 All righty, so good morning. Happy Friday and happy new year. I would like to call to order the Durham Recovery and Renewal Task Force. It's great to see each and every one of you. I hope all of you enjoyed your holidays and found some time to take a much needed break to recover and renew yourselves so that we can continue the great work that we started as a Task Force in 2020 and work that each of you contributed to significantly in 2020. So many thanks to your great work in 2020, and I'm certainly looking forward to the great things that we will accomplish as a Task Force in 2021. So with that said, I'm going to turn it over to Mayor Shul and Chair Howard-Tenn for some updates. Good morning, everybody. Thank you, Matisha. Great to see everybody during the new year and I did get a chance to reflect over the break. The break on all the good work that you all have done and it's just been a really amazing achievement and I want to thank everybody again for just such fantastic work through the Task Force. I feel really proud of it and really appreciative. I do want to first acknowledge and welcome Chair Brenda Howerton and her participation in the Task Force. We're really glad to have Brenda representing the county. As all know, she's been over the existence of the Task Force. She's been to our meetings, listening to our meetings, and it's great to have you here, Brenda, as a member. Thank you. Just a couple of quick updates. First, before the, at the request of the Task Force, before the holidays, Dr. Mubanga and I convened a group to explore the creation of a new roundtable dedicated to pre-K to 12 education. And as you know, our education roundtable is mostly around college education and the group agreed to do this. Several of you all were on the call and I really appreciate your being on the call. Dr. Mubanga and the Durham Association of Educators and the school board have each agreed to appoint one chair for the new roundtable, which is great. The city and county, based on the encouragement from the Task Force, created the Durham Care Small Business Grant Fund. This is a separate grant fund from the earlier $3 million business recovery fund that we have. And the city and county contributed together $500,000 to the fund. It was administered by the city's Office of Economic and Workforce Development and all of the funds were distributed in a timely way. They were distributed by the Office of Economic and Workforce Development and they were distributed to 57 local Durham small businesses. We'll have more information on those disbursements at our next meeting, but we were able to help 57 businesses, which is fantastic. Excuse me. That, you know, thinking about what we need to focus on, and I know we'll be talking about this, but of course on everyone's mind is vaccination distribution and acceptance and especially to vaculate vaccination acceptance and how the Task Force can contribute to that over the next, over this year. How we can help overcome vaccine hesitancy in people. I think that's going to be a big, big part of our job. Continuing to think about economic recovery and especially not just businesses, but our workers. And I think we need a good focus on our workers during this next six months. Continuing their back on the ball and health ambassadors and green light programs, which I think can be very proud of. And then also I think, you know, we don't know exactly what's coming down the pike in terms of federal relief and eviction rental assistance and so forth. They're really keeping our eyes on those issues and seeing what the task force needs to do to be supportive of the folks that are working on those issues. So those are some of the things that I think of when I think about the next year and again just want to express my gratitude. I really appreciate everybody on this group. You've done an amazing job and it's made a difference. So thank you very much, Patricia. Thank you very much. Chair Howard. Thank you so much. And again, good morning to everyone. And I am honored and pleased to be with you this morning. I'm going to choice it over to vice chair and allow her to give her report this morning. I, as I begin to understand all of the different roundtables that you have so I do want to just bring one thing up about our child care facilities that the how this pandemic has taken a toll on the affordability of childcare. And I have been serving on partnership for children and that has been a huge conversation about the lack of resources for childcare that impacts parents and being able to go to work. I think I'd love for us to take a have a conversation about a little bit later. But again, I am glad to be with you this morning and I'm going to talk to take, toss it over to vice chair Jacobs and have her give her report this morning. Thank you, Madam chair and, and it's great to be with everyone. I hope everyone had a had a great new year. And I just want to echo the comments of the mayor, when, you know, I know all of us probably did a lot of reflecting over the holidays and when I think about one of the high points for me personally over the past year and just dealing with the pandemic. You know, one of the things for me that is just been I that something I'm just so grateful for is is all of you and all the members of the task force and the roundtables and thinking about how our community has come together and responded to the pandemic and so really innovative ways that I think are just so, so unique to Durham. And I think that it is going to put us in a good position to build on for the future recovery after the pandemic, the work that has been that has come out of this community. To add to some of the things that the mayor said, I'm sure everybody is aware in terms of the governor extending the moratorium on evictions now through the end of January, bringing in the