 So welcome everyone. We're going to start in just a minute and we're going to allow just a moment or two for some people to get connected. While we do that, we want to say hello and welcome to all our Amherst community members and we thank you for joining us today. We will be holding short live chats like this on Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon for the next couple of weeks. In this webinar, we ask you to from the Zoom application click the Q&A button to type in your question for us. Your questions will only be visible to the hosts of this meeting. Additionally, if you'd like to join the conversation and speak, please use the Zoom raise hand button or press star 9 from your telephone. We ask that you introduce yourself before asking your question and to maintain a civil discourse. As a reminder, this webinar is being recorded. So please refrain from asking any personally identifying health questions. So today joining your town manager, Paul Balkaman and I is Amherst health director Julie Fetterman. Good morning or good afternoon to you both. Welcome afternoon. Paul, before we launch into Q&A, do you have any updates for us? Sure. Well, first off, thanks Brianna for setting this up and also for this is the first we're broadcasting live on YouTube, which is really exciting. It's another new innovation for us. It's always every week. There's something new. It's really awesome. This morning, the town budget coordinating group met the budget coordinating group is a group that was established for many years, but it's also in the town charter includes representatives from the town council, including the town council finance committee, representatives from the board of library trustees and representatives from the school committee. And neither is the group. It's not a decision making group per se, and that it reaches it works by consensus. But it includes superintendent of schools, the library director and the town manager as well. So I called this meeting to or to together because of the obviously change reality of our budget situation for the current fiscal year, and for the next fiscal year. And that meeting was recorded and you can watch that independently. So I'm not going to detail what we went into, but we really talked about a schedule on how we were going to address the budget going forward. And the key things on this is that we will have a major presentation to the budget coordinating group, the full committees of this town council, the school committee, and the board of library trustees on Monday, May 11 at 630. And that's when we will be making our presentation on where we are financially as a community, where we think we're going and seeking some budget guidelines from the, from the town council. In short, what we're asking to do is to be able to have a one month budget that will be approved by the town council that will get us through the month of July, and that we will then work during the month of June and July to establish a budget for the rest of the month. We don't want to keep doing one month budgets, we want to keep them relatively short. We want to, we'd like to be able to do just one, just because of the economic uncertainty. So that's where that's, that's what you can expect to see the next key date is Monday is Monday, May 11. There is a finance committee meeting today if you're watching live at two or three o'clock today, in which we the finance committee of the council will be talking about a little bit about what we talked about at the budget coordinating group. And there'll be some discussion at Monday's council meeting. So we are, you know, while Julie is handling all the coven 19 health related things. Sonia Allridge and our finance team arm, our position to have been working to look at the budget thing so there's a lot of things happening at that simultaneously, and we're getting them all done. So that's sort of just the update I'm really happy that Julie's here today because this is really about health updates but we can answer any questions that anybody has. Thank you Paul. First I wanted to start with thanking everyone in Amherst for what an incredibly good job they're doing social distancing, staying home, cleaning of surfaces. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. And we really appreciate all that everyone is doing and we understand the stresses that you're under. We want to continue to invite you to go to our coven website where Brianna has listed a lot of resources for you and your family, because we know just how hard it is to be staying home. Now let me ask you, I believe there's also either an email or a phone number that people can put things forward to about either resources that they know of or resources that they don't know where to look for. Absolutely Julie so from, from the Amherst COVID-19.org website. You'll have links to both my email and the info at Amherst MA.gov and that's a general informational inbox or we encourage people to ask their questions, even when they have follow up questions from from these chats that we're having to send their information there and we'll get them more answers or provide those resources that they're looking for. Great. Thank you Brianna. The other thing I wanted to point out to people and I think it may have been only a week ago when we talked about this phone number, but Cooley Dickinson has a COVID-19 phone number and that number is available seven days a week. And it is 888-554-4234. I'll repeat the number again, but the reason this number is important is because if you don't have a healthcare provider, you can call this number and be linked to how to get one. If you need health insurance, you can also find out how to get that through this phone number. Also, if you have questions about COVID-19 about whether you're having symptoms or how you should access possibly getting testing, you can call this phone number. So I really want everyone to know about it. It's 888-554-4234. I don't have any other particular updates. I think we're all in this pattern of just