001welcome kevin i like your sign in the back sorry i'm dominating the meeting all right so we are ready to roll we're live great thank you emma again thank you um there aren't enough thank yous for everything you do and um we just like an update if possible on the regional educator vaccine days and any new information that you have as well as how i think for me you cut out at the end of their gene but um i think you're talking about the um the school days for hampshire county teachers and and how that was looking um let me pull up so northampton and amherst have chosen as regional vaccine sites to allocate 25 of our weekly amount that were distributed from the state to prioritize teacher and staff vaccines for the next four
002weeks we did reach out um meredith o'leary reached out to the head of the superintendents which i believe for the group is in east hampton um with the plan and uh this week um i we're not sure exactly i know meredith and i were speaking about um planning with who would be the ideal group for this first vaccine clinic but i know that for amherst let me pull up our clinic schedule um so the link for that clinic will be coming out through i believe mike morris to the teachers in amherst and for this week our clinic would be on thursday the 25th starting at 6 30. that's what we're planning on right now thanks emma and so the link is going to come from the superintendent a lot it's a and it's a live
003link that will go to um everyone that's eligible in the hampshire county so i'm not sure exactly who it will go to if it will first be prioritized to that k through five group of staff with those um the younger children or uh if it would be a certain um work force uh like paraple para or um you know the extra support people um so i don't know the specifics of that uh but these will be for hampshire county on a broader sense i know that the john musianty health center was reached out to by by gateway school systems to try and help partner with them and hampshire regional schools to try and offset the amount of vaccines that are needed for hampshire county but northampton as well will be releasing their clinic date um
004which we tried to schedule our clinics at the same time to help with the distribution of everyone's needs for signing up so those two clinic live clinic links will be sent out into that email all right and just as a follow-up and i completely understand if you don't know the answer to this but who decides what cohort that first live link goes to who makes that decision yeah i know meredith o'leary and i had discussed that but um we hadn't come with an answer for that so i'm not sure all right well we do have um we do have staff that are still trying to get appointments like thousands tens of thousands of other hampshire county residents and as that date is coming up fairly soon um do you have any idea when um because
005i know krista and i are both working really hard with other uh colleagues to help people get appointments we have um quite a lengthy list of staff members who are assisting those who can't who whether for various reasons whether it's a tech issue or just have not been able to to hit the magic button to get a vaccine so that we do have a number of staff that that have been waiting for this um this live link to come out and knowing you know we were all given the dates the four dates when educators were going to be prioritized so given that it's next thursday and those of us that have been on the cbs website and have been on the mass backs website know that you really you basically have to have everything set
006up and ready to just hit click um so they're you know people are understandably anxious uh knowing that it's coming up and being fearful that because they're not in front of their computer when that link gets sent out by a super school district superintendent that they'll miss out on it yeah that's that's definitely understandable and and something we're trying to avoid too um but it's so hard to strategize around what's the best way to make it easy um so i totally i hear you gene so what can we tell those people um to have to make them feel better because i know i'm an early riser you know so i was up between 5 and 5 30 and had my multiple devices uh set up which is basically what it takes right now i know
007that the number of doses are increasing and we're very happy about that um but again i just want to convey that there there is a sense of anxiety that um not knowing when this is going to get sent out and who is going to be sent to if it's just being if it's being um the field is narrowing down to a certain cohort a staff not knowing ahead of time that you need to be home or you need to have um stable wi-fi um and you need to have everything set up in order to uh to click on the link when before all the doses are gone which leads to another question which again probably don't know the exact answer but do we have any sense of about how many doses would be available for
008each of those four educator days approximately yeah let me do the math right now [Music] um so for each day over both areas since right now northampton and amherst are only being allotted a total of a thousand a little bit over a thousand pfizer is 292.5 doses a day and it's we hope that changes yeah so we all do but is that person or is that total that's total okay and that's for one one location in northampton one location in amherst or the two northampton locations and the one amherst so i believe northampton only has one location um at northampton senior center uh and we have our site here at the bang center so that's a cumulative amount of 292 doses okay so approximately 300 doses between two sites ish um so 150 uh ish
