to go with vaccination. Our county executive has been on top of this, and we are the only county that is going to have multiple sites. We're going to have four different sites throughout the county. But Bloomfield residents are going to be going on Westfall bolttech for the vaccine and with us here today. She's no stranger to Bloomfield. We have the county health officer Maya, Florida.
It actually will be out do pleasure to be here. As the mayor stated, thank you so much to the mayor for having me on. On behalf of the County Executive. Thank you so much. Yes, so the our first testing site for the county was on March 26. And our first vaccination site will be on December 26. The website that some of you may have used prior the Essex covid.org website is what we will be using to to register for the appointment only vaccine sites as the mayor stated the location for all Bloomfield residents will be West Caldwell tech, the hours for less carbotech will be 12pm to 7pm. six days a week. When we do start testing on January 26. We will be open January 28 January 29 January 30. Then we will we will be closed the 31st first, second and third and then we will start six days a week on January 4. So just to repeat, we will be open on January 26. Monday, January 28. Tuesday January 29 is Wednesday, January December 30. My apologies and then we will open back up On January 4, six days a week from 12 to 7pm. Me appointment only system is right now currently and I know the big question is who's eligible and who's not. We're currently following the federal guidelines along with the New Jersey Department of Health. For the class. The phase one A, which are healthcare workers, and health care workers are those individuals who are paid or unpaid. Those individuals who work in high risk highly infectious settings for COVID-19. This does include home health aides, individuals who work in healthcare settings, and that does not mean we have to be a healthcare professional. That individual can be a secretary janitorial staff, but they are exposed or work in a healthcare facility or a facility that has a high implied interaction with COVID-19. This does also include funeral homes and funeral home directors and funeral home employees. With that, being a kind of the group, the website will go ahead and ask you to identify yourself in that manner, whether you are a healthcare professional, as we continue to move I know there's been everyone's been hearing about phase one, B phase one, phase one C, phase one B, we're not sure when that's coming. Phase One B will be including the essential employees, which are our first responders won enforcement fire alone with prosecutor's office and then also those essential employees within our municipalities. The vaccine that we are receiving at the county is being a journal vaccine, a lot of you may be questioning and maybe having questions in that. So we are not using the Pfizer vaccine. It is what we were given by the state. It was not something that we chose it was it was what we were given in the lobby, but it's apartment of health and that is the majority of vaccine. The majorna vaccine is a two shot vaccine. So you will receive your first shot on let's say the first day, your next shot is 28 days later. Using our appointment system, you will receive a notification 10 days before your second shot two days before your second shot and then again 24 hours before your shot. When you are coming to the vaccination sites, you will be receiving both an email and a text message confirming your appointment, we highly encourage to make sure that you have that email available, whether it is printed, whether it is easily accessible on your cell phone or on via text message. The reason for that we will be using the QR code that is attached to your appointment to be able to confirm and register you for this site for that day, just to assist us with the with the point with just traffic flow. If you had any questions or on able to register via the website, you can go ahead and call our call center. That call center I can put that in the chat mer afterwards. For the
infer individuals, The call center is going to be open Monday through Friday, that's 930 to a 9:30am to 4:30pm we're being more than happy to go ahead and register you lafley on the platform does take insurance. It clearly states if you do have insurance, it is covered. The vaccine itself is given to us for free by the federal government. The the administration for the vaccine that first shows you all your insurance or Medicaid or Medicare will be charged $16.24 I believe and then $28.39. For the second shot, it is very clearly stated, if you do not have insurance, you can of course Go ahead. So just make sure that you click on the I do not have insurance tab and that will be covered by the hersa Act within from our federal government for those individuals that do not have it. We also encourage any individuals to make sure that when they do go ahead and get vaccinated, they wear loose clothing and something that is easily rolled up a sleeve or of something of that nature, just to expedite the process and make it easier for nurses. Other than that the county does again have I'm actually sitting I don't know if you can tell may have been easier. I'm sitting in Donald p right now because we had a press conference for our fifth site which will also be opening soon.
Other than that, I have
no other comments from the county just we really do encourage those individuals who are in that phase to go ahead and get vaccinated. If you have any questions please feel free to reach out To my department, as well as if you have any questions, please go ahead and call our call center line. The website is looking like it's going to be live within the next hour, hour and a half. And of course, Google, of course, like may have been easy, you know, and you can go ahead and get that out social media out as well as our county executive will to along with robo calls that some of you may have received. Thank you so much, man.