National Guard to help with vaccines, extending the current curfew. And then one of the great news is approving drinks to go, which Durham has been Durham restaurant tours and business owners were one of the leaders of this pushing this actually since about March. So that that is really great news for our local businesses. Rod will talk, I know in detail about what's happening on the ground related to vaccines and Katie. But you all may be aware that we that we have started distributing vaccines to folks who are 75 and older through Duke health and and Durham County is pushing that out to residents. We the county has approved our board additional support funding. Since we last met, we have now extended our food support programs through the end of March, that will be feeding 250 families, 150 seniors. And that includes 650 children, plus supporting the food deliveries for Durham public schools to 1500 families. So we know that food continues to be a critical critical situation and we are helping to support that. We also just approved testing for Durham County employees, especially our detention staff and our youth home staff. And, and then we are continuing to test our detainees in the jail as well. And great news is that we have received up to $7.7 million in additional rental and utility assistance from the state through federal funding which is which is really great. The board has also extended funding for the hope learning centers, which supports our most vulnerable students. In addition to the Durham public schools learning centers, the hope learning centers which are at student you, Kate's corner and the YMCA are helping to support children from our public housing students who are free and reduced lunch, foster care students, some of our most homeless students who really need to be in a supportive environment to do their virtual learning and during public schools just announced yesterday they will be virtual for the rest of the school year. So this is a really critical way that to support our students and our families. We will also be taking up the consideration of funding through the third quarter, and the, the request is for the Durham Public Schools Foundation to fund the fourth quarter. Another great news is that federal government is extending the snap benefits, the extra funding for snap benefits plus they even increased it an extra 15%. So again, providing additional food resources for people in our community. I'm glad to what the mayor has said about what, you know, our future conversations I can concur with him about about everything that he said. I would like to hear, I look forward to our discussion further about how we can really position our community to get everyone vaccinated as quickly as possible I feel like that is the quickest. That's the best way we can really support our businesses and, you know, just help our community recover is getting everybody vaccinated as quickly as possible. And then also just, we don't know what's going to come out of the Biden administration in terms of relief, and again to be in a position to, to partner at the federal level with with hopefully some type of relief package that will come to everyone our community. So I look forward to our further discussion today. Thank you. So thank you so much Mayor school chair Howard 10 and vice chair Jacobs. So I'll start with a couple of items and then I'll turn it over to Katie. So first of all, want to start off with a warm official welcome to Elisar Passato, who is replacing Polar on our task force. As you all recall, we may recall Polar is on a well deserved sabbatical that I'm very jealous about that hopefully she is going to enjoy her time. And I'm looking forward to Elisar contributed to our task force efforts. I'm going to provide a quick update on budget proposals that are subcommittee reviewed back in December. Budget committee subcommittee consists of Anthony Buchan, Polar, Katie, Jody and myself. We met in December and we actually review three proposals that were submitted from our roundtables. We reviewed a proposal from our immigrant and refugee roundtable to fund $500,000 and rental assistance that would be distributed to local nonprofits. Great proposal but the subcommittee felt that there were some additional work that needed to be done and so we charge our task force staff also known as Ryan with working with the appropriate city and county staff to further that and refine that proposal. We also reviewed a proposal from our communications team, and that proposal was to provide additional funding to support the task force back on the bull public health campaign. You know, again a great proposal but we did ask that communications team sharpen their pencils one more time to see if there's any sadans that we can realize through greater collaboration with public health, Duke, and others that are also communicating about COVID-19. And the final proposal that we reviewed came from our festivals and events roundtable. And that was a proposal to create and fund a new commission that will be dedicated to supporting major festivals in 2020. We supported a portion of that proposal, including the creation of commission and funding a support of a staff position for six months. While we recognize that we had, you know, three proposals that we likely would like to move forward, we wanted to make sure that we did some additional work before we move forward any one of these proposals, because we don't have unlimited funds that we are able to tap into. We don't want to piecemeal proposals as we bring them forward and we recognize that the festival and events proposals is not an urgent proposal. So we're going to spend a little bit more time over the next week or so just getting some additional information on those proposals. It is our hope that we will come forward to the task force with the