009for each site and again this is open to all hampshire county correct correct so all hampshire county educators who filled it who fit into that pre-k to 12 category so it's not just educate it's all school staff correct anyone that works in a pre-k to 12 setting up correct um i see ben doing mental math um so that again that just shows uh that there's going to be a level of anxiety as to for those that are waiting for this um for these educator days to come um that there's there's a limited supply yeah the the only way that we couldn't open it up to the entire state was if we held these private clinics with 25 of our allocation if we were to hold a new clinic it would have to be open to
010all teachers throughout the state and it wouldn't be with any more vaccine so i'm probably going to answer my own question but would you suggest that people that educators school staff continue to go on to the cvs website continue to go on the mass facts and do the pre-registration and not depend on on this as being a sure thing absolutely um and and umass as a site as well and anywhere that you're able to find appointments um i will say that appointment availability as people find appointments that might be closer we are seeing this kind of domino effect where appointments are booked and then so that's just something to be aware of um recently we have been engaging our wait list for clinics more often so if you do get on the wait list perhaps
011we might get down to you through the asip clinical indicators for how we prioritize vaccine doses so if you do get on one of our wait lists we are actively using those because we are having people book appointments from outside the area or even inside the area but then finding that appointment sooner at a different site so just to keep that in mind but yes gene definitely people should continue to sign up anywhere they can okay great and for anybody that's listening what's the process for getting on the wait list uh for our sites you it would be during an open enrollment time of a clinic that you might not have a clinic appointment time available when you get there if you don't get there right away like when the clinic link opens but you
012can say add me to the waiting list and you would register that way to be added to their clinic's waiting list in prepmod the waiting lists are a cl it's a clinic based system not a expanded wait list forever so that's just it's clinic specific when you sign up for that in terms of the state the state does now have this option where you can sign up for to be called or contacted when appointments do come up and in your phase is open for mass vaccine sites that's currently only available for those mass vaccine sites but you can find that on i don't know if it's the vax finder or the mass.gov link but it's up there i've heard it's very easy to do and it doesn't engage you for those appointment until you're eligible
013which is nice so it kind of keeps you in the background until your face comes up and then all of a sudden you'll be notified if an appointment gets to you and you have up to 24 hours to make that appointment which is really nice um so it's kind of like a placeholder so if you're not someone who's by your computer every day or maybe by your phone with a text message um it's nice to stay connected for when appointments come available all right and i know this question has come up a lot because right now in the united states we have three vaccines which are were approved as far as i'm concerned the best vaccine is the one that you can get would you agree to that with that statement that you should not
014search for the perfect dose like you shouldn't be searching for moderna versus pfizer versus johnson johnson you should um the best vaccine for anybody is the one that you're able to get i muted myself um because there's some background noise here so yeah i mean i think dr fauci said it i think you say it as well um i mean all of these have a hundred percent of being able to prevent hospitalized critical illnesses so any vaccine is better than no vaccine and anything that any of us can do our part right now to get vaccines as quickly as we're eligible and they an appointment comes up will help us to end this pandemic more quickly so for the first time i have a day job question because it's been posed to me and i
015i'm not a public health expert here and i'm not involved with the uh the teacher clinics but but could you say for the record into the public the the teacher clinics that we're talking about right there that's not it's not just open to teachers it's people who work in schools that it's open to correct it's anyone who works k through uh pre-k through 12 grades 12. and that would be exclusive facilities department correct okay i just wanted to hear that out loud and para's and esps and nutrition staff and all of the um other individuals who help support our school systems thank you yep transportation facilities maintenance we're we are an educational community all right um i want to segue it's a different topic um we're looking at bringing more people back in to our
016buildings yay but um we're still talking about wearing masks and there are so many different types of masks that are available and i'd like to hear from you what are the best types of masks that um students and staff should be wearing yeah so the best mess that individuals can wear if it was a disposable mask would probably be those and i say disposable like it's 2019 and we only wore them for one patient room or one exposure would be those kn 95 masks those are um those have the best filtration that's available for us in the community beyond that i think a triple layer cloth mask or double masking is also really great but you really want to make sure with those cotton masks that it's a tight fiber to be able to reduce