Thank you, Maya. And if anybody has any questions from I will wait until the end, and then we'll ask her. Next up. We have throughout COVID-19 the township has formed a great partnership with Claremont hospital. They've been testing our employees. They've, we've arranged for all our employees to get tested after thanksgiving to make sure that everyone was safe to return to work. And the CEO Mary Ellen has been absolutely wonderful. And with us here today, we have Dr. Veen Balam, who is here to talk about the actual vaccine, and how Clara is gone about it and what's going on with Fira just from a COVID-19 perspective, because clarity is one of the worst hospitals in the state with COVID. And, you know, just from our perspective in the township right now, we felt this was very important to get the word out of how safe the vaccine is. You know, for example, right now, about only 30% of our police officers are willing to take the vaccine. So we want to make sure that the word and we educate our public as much as possible about it and Dr. Levine is here today with us.
Thank you, Mayor, thank you for the opportunity and it's been a really great partnership to be able to work with you and everybody in the county in the community. As you know, when this pandemic started in March Claremont got hit early with with the COVID 10 Nemec through that we've seen it seen diagnosed and treated 1000s of patients with COVID and a lot of them very successfully. In more tuned patients were coming in, they're coming in very sick at that time. Even diagnosing COVID was a challenge that was at the at the very onset of the pandemic. As this is evolved Claremont in partnership with rbj. Barnabas health being part of a larger organization has given us real access to great things such as the ability to diagnose right now at Claremont, we have a lot of equipment that enables us to diagnose COVID rapidly, we have multiple machines we have set yet machines, we have added machines. There is no shortage of our ability to be able to diagnose screw. Beyond diagnosing we have some of the latest and best technologies and medications available
to treat COVID.
Currently, some of the latest, the latest, most proven medications include monoclonal antibodies, Eli Lilly, as well as regeneron, which we have, we also have plasma which was we were one of the first in the state to be offering it by partnering with the Mayo Clinic. So we have a group of physicians here on staff that have since March has really kind of brought together the best of every specialty, and the latest literature reviews, outcome space, medicine to be able to treat all the patients that come to our MOS. And then regarding what we're seeing today, you know, in March when the pandemic hit, hospitals were overrun with endemic and and people were very afraid to come in for medical care. What we're seeing today is a very different picture. Today, we're seeing a lot of COVID patients come in, most of them are being treated successfully and sent home to be with our families. One thing I really want to emphasize is the importance that if you have any other medical issues going on that you shouldn't ignore them. So in the first round of the pandemic, we we recognize that people were, you know, the number of heart attacks throughout the country dropped by 50%. Now we all know heart attacks just don't stop happening. But people were so fearful to come to the hospital to get treated, that they were having these heart attacks and staying at home. What I want to emphasize is rW j and Claremont is completely committed to making sure that if you have continuing are needing medical attention, please do not delay that medical attention. We're making sure our facility is very safe. And we're segregating the COVID patients from the non COVID patients. Every single patient gets treated. So don't put your any medical attention that you need to ignore it. So please come in to get any medical attention that you need. Now in terms of the vaccination, we we started vaccinating this past Monday. We have the Pfizer vaccine There's two vaccines that we just talked about Madonna and Pfizer were both granted approval by the federal government FDA Kisha, I'd like to start delivering vaccine. Now they don't have a full approval, they have what's called an emergency authorization use. So what that means that they've done rigorous testing, and then looked at complications and side effects. Asians, so you can I can say something.
The only thing God was promised in return, so I, so there's some people that say, No. Yeah, so just happy new place. Okay, thank you, you should, you should there, the President is making some people then.