having to stick with the social distancing and the cleaning. And this is where it gets really hard because as we know, Massachusetts is at that point where we're seeing a surge in cases. We also do feel that in Western Mass, some of that surge is going to come a little bit later. So the next two weeks continue to be times where it would be really, really great for people to just keep hanging in there and staying home as much as possible. So I think now we'll open it up to questions. Great. Thank you for the update, Julie. We have some questions here that were submitted, and I can launch right into those. We have someone asking or telling us that they've been making face coverings and they want to know how and who they can give them to to be most helpful to our community. That's great. We've got two staff members at Town Hall, Jen Moisten and Angela Mills, who will be collecting face masks and distributing them. I'm not sure where the physical collection point is yet. Paul, do you know if we have that established or should we have people just contact the info line for now? I think just contacting the info line or town manager at AmherstMA.gov. Either one will get you to the right place. The program is being initiated by the community participation officers and there'll be some information on the COVID-19.org website. And the idea on it is to have people both donate material to create masks and then to distribute masks to the underserved population who might not have access to cloth masks otherwise. So it's a really interesting initiative, ambitious goal of thousands of masks. So we're going to need a lot of help and need a lot of donations. So hoping that people will step up and help us with with other members in our community who might not have access to selling materials or selling machines and things like that. And I imagine we'll be releasing more details about how that can how that will all transpire shortly. So again, we'll put that out on our social media channels, but also on our website in the Amherst COVID-19.org site. Okay, so I have another question here. From a parent, I believe they don't understand why their kids can't play baseball with other kids. You know they're more than six feet apart when they're playing most of the time. Any advice on that or any sort of recommendations on outlets for these, these kids. One of the things about all ball games and games that use equipment is then you're going to be sharing the equipment. So again, it surfaces that are being touched. You know, in baseball that ball is going around and around to a lot of different people. So are the bats. So in order again to really stick with the strict rules around social distancing, we really don't want people playing games with balls, frisbees, that kind of thing. Great outlets are bike riding with your family and going for long walks. We're seeing there was an article in the paper the other day about a neighborhood where folks are going to see how many miles they can log in the whole neighborhood. I think they've already hit 5000 miles. So I think even if you come up with little games like that within your own family that involves some physical fitness and outdoor activities, especially with the good weather coming. You know, calisthenics, we used to make our kids run around the outside of the house and we would count the laps while we just sat and relaxed. So it's, you know, the most simple and basic of things that are just right out there in front of you are going to be the ones that are sort of the healthiest to do rather than gathering in groups. And just throw it and jump in on that because it sounds like oh you're 90 feet away or 60 feet away, but you're really not. You're standing next to each other all the time. You're the catchers next to the batter. Kids are sitting on the bench together. It's just, you know, it's too much opportunity and too much attraction for kids to not do that. What our family is doing is push-up. How many push-ups can you do in the course of a day? So people are doing them, you know, my son is doing it with all of his friends. They're doing like 300 push-ups a day. They're doing it 10 at a time, but like 30 times a day they get down, do 10 push-ups and they check it off and then they is competition with all his friends in their own homes to count how many push-ups they can do. Well, take a couple zeros off of that for me and then that's where I am basically. I like that. So we have another question here and before I ask it, I just want to remind those who are in attendance, if you would like to ask a question, use the Q&A button or raise your hand from Zoom, star nine from your phone. The question I'm about to ask, I'm going to share my screen so while you're answering it, I can have some resources for folks. The question is, this person saw a jump in cases in Amherst and they're wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that, what that means. Yes, that was probably today. Yesterday at the Center for Extended Care, they had someone who was ill in the middle of the night and they were tested rapidly and came back positive for COVID-19. The Center for Extended Care has now tested 42 people, or should say 48 people, 42 have come back negative and four have come back positive. And anyone who has a pending test, along with the folks who've come back positive are in their own special wing at Center for Extended Care. All the families have been contacted before the testing began, and then afterwards with the results, they've got excellent communication going with families. And we've been in close communication with the Center for Extended Care over the past five to six weeks, and they have been taking excellent care of their residents and had really great infection control guidelines in place. They are also, a few weeks ago, they really had to stop having visitors and they have what they call glass door visits, so they arrange for residents to be able to meet with folks with their families through a door. A staff person is there to help assist with