recommendation via email on the proposals that we want to bring forward. And if we get your support, we will move those proposals forward. And we plan to submit those proposals or the recommendations to fund those proposals to the city council and their work session at the end of this month, which is January the 29th. But we have to have any recommendation that we want to move forward finalized by the 19th. So again, we will be sending out something to the task force via email for you to react to and or support or not support with the hopes of moving something forward and in the next couple of weeks. And you should have a copy of those proposals that was sent out in your agenda package. Any questions about the proposals that came forward. If not, I will kick it off to Katie to provide a few other updates. Good morning Katie. Good morning. Thank you I apologize for being a few minutes late this morning. Happy New Year to everyone. A couple of additional updates. First of all, and I think we may have mentioned this last time but I do want to recognize once again Blue Cross Blue Shield, and thanks to Matisha for ensuring that the donation for 250,000 bottles of hand sanitizer and 50,000 masks and an update on that. Even half of those items have already been distributed to Durham public schools community health ambassadors and health workers and a lot of local nonprofits, serving our vulnerable populations in this community, including those places serving as emergency shelters for homeless persons on cold nights so thank you again Matisha for that great connection and that that is a significant donation that has really helped. And then I also want to recognize Lois who connected the task force team with an individual who donated 10,095 masks which is terrific. Staff have distributed those masks to emergency management and other appropriate groups. And so thank you Lois for making that great connection that's outstanding. I think you heard from Vice Chair Jacobs about the remote learning for Durham public schools so that plan is to continue remote through the end of the semester. And then we have an upcoming vaccine forum with the Durham Faith Leaders Roundtable as part of our Places of Worship Roundtable led by Dr. Davis. That is next Wednesday, January 13 from two to 3pm. And Dr. Akinboyo and Dr. Kim Wolf will be joining that group to talk about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine and answer questions that that group may have. And then we have an immigrant and refugee multi-lingual town hall that our immigrant and refugee roundtable is planning for mid-February and we will have, once we have the date solidified, we will share more information with you. And also continuing to work with CC on forming the roundtable or town hall dedicated to Durham workers. So a lot of a lot of work underway and more to come in the in the coming weeks. That, do you want us to move right into metrics, Matisha? Absolutely. All right, so why don't I kick us off with the hospital metrics, which unfortunately, and I think you'll hear this from Rod as well. We're in a very different place than we were a month ago. We hoped that wouldn't be the case. I think some of us expected it might be the case. Unfortunately, I think we are in a really difficult situation with where we are right now, and I expect that to continue for the coming weeks, at least the next several weeks. So we are currently at 180 patients across the health system that was as of last night. And across the health system that includes Duke Raleigh, across Duke University Hospital and Duke Regional, which is the numbers that we have, I've been regularly sharing here, we're at 144. That includes 110 active cases and then the remaining cases are what we consider resolved cases. Those are patients who have COVID are no longer requiring isolation but still require hospital level care. In some cases still requiring ICU level care. And so we are at just over close to 35 patients in the ICU across Duke University Hospital and Duke Regional Hospital. Our seven day average between the two hospitals is 95. Last month when I reported it was 64. So that is a substantial increase that we have seen. We remain above 90% capacity as you know we are always at high capacity that fluctuates during the week it fluctuates depending on time of day. But we are at a point where certainly as we have every day since since March, April timeframe we are reviewing carefully our schedule for surgeries and bumping that up against looking at the the urgency of that surgery against our capacity. And fortunately at this point we have not had to make significant changes to that or schedule, but in the coming weeks we may have to do to do that so. And we're in a similar situation to other hospitals and health systems in the area. I think others around the state are in a more dire situation I would say in terms of their capacity. We are managing very well. We have a phenomenal team first of all, just an amazing team, and we've put in place a number of things since the spring a number of different levers that we can can pull to be able to make sure that we're able to to meet the demand and care for our community and so we're very committed to doing that. But but I don't want to paint a rosy picture of this it's the numbers are very different from where they were a month ago. Happy to answer any questions before turning it over to Yes. Just to get clarity because what's in the news every day is about hospital systems having to ration care. Is there any trajectory that you're looking at that would suggest that we could get to that point in Durham. We are we are working very hard to make sure that we can accommodate all of our patients so that you know, I think, right now, we are, we are very much able the biggest challenge we have is really around staffing and you'll hear