So the important thing I think we need to know is that Pfizer vaccine or both, their mechanism of action is very, very similar. The big misconception about vaccines is that they contain virus. You know, historically, when we get our mumps, rubella or chickenpox vaccine, they typically do contain virus. This is a new technology that was used to create this vaccine, the both of these companies utilize something called a messenger RNA model, the messenger RNA does not have that virus within it, it is actually a replica of DNA that goes into your body, it does not go into the nucleus of your cell, which is the brain of your cells in your body, but it goes into the cells, and it makes your body's immune system, identify this messenger RNA and create what we call spike proteins. It's your immune response to dismiss
the the two, the two type of
journal and Pfizer need to have second business. So the first is what we see is we see your body create an immune response. So then you can start fighting this virus. But to get a full immune response you need the second is for the Pfizer vaccine, we need the second dose of 21 days, and for the Madonna you needed at 28 days or about approximately a month, once you will have you will have the ability to fight the virus moving forward. Both manufacturers report the efficacy or the ability of this virus vaccine to work against the virus at 95%. So that they are claiming that 95% chance of you being protected from this virus by getting this vaccine. I've heard over and over again. You know, should I get it? Should I wait? Should I see if it's safe, I can tell you having lived through, you know serving as a chief medical officer being on the frontline being in the hospital since March, that the vaccine is going to be much safer than getting COVID 19. There's so much about the disease, we don't know there's so much about the long term effects that we don't know that if you have the ability to get the vaccine to protect yourself and your loved ones, I think it's very important. I myself will get the vaccine, my parents are in their 70s will get the vaccine, because I do believe that it is safe. If there's any and just so you know, we started rolling out our vaccination program for our employees, just like the public, there's a whole categorization system,
we
we basically give our our primary caregivers of COVID patients the highest category, like our emergency room, doctors and nurses, our intensive care, people that are taking care of patients daily, they are the first ones to be able to get vaccinated. And then over time we we want to ensure all health care, employees get vaccinated. We've now throughout the system probably put out several 1000 vaccines. Overall, we've not had any major issues. There have been some small side effects and minor side effects I mean, elevation blood pressure, itchiness, cough, etc. But nothing, nothing. We have not witnessed any serious side effects. So this will be an ongoing process. When you do get your vaccine, the FDA asks that you have an app so that way we can categorize any sort of side effects so they can watch in real time as the vaccines are being rolled out. If any future side effects of being discovered appear. So I think I'll stop there because we could probably go on for hours. But thank you for the opportunity to partner and a partner with the Department of Health and with with the county and we look forward to really having a successful relationship and and moving beyond this pandemic.
Thank you Dr. Brown. We appreciate you being here today. The The first question was, there's been some side effects of the vaccine, who is at risk of developing serious side effects. And that's more for Dr. balin.
Yes, so right now, there's no defined personal. So the people that we worry about the most, for people that have cancer, and they already have a reduced immune response. So people that are on immunosuppression, because they're getting treatment for cancers, we worry about them, because even you get the vaccine, your body's not going to create the immune response that somebody that, you know, didn't have cancer him. So there needs to be thorough discussion around that. The few the few episodes have minor side effects that we've witnessed, or people that have a lot of medical issues, such as hypertension, and diabetes. So overall, it's a very safe profile. And there's no single type of category that we worry about, you know, I get I get the question, what about pregnant women? What about breastfeeding? There is no data out right now that studies app specific groups. So we don't have a clear answer for that question.
Next question is when is it anticipated that seniors with underlying conditions will be able to get the vaccine and I think this is more for Maya? I think seniors as of right now, with underlying conditions, we're putting that one big category along with frontline workers. I don't think there's a set date as of today that they're going to be scheduled. But you know, my if you want to go into a little more,
I think he said it all merits exactly if we do not ever know exactly when that will be occurring. That next one the phase, and that is for 75 and older individuals. And then that 65 and over falls into that one see. But once we do know, again, we will do the same aggressive marketing campaign robo calls, and then also get it over to the municipalities proposing.
Thank you, Maya, can we be notified at what phase is being vaccinated? Yes, absolutely. We're going to be on top of this making sure the public knows where we're at and what we need to do to get the word out.
I've read that the maternal vaccine might be given in two dose strengths, the first being lower than the second. Is this the way that we can expect the program to be handled?
Dr. balin?
So yes, the second so I guess the question really is asking about, so the second dose typically has a stronger effect. So people's symptoms are going to be much stronger. So any, you know, the pain at the site of injection, people feel really have muscle aches, you know, feel fatigue, feel winded, and it's typically those types of symptoms we see after the second dose and not after the first. And for that reason, when you do get the second dose, we really even if even our employees, we really recommend that they take you know, 2448 hours off so that that way they can recover from that second dose, because we do believe that it'll be it'll have a significant impact on your body's immune system, and will cause muscle aches, fatigue, and sometimes we've seen a cough.
How many per day will be vaccinated. I believe right now the county executive has set it up where the first couple of weeks we're going to be at 250, then go to 500 and then go to 750 per day, as we go on.
Is there any estimate when people at the bottom of the priority list will be vaccinated? Were parents in our 40s with young children with no health condition. As of right now, there's no set timeline but I believe the governor said possibly in March or April is realistic for somebody in your category. And then we got wise workout going all the way to West Caldwell. When there is designated location in West Orange in the former cave, Kmart This is far for those of us with cars, let alone those we use public transportation. The safer designated by are in conjunction with our Health Officers, for our senior citizens we'll be working with setting up rides up to what's called law when everything gets situated. So we'll be working with you to make sure you get up there. And it's you know, I know it seems far but it's actually not that far. It's only about 1015 minutes away. You can even take 46 or Bloomfield Avenue Is someone who has COVID in the past? Will they have to wait to get vaccinated?