017the micron size if i i've always found this interesting that if you do the blow test there's probably some other name for it right but like if you were wearing your mask and not that you want to get close to a flame but if you were trying to blow out a candle with your mask on you shouldn't be able to blow out the candle right the mask is supposed to prevent all of that expiration from going out into the environment to decrease the amount of exposure for those around us so um i i found that to be a really fun test to kind of do with my kids at home when all this began so they could think about how masks work and everything so that's kind of a fun test to do at home
018if you don't mind looking silly which i certainly don't so i think as long if you know that you have that good fit around your face meaning that it's it's tight around your face uh and what we call the filtration which is the the size of the fiber if you have the fit and filtration piece then you're doing a great job and i just want to applaud like everybody on how far we've come with meth yes we're meeting virtually right now so we don't need them but i think we've come from being really um culturally uh defensive about wearing them to it's kind of i know my face sometimes if i forget to put mine on i'm like oh my goodness it's like me being without my glasses where's my mask so thank you everybody
019for working hard with it do you have an opinion on the netgators oh yeah i was just gonna ask that i know neck gaitors are comfortable i think they're really chic um and have some nice patterns but they're they tend to be made out of um the stretchy fabrics the spandex type fabrics those that are not good in terms of being anti-microbial they're not good fibrous they don't have that tight knit and if you do the candle blow test then it's not going to pass so neck gaiters while being chic and very like good with the patterns i think in terms of if we're thinking about covid and making sure that we have that good fit and filtration that they're not recommended along with well along with just a quick yeah i was gonna say
020can we follow up about bandanas because i think um they also have some wonderful patterns and it can be very chic but yeah i would say bandanas are on the same kind of wavelength krista that really these should be um masks that fit well um and will pass the the blow test i know my i have several bandanas at home that look good in my hair when i'm doing some chores outside but wouldn't pass the test like i have this really nice looking oh rock cameras fouchy mask love it but look at what happens it's not going to fit whoever designed it who is lovely but it just doesn't fit good around my nose so while this makes me look really cool and smart it's not a good mask because it's not going to keep
021everyone safe because my air my breath is going to come up and over that so that's something to think about so i keep it right here hanging by my computer because i still love it and it makes me think of the science and dr fauci but i tend to wear this mask or my nice double triple ply cloth masks that some family members have made i have a very quick question for ben i'm looking at the time and i know 4 30 is um approaching quickly um ben just a question the tents are not up right now around school buildings um i know we're hopefully leaving winter behind we can all hope i know do you have an anticipated date when those will get set back up again not even an anticipated date i have
022a scheduled date the week of uh april break we'll be putting them up so like because there is a concern because you know if you live in new england you know we have snow season mud season wet season and wind season and we're kind of like teetering towards the actually the middle of wind season so that's our concern with the uh with the tents right now but yeah we want to get them up as soon as we can safely do so but it'll be by the end of april break it'll be up so will you use will you be using april break time to set them up or will you start when the younger students are are back on april 5th yeah we're we're trying to get into a couple areas like you know like
023cracker uh well crocker we're waiting on a new tent but yeah the the elementary schools we're going to hit first so if we i can promise you april vacation but we are going to try to look for areas of opportunity before that and we all also know that uh whether you you might be able to predict the weather in advance but you got to take that with the result this time of year yeah unfortunately for our staff they're going up regardless of what the weather is over april break so we will um we will hope for very very pleasant weather is there anything else stephen you want to any concerns or it's no shoots bury this morning in the rosa muddy so from wind season to mud season right there all right so unless anybody
024else has any questions nothing all right then so i guess we'll all have a good weekend i'm getting stabbed in the arm tomorrow in chicopee so i'm excited about that that's very exciting are you going to the chicopee cvs yep nice that's great good for you waking up so early actually paid off for me for once [Laughter] well and hopefully we'll suddenly get flooded with tons of more vaccines so none of us will have to do that anymore but thank you everybody for for having these discussions and welcoming me to the meeting and it's a fun group i get to enjoy steven's hat in the sign shout out already folks well we'll see you on the other side bye thank you