that repeated from other hospital leaders across the state. We, we have beds staffing is is always a challenge and particularly this time of year is typically a challenge for us. More so this year than ever before, because every hospital and health system across the country is is facing a similar situation and so recruitment has become more challenging than it has been in the past. We are recruiting we are actively and aggressively recruiting and getting new new team members in. We're looking at our models of care to be able to make sure that we can accommodate patients. Great question. Vice chair Jacobs. Thank you, Katie. I had a few questions. One is, are you seeing any difference with the type of, you know, the level of care that people need now versus before, and also wondering about the status of the vaccinations for your staff. So whether you feel like you will be impacted by what's happening in other parts of the state. Will that impact the Duke health system in terms of people being transferred in. Great questions. I'll actually ask Dr. I can boil perhaps to speak to acuity of patients as a clinician from a clinical perspective. Why don't I start with the question around vaccines and transfers so we see transfers in from as we talked we've talked about before we get transfers in from other hospitals around the state on a regular basis. We are still working to take those transfers in as, as, as we can, I would say that our transfer numbers at Duke regional, and I can speak just to Duke regional around the transfers right now, have been a little bit lower in the last couple of weeks than they were this time last last year and that really is, is because of our capacity and capacity constraints that that we're feeling, but we are still able to take in. We're not closed to transfers we're still able to take in transfers. But that certainly does have have some impact in terms of the vaccines. We've had a really successful launch to the vaccinations. We are now three weeks into that a little over three weeks into that so we just started this week with our second doses. And so we have vaccinated over 12,000 across the health system. And those are team members who are in that one a group. And so, you know, again, really successful launch to that vaccine campaign. I would say at this point, I'll ask Dr I can boil to perhaps speak to some of the acuity that that she's she and others are seeing. Thanks, Katie. So I will address it in two ways. So just first of all, we know that those that are infected with or get COVID-19 disease can fall into different categories. Some coming to the hospital and get discharged fairly quickly, but we've seen some that have pretty high acuity and need critical care that pattern hasn't changed. We continue to see more cases, which means we're seeing more COVID-19 patients in the hospital, but we still continue to see some with mild, some with some somewhat moderate disease and some with pretty critical illnesses and unfortunately could lead to death. That being said, so the second way to address this is yes, we've heard a lot of news about about the new variants. And we know viruses and maybe we haven't emphasized this as much, but viruses mutate, they change strains. This is what viruses do. They need humans to do this. So we can help with preventing new strains by masking, washing our hands and distancing, because the viruses replicate. So they in us. And that being said, we've not seen this variance lead to worse clinical disease. So we are seeing more and more states reporting the new variants. We may see it in our Carolina soon enough, but we have not seen that translate to worse disease. It's still urgent that we continue to prevent spread. Thank you best. Any other questions. Yes. Is it is our right. You did. First of all, good morning and thank you for having me on task force and I'll do a disclosure. As I'm getting accustomed to serving on this task force I may have a lot of questions so just, you know, bear with me on that. So as I'm trying to understand this, this, this notion of capacity, right. So what happens when you reach capacity or people then transferred to other hospitals are folks not able to walk in and get care, just to understand that part. Yeah, we, I mean, we were, we do everything we can to make sure that we are able to what we call flex up to take care of any patients who need our care so we are not turning patients away patients can still come in and but but patients may have longer waits and so, or maybe cared for in a different setting than a traditional hospital room. So we are caring for more patients in the emergency department for example, our surge, and it's a great question, our surge plans, which are emergency plans that we've had in place for very long time and and and have, have I would say, have for the last 10 months in terms of that planning call for us to have beds in multiple different locations that are not traditional hospital bed locations in the hospital and that's true for for again every hospital is looking at that. We're not doing that. At this point we are, there are times when we have had to hold patients for longer in the emergency department and care for them for longer in the emergency department waiting for a bed upstairs. Does that help answer that question. Yeah, it does. I was just wondering, like, yo, we reached capacity, then we have to send folks over I didn't know that there was this like section of like, well this is. I was thinking of the whole building capacity rather than, you know, specific medical or areas capacity kind of right right. We have an amazing our teams have an amazing ability to flex and they have been doing that since the spring and and they've done that traditionally when we've had peaks in capacity. So we are really well skilled and have that pretty well honed. Even having