So yes, so one of the one of the things that I find both Pfizer majority recommend is, is that you've had COVID, in the last 90 days, that you wait to get the vaccine. So once that 90 day mark is up, you will be eligible to get the vaccine. And the reason is, is that when you get COVID, we don't know if you've
had a mild dose of COVID. Or if you've got,
you know, a severe case of COVID. So we don't know what your body's immune response is, when you get the vaccine, we can predict, and it's much more targeted and organized, what kind of reaction that medication causes. So we'll know that your immunity is effective after the vaccines given. So one of the things that I think I see in the community a lot is that people say, Well, I only had COVID, I'm fine, you know, I can't get it again.
So we don't know that
just because you had come in yet antibodies to that, and those antibodies are going to protect you and how long they're going to protect you. So I think once that 90 days are up, it's going to be very important that you still get vaccinated.
I have heard that it's not it is not advisable to mix vaccines, for example, don't get Pfizer then get Madonna, how will be how will we be sure that when we get the second shot, it's going to be with the same type of vaccine.
So the delivery process is very complicated. I'm sure it's going to be for you guys, as well. And there's a lot of organization that purse on the back end. But it is very important that the same vaccine is given for dose one as is for dose two. So on the back end, we will be organizing that as well as the town's to ensure that that happens.
Yeah, and one thing for those going to the county site, when you're there for your first shot, you will be making an appointment for yourself. So that's kind of you know, and it's going to be 21 days after the first shot. So the county is regulated. And right now the state is designated Essex County to get the maternal vaccines.
My hair if you don't mind, we're actually going to when you schedule your first shot, you will automatically be given your 28 day appointment.
Oh, so there you go. Thank you, Maya. Will people with high blood pressure be able to take the vaccine?
Yes, they will.
To be clear, the township saying they will shuttle people to the vaccination site if they don't have access to private transportation. So right now we are with a conjunction with the county executive. Other mayors are trying to we're going to arrange days when our senior citizens can go as a whole. Whether it's 50 out of pop, and we will provide through our dial ride and track senior services that we have, we will provide rides to seniors that don't have access to transportation. If one has been cancer free for over 20 years, are they still considered to have underlying conditions?
They are but if you've been cancer free for 20 years, I should not have an issue with getting the vaccine. It's somebody that actively has cancer that's on immunosuppressant medications to fight the cancer. Those are the patients that we worry about.
Do they know how long the protection lasts from the vaccine? Will we need boosters in the future?
That is to be determined. So these vaccines, like we said are under emergency use use authorization so that they are going to continue to study the effects how long they last, whether you'll have antibodies, we may need boosters. So right now, we do not know fully how long this protection will be. But I assume it will be at least for a year. But time will tell
anyone other than seniors, I'm assuming this is for transportation. As of right now, we haven't gotten that far. Right now we're just concerned with our senior citizens who are going to be in the near future.
We're going to need to get to the west Caldwell site. And then another question is What about those with asthma?
For the vaccines, though,
that would not preclude them from getting the vaccine.
Okay, perfect.
So again, it doesn't look like we have any other questions in the chat. If anybody has questions in the future, please feel free to email me and we will get it to firemonkey and Dr. Balam. And I just want to thank Dr. Balam Maya, and although there's how old will there be social visits and if seniors aren't be transported in buses, we will arrange for multiple buses to go up when we get the seniors there. And then we have what about teachers? As of right now, I guess teachers aren't in the essential category like fire, DMS and police. So it should be determined when teachers can go. Linda, did you have a question?
You're on mute right now. Okay. Yeah.
Okay. Can you just repeat the website
and the phone number for the call? The website is Essex covid.org. And my if you could just go over the website, the phone number? Sure, no
problem. So
the phone number actually sent it over to Diana, you'll be able to put that into the into the into the chat and then as well as Essex covid.org.
Thank you.
And again, estimated date of one v shots as of right now, we don't know. It's to be determined. But if everything goes to plan, you know, and don't hold me to this, but we can see it happening probably mid to late January, if not early February.
So again, I just want to thank everyone who participated, especially our doctor Balam, my lord, oh, our Karen lore, and this is very important to get the word out when I'm eligible for the vaccine, I will be getting it. You know, I just want to make it clear that you know, that's why we want to Dr. balin here today. It is safe. We're trying to get the word out to our frontline workers, who it's very, very important, you know that 30% number is, is low. And we want to make sure as many of our frontline workers get it as soon as possible as soon as they're eligible. So it's extremely important. Again, I just want to thank everyone we will be in Happy Holidays. We will be looking to have this when we can probably sometime in January and but just stay on the lookout for as the state changes and updates when we go into the one B category. We will put it out in town in the township sites and social media and everything. So again, thank you everyone and have a great weekend.