using a telephone at the same time. So they're taking really excellent care of their residents and we are in constant communication with them around the resources they may need to continue to serve their residents. We were very heartened to hear that already 42 people have come back negative from their residents. But that is why you've seen a jump in the numbers basically within about 36 hours in Amherst. So, feedback. So, the, you would expect that to happen. Yes, yes, we have been, as I say, very pleased with all the controls put in place in all of our congregate settings in Amherst. By definition, a congregate setting is going to have some people coming in from the outside, and no matter how good screening techniques are and, and all of that, as we know, especially with asymptomatic transmission. It, it's, it's almost inevitable that there will be some cases. And so the key to that is, is limiting the number of cases is identifying them early using very strict isolation and quarantine protocols. And so while this is not unexpected that it might happen, we are feeling very confident about the protocols in place, the care being taken, all of the protective equipment that is necessary to do the work is present and on site. We are in constant contact with them in to help in any way with any pieces of this process that they might need support with. And they are also in very close communication with the State Department of Public Health. There is an online system called MassMap where that is activated during emergencies. Once the coronavirus began hitting the United States, all the nursing homes in Massachusetts started using this system to be checking in daily with the Department of Public Health. And as soon as anything happens, all that information gets put through an electronic system into the Department of Public Health. It communicates with the same system that, that local boards of health use. But of course we're all in contact anyway, these are just sort of the overlapping electronic systems that keep us linked with the data. But we still use all the old fashioned communication techniques also. Thank you Julie. Oh, I've got a little bit of feedback too. Hopefully you can hear me. I'm going to quickly just share my screen so that you can see. What's that? It is, I don't know what's going on. I don't think I have it. I'm going to just share my screen quickly so you can see where every day the Amherst count is updated. There's a lot of places where you can check the Hampshire County and Massachusetts count and right now you should be seeing our Amherst COVID 19.org website. This is updated Monday through Friday usually in the mornings with the Amherst case count Hampshire County case count in Massachusetts, as well as linking to the daily MIMA briefing which has a wealth of information. If people really want to dig deep and see charts and data. We update this as well daily in the morning. And just for someone who's on our regular website. There's a bar across every single web page if you click where it says COVID 19 it's going to have that updated information as well with case counts so if you're looking for local case counts that's those are two places where you can find those with relative use. Julie, can you just jump in, Julie, what constitutes a case and that number will only go up, right? Correct, that number will only go up. So that's a really good question, Paul, because we've all heard a lot, maybe more than we want to hear about testing capabilities. So a case is determined. If someone has had a positive test for COVID 19. So it means that they had to contact a healthcare provider who then screams them in for testing they got the test, they got the results back. So that's a positive case. So those are the ones that are being used for contact tracing which you've heard about also so when we get someone who actually has a positive lab test. They become a case, and then all of their contacts are found to see who needs to be going into quarantine for two weeks to see if they may develop disease. So what has been happening a lot and which will change with more availability of testing throughout Massachusetts and the country is more people will be getting tested. So that will also also cause the numbers to go up. What we know now is two things. One is that many people are just getting clinically diagnosed by their healthcare provider because there aren't enough tests. If they're contacting their provider and they're mildly ill and they meet a certain criteria, the healthcare provider will tell them to isolate at home for a certain period of time. And they will then also tell them to let their close contacts know family members work, work associates that they've been a contact and they will quarantine and that's all done just through the healthcare provider. Because when we're tracking diseases, we always go by a confirmed lab value. Now that's why you hear so much discussion about the fact that it's critical to test because when we're not testing, we're not seeing the numbers. So when you see that we have 22 cases in Amherst, that represents those who are able to get tested. Very likely there are people who are sick and have been told to stay home. And then very likely as we've heard more and more recently, there are people who are mildly ill or asymptomatically are positive for COVID-19 and don't know it, don't feel it and have not been tested. So these numbers are not currently are not particularly representative of disease in Amherst. You still have to think that it's quite possible that there's a lot of disease around us that could be communicated to others. And if you were one of those 22 and you went through the regent and you isolated and then you're finished, your number doesn't come off. That number just is cumulative. It doesn't deduct anybody who's been here. Yes, for now we're just putting up a cumulative number because that feels useful because it was the public really wanted to know how many people have gotten it. Now over time we may look at well should