said that certainly the numbers that that we're looking at our significant numbers and so that's where we, it's just a matter of reminding everyone of the importance of those, those three W's right the wearing your, your face covering the mask, washing our hands and and waiting six feet apart and I would add to that avoiding public gatherings, right so I think it's, it's three W's plus the plus an a for avoiding. Maybe that's the way we think about it but it's more than just the three W's it's avoiding gathering with anyone really outside our immediate households and that will help protect everyone and and certainly will help us in the hospitals as well. Eva can anything else that you would add to that that I mentioned before and I'm not quite sure if earlier as I had joined us at that point but the concept of the hospital function is full has been something we've dealt with for years the hospital functions full constantly. I just think a lot of our worry has centered around the most beds in the hospital, starting to be filled with COVID-19 patients so that would be different from what a typical pattern is, which then changes how the hospital handles is surgical or the person with heart failure or someone that just has a really bad say for example influenza, which thankfully we're not seeing as much. So it's, it's one in that we could get there where most beds are being filled with COVID-19 patients and that puts other people at risk, but the hospital for years decades has learned to flex up and down to manage beds appropriately. Thank you so much for that and like I said, bear with me as I serve on this task force I'll definitely have a lot of questions. We welcome those questions so thank you that was that was a great question. Thank you. Anything else before I turn this over to Mr Jenkins. Rod, take it away with our Durham numbers. Good morning to everyone and and once again I will echo what Katie just said we are certainly in a different place than we were a month ago. And I think the comforting thing is to say that this was to be expected, because through us as a task force and you know you guys being public health champions yourself, you heated the call and encouraging your spheres of influence, not to congregate not to travel to remain in their pod. However, that didn't happen. And as to be expected, we are definitely seeing the results of travel and Christmas gatherings and the picture simply is not good at this time, however, I would say what goes up certainly must come down so we'll go on and we're going to continue to accentuate the positive. Our current total active cases as of right this moment is 1082 cases. I'm encouraged by the fact that 14,890 duramites have beat COVID, and that number continues to go up. Unfortunately, with a sustained period of transmission, you're going to have a number of deaths, and we have had a significant number of deaths over the past month. Our total is 149. And we certainly extend our prayers to those people who certainly love lost loved ones to COVID anytime but particularly during the holiday season because I know that was extremely difficult. Our total since the pandemic began right now 16126. Our seven day moving average which we all know is a really reflection of transmission in our community is 122. This is an increase. Last week, the average was 98. Two weeks ago is 144. So we certainly saw that surge go up and down. We're only about a weekend to July so those numbers will be reflected next month but for the month of December as a whole. We saw 3790 cases total. So again that surge was very, very strong. North Carolina continues to increase and Durham unfortunately continues to increase as well. We keep a close eye on race and ethnicity. We certainly want to make sure that our pandemic response is reflective of the vibrant community that we serve. And I'm proud to say that those numbers have remained relatively stable as far as COVID-19's effect on Hispanic Latinx right now remains at 22.4%. Lower but we certainly have more work to do. We've seen it go as low as 19% over the past month kind of creeps up a little bit through the holidays. Our black or African American community remains at 39.26%. Our white community remains in the 20s at 27.18%. We continue to see the same trends as far as work where COVID-19 infections are present and that's in hospitals, general medicine, affecting African American females and large numbers by 45.83% or hospital related with 72.62% being female. Nursing care facilities continue to be a focal point of COVID-19. And I'm encouraged by the fact that through the long term care facilities partnership with the federal government, they have begun to get COVID vaccinations. And that will certainly help tamp that down, but we still have a lot of outbreaks going on at those facilities. 52.12% of our cases are coming from nursing care facilities affecting African American females at 59.39%. And then of course the professional scientific and technical services industry at 51.4% of our cases affecting white females at 53.68%. We have a high positive percentage rate right now. For the prior week, it was at 11%. And it varies. The state does show it being at 11%. However, Duke's model does show it at right at about 6.6%. So it kind of varies. And I think the numbers are a tad bit skewed due to the holidays and people being off and numbers being aggregated. But nevertheless, it's not where we want it to be because we want it to be way below 5%. However, this is our current state of affairs. Prior week, our average was 6.9%. So again, it reflects the transmission reflects the surge that we're currently facing all the need for individuals to remain at home and double down triple down on the three dollars. Again, we continue to keep our eyes on school age children. We're really, really concerned about that. Again, we certainly have heard that during public schools have taken a proactive step to remain at plant C, which is remote learning. And that's indicative of them keeping a close eye on the numbers and the transmission rate. And for the month of December, we had 443 total cases of individuals or 18 years of age and younger, which represented 11.69% of our cases. At present, Durham continues to fight the good fight when it comes to COVID-19 surveillance and contact tracing and contact investigation. We've not veered away from our stance, which is to make sure that we make contact voice contact with every individual. We're doing the very best we can. But as mentioned, Katie alluded to the numbers are extremely high right now. If I can make it plain, ladies and gentlemen, I think it would be safe to say for the next six weeks, we can expect to feel the effects of the holiday gatherings. We've not seen New Year's activity as of yet. And we, we truly do believe that we will be able to see a little bit of bending. Probably with that, within the end of six weeks. As Katie has alluded to, of course, a lot of the questions and I don't know if acceptable to move forward with tissue and Katie, but vaccinations are definitely on everybody's minds. And we are delighted to know for the general public to know that yes, we do have vaccines here at the Durham County Department of Public Health. We are still in phase one eighth and it's important for me to say that to the broader audience. We are taking out time to make sure that we are able to go into the next phase in a very safe and effective manner. I like yourself saw some of the news reports from other counties that have our valued and beloved seniors who were in long lines getting up at four o'clock in the morning and in waiting for hours only not to be able to get the vaccine due to high demand. We are taking a very, very cautious and methodical approach to make sure that we do it right. I'm so delighted and grateful for Katie's partnership because we're trying our best to make sure that we could kind of spread our services throughout the Durham County area. And we want to make sure that if at all possible if we can take the services to those seniors we want to make sure we do that as well. Duke being Duke is very proactive, very innovative, and they've set up resources already to to prepare for this next phase. However, I do know that it'll probably be within the next few weeks before we move into the next phase. We, we at public health are certainly responsible for not only providing vaccine to those specific populations as designated by the ACIP, but there are times ladies and gentlemen where we have to also share our vaccine. And I'm encouraged that the state is really reaching out to local providers in an effort to get them to to embrace being able to vaccinate their patients as well. In my humble opinion, you know, if anybody has older folks who who are their loved ones, they're sitting at home waiting on their doctor to call them. They're waiting on their doctor who knows them and the nurse knows exactly how to take care of them that's what they're waiting on so we're continuing to hold those partnerships. Nevertheless, we did start on a holiday week holiday weeks, Christmas and New Year's. The COVID vaccine management system has been a little, a little troubling to traverse to say the least, but nevertheless we have done a lot of work around to get bulk uploads to make sure that we're able to vaccinate individuals we've done what we've supposed to do as an agency as far as vaccinating our EMS fire frontline individuals. We certainly have the health ambassadors lined up to receive their vaccinations. We're doing our best to adhere to the guidance that we receive per the vaccination plan. It is also worth noting, as you all well know that in the midst of our solidified plans, the ACIP and the state did find it not robbery to change midstream and go ahead and change the phases of 1B. So now it's a three tiered approach. And again, the top of that 1B A is our seniors who are 75 years and older. We do not want to have hazardly take care of our most vulnerable individuals. So we want to make sure we do it the right way. As far as numbers are concerned, we a little over really a little bit over 1100 vaccines that we've given. And again, it was to a specific population. I take pride in saying that we partner with Lincoln to make sure that their their their staff has been vaccinated. And we've also partnered with the National Institutes of Health here in Durham and we've also partnered with North Carolina specialty hospitals to make sure that we can provide them with vaccines as well. I think Katie wouldn't mind me expressing the fact that some of the main concerns that we have as healthcare leaders are the amount of vaccines that we're received. It is no secret that at present in the state of North Carolina, we do not have enough vaccine to vaccinate everyone at this time. It's been a little slow going. However, we're encouraged by the fact that through our great work in our our ability to get vaccines out the door. We're encouraged that we will eventually start receiving more and more. However, at present, we simply just don't have enough vaccines. However, we do know that eventually every single person that wants a vaccine will be able to get it. I've been assured that I'm also encouraged and I'll conclude by saying and be able to take questions. I'm encouraged by the plans for the new administration. Just just what's been outlawed 100 days of basket. At the bare bones been 100 days of basket. A million, you know, 100 million vaccines in 100 days. I think that's ambitious. I think I'm encouraged by the package that's coming to the states to help us not only with COVID-19 testing but also COVID vaccine administration. I'm also encouraged by the more