we break down those numbers in different ways, but at this point, especially because they're small numbers, it seems to make sense to just have how many people have gotten COVID-19 during this period of time. And if we if we change the breakdown of the numbers that will be well explained on the website. Great. Thank you. We have a question here about face coverings and this person wants to know that they often see people without them out and about. And who do they call is this required in Amherst to have a face covering and maybe speak a little bit more about where we are with that. Sure. So face coverings have been strongly recommended by the Center for Disease Control Department of Public Health. And so in accordance with their guidance, we strongly recommend that if you are going to be out somewhere and you're not going to be able to keep six foot social distance that you have a face covering. And that can be a mask. It can be your turtle neck pulled up a bandana. It's just really important that the fabric be very thick and then you not be able to see light through it because otherwise the virus can get through the porousness of that fabric. So we're not taking complaints about people not wearing masks. It is a choice, especially because it's truly the social distancing the more than six feet that we really want people to be doing. Excuse me. We know that especially if people are going into a business that it's probably going to be useful for them to wear a mask. And what they're doing is they're protecting others from what they might possibly be transmitting. So that mask is holding in anything that or not anything, but the hope is that there's some efficacy, some value to the cloth holding in some virus, but we know that cloth does not completely hold in a virus. So that's why the six foot social distancing is much more crucial. Great. Thank you. And kind of along a similar lines. We have someone saying you know that with the weather getting nicer we see people more and more out on trails. And now that school is school buildings will be closed for for the rest of the year. Is it is still safe to walk on trails and conservation land given this increased usage. It is we just really want to see people being super courteous of others. So if you're in a family group or if you're alone, and there are people ahead of you on a trail or behind you that you're really keeping more than six foot distance. And that if someone needs to stop and rest on a trail or something like that. It's going to be a little while that maybe they indicate that to people behind them, and that they're well off the trail so if someone needs to pass them. They'll be sure to be able to have more than six feet. So it's really everything we're doing is really about that six foot or more social distancing. So that's what you want to be creating whenever you're out and about whether you're on a sidewalk a street on a trail on the bike trail, for example. So it's great for people to be out and in the beautiful weather hopefully that's going to help us with with all the social distancing we have to do we just want people to be really conscious and courteous of everyone else. Great, great, great advice. So we are coming up to our 30 minutes but I had another question here or that I thought was really important. So we have a community member saying, asking if there's a way that they can show appreciation to our first responders to our public safety teams that have been working to keep Amher safe. They really appreciate how much we're all doing. That's a wonderful question. I mean, I, everyone has been working really hard and Paul I want you to chime in here if you have some thoughts about this. I think even just expressing how much it's appreciated is is really welcome to hear because we've got people who've been working really hard and and long hours. And we so appreciate their availability, especially all of our first responders who are just on call 24 seven. Yeah, I think you know I think a lot about our first responders I also think about a lot about the people working in the hospital and our house housing where seniors are living where the congregate housing. People who are cleaning every day people heard her helping our seniors. They're there in them, you know, especially at the hospital working in really adverse conditions. One thing that all people always appreciate is food. And if you could call the institution up and say hey I'd like to buy lunch for some people how do I do that. They very welcome that I know that that's something that's always really appreciated. I think Julie you're right that just saying thank you to folks I think about our dispatchers too. You may not know that but they're on the very top floor of our police station they're there 24 seven. There's always three or four or five, sometimes six of them depending on the day answering calls ready to respond dispatching services. So, so all those kinds of little, little expressions of being thanked by the people, especially the people who aren't on the front lines but the second line. It's really appreciated because they're just as important as the people you see in the cruisers in the fire trucks. There's also always a group of people behind them who are making sure everything is clean and they can come back to a station and it's been clean so that's what that's what I think about mostly. Great. Thank you. That is all the time we have for today for questions. I want to remind folks that if you have questions, please email us at info at Amherst MA.gov to call the town manager's office at 413-259-3002. We will be back here on Tuesday, April 28 at noon with Fire Chief and Emergency Management Director Chief Nelson. So please join us or send questions in advance if you can't join us live. It'll be the same link and the same phone number as today and future sessions. So that that's all I have to say any parting words from either of you. Thank you Brianna for setting that all this up. You're welcome. Thank you guys for joining us. Thank you.