coordinated approach from the federal to the state to the locals, because that truly has been what's been missing states have been required to just really go it alone and try to do the best they can. And that uniform guidance is what's going to get us to what's needed. I heard Madam Vice Chair loud and clear. I agree. The best way for us to get back to normal to get our economy going is to get vaccines out as soon as we can to our general population. But I beg your patience. I do beg your patience. It is truly going to be an undertaking, but the plans that Katie and her team and my team have in place are going to it's going to be effective. We just want to make sure we do it the right way and we want to make sure that we do it in a way that's safe and effective. Be happy to take your questions at this time. Mr. Chair Howard. Thank you, Katie. Thank you, Rob. You know, you always give such a great report and I know that I'll hear your report again on Monday night but given that I have this opportunity to ask you a couple of questions that you mentioned. You know, we got, we received, the commissioners received a report from you about the number of vaccines that have been provided. What's the difference between the 640 and the 1100 that you just mentioned, can you clarify that for me and then one other question. Absolutely. The storage. As they're coming in and they're not being used. Is there a problem with storage and how long can they be vaccines be stored. I will say there's no problem with storage. We are, we have been the recipient of through North Carolina Central's Accord program. We were the recipients of an ultra cold storage freezer. That is primarily being used for the Pfizer vaccine. So we have plenty of storage for that. And we are eternally grateful for that partnership. So I've been seeing the numbers that were provided earlier did not account for what we had provided to the National Institute of Health and also the North Carolina specialty hospital. I think on that report that I provided I did indicate that we did provide some, some vaccine to Lincoln. And then of course we've had a very productive week this week. As Katie can attest every week gets every day gets better and better. And we're able to administer vaccine. To more individuals. But again, I don't want to get too much into the granular details madam chair and others but if this were like a regular flu or each one in one, we'd be much further along. When we have the screening that needs to require for individuals to come in and the socially distance and the fact that there's a requirement that after you get vaccinated you have to be monitored for a certain period of time. That just kind of requires us to take a little bit more of a methodical approach to administering this vaccine. But nevertheless we're committed to making sure we do it the right way. What, what's your, what's the staff availability and are you okay with nurses. Are you shortage around nurses to be able to give these vaccines. Yes, ma'am. We can always use more. And that's why I'm encouraged by the package that's coming from the feds hopefully sometime this month for vaccine administration. Those monies hopefully will be able to provide additional resources that we could use to to get more vaccines out to the community. At present, the Durham County Department of Public Health does have enough staff to take care of that we have been fortunate to be able to use some of our code funds to hire temporary staff. And we're going to continue to do that. So we certainly appreciate your support with that. Thank you. Thank you, Rod. And I can't even imagine all that you and Katie and everyone who's working on this phase of things now, the next, the next challenge that you all are facing with, with the vaccine distribution. I just, I wanted to mention, Rod, I guess I forgot to mention my report is some is the survey that you all are doing now. And also the new effort with the email at the listserv that people could get on to get vaccine updates. So I guess Brian, if you could maybe send that out to the task force to make sure that everybody has the hotline number. And then the survey and also the, the email list so that we can all get that out to all of our networks. And I just wanted to get a sense from you and I don't also I'm not looking at the agenda right now is this in the agenda or now or is it later on where we're going to talk about what other supports that we need to provide to to Rod or Katie related to, to the vaccine program I don't want to jump ahead if it's not the appropriate time. Yeah, it's part of this conversation now. It is. Okay. Um, so yeah, I bet I would like to hear just a little bit about like if you could wave a magic wand right now like what are you seeing Rod and Katie as, you know, a role that the task force could play in what you foresee is what would be the ideal situation. If we did have enough vaccine coming into the community. You know, what would you, what are some things, what are things that you think the task force could help with. I mean Commissioner, I mean chair Howard to mention staff, you know just having bodies and people. And just that you're seeing out across the world I know everyone's talking about Israel, they're up to 17% of their population vaccinated. You know, would it be what we have a 24 hour system. You know, it would be decentralized. Wondering what, what how would the task force could help thinking ahead to position us for that anything that we could help with. I'll jump jump in briefly, you know I think one of the most important roles of the task force and of individuals on this task force is to serve as champions or ambassadors for the for getting vaccinated and and the messaging around the safety and efficacy of the vaccine and helping to guide people to where we have resources through the health department through Duke to answer the questions that they have about the the vaccine. And, and also reinforcing the need for patients, right, because this is this is not an overnight process. You know, I'm incredibly proud of the partnership that we have with the health department with Lincoln with Duke, and the work that our teams collectively have done to really scale up operations around vaccination. This is a significant effort it's it's unlike the logistics for the safety the storage the receiving the scheduling the documenting of the vaccine is really unlike any other vaccination that we've done in the past so as as rod pointed out this is, this is different, it's not the flu vaccine where we can just line people up and go very quickly there's there's more to it just just in terms of the documentation for example. So it's a very complex organization or operation with a lot of moving pieces so if this group can help us to reinforce the need for patients. It can also help us spread the word, I think that right now, to me is is one of the most important roles. There may be additional support and help that's needed down the road around staffing, etc. But the most important thing right now is is being advocates I would say I would will mention Eva can put in the chat but we have begun registering at Duke registering patients 75 and older for for the vaccine. You don't need to be a patient for that, but but you do need to have an appointment. And so the the information is there in the chat. It's on our website to health.org on the coven 19 update page so we are, we are in the process of ramping that up. But knowing again that the vaccine allocation to the state, and this is this is not a reflection on the state who have done a tremendous job with this, but the allocation to the state is limited. So, I would concur with everything that Katie has said, you know, for the most part, you know, if you had that magic wand we would ask you to tap it and give us more vaccine, I would say that because it's a it's a balancing act. You don't necessarily want to open the floodgates and then you not have enough vaccine to take care of everyone. So it's a slow methodical process to get through those particular phases and those particular groups that have been identified as most at risk. And then of course, there's the you know everything she said scheduling the logistics and everything but most importantly I would say for public health is not to waste any vaccine. Because it's, it's so precious, and you want to make sure that you are doing it the right way and from a clinical perspective, you know you want to make sure that you have those individuals who are on on the ready who are pretty much garden it and making sure that they, they, they, they give us the proper amounts in order to do it. And, and, and of course you know it's truly a balancing act so we want to make sure again that we do it the right way both internally and externally. I've been remiss in saying, you know, again, the faith round table, the Durham workers round table, the immigrant and refugee round table, those type sessions that the recovery renewal Task Force are committed to having our instrumental because again, it kind of casts a wider net and helps us to really get that information to the masses in order for individuals to make a personal decision because getting this vaccine truly is a personal decision. So I want everybody to have the right information. Yeah, and then the one other thing I would add, and I know I sound like a broken record with this but I think this group really can play an important role and in reinforcing those basic three Ws plus, plus the avoiding gatherings. That does not change because we have a vaccine. So we are still very, very early in this, and we are going to need to continue to practice those best, those best practices for public health for the foreseeable future so I think continuing to reinforce that is really important because there is, there is some risk that as more get vaccinated in our community. The guard comes down and, and we don't want that we still need people to be following those best practices, I would say. I will say, I know Katie and I have said a lot but I definitely wanted to kick it over to Doc back in bullio to see whether or not she had any additional commentary. I agree. The vaccine is just an additional layer in our arsenal against COVID-19. We have continued to wear a mask despite getting vaccinated. We anticipate we will get to a point where we have enough people vaccinated, and the rates are low enough that we can continue to adjust in some of the mitigation steps we have taken, but when are they it? And we are also going to have to wash our hands, right? I mean like some of this stuff is actually, the hand washing doesn't go away, ever. It also helps, you know, a side benefit is, you know, I think Doc, Doc and Bill, you'll kind of touch on it, but flu has been relatively low because of all that you've been doing and our audience, listening audience has been doing. You know, this is normally the time when we start seeing the flu peak and a lot of people get sick but not necessarily the case this year and this is what we need to continue to do, you know, from a public health measure. So I do want to open up the floor to Phil to see if Phil has any additional comments that he wants to add as it relates to vaccinations or support that you may need from the task force as well. Thank you, Matisha. Can you hear me? Yes. Very good. Well, first I want to thank Rod and Katie for their assistance they always provide to Lincoln Community Health Center, and especially during the pandemic. Community health centers have not yet received their allocation from the state. We're told that the first allocation will come from the state to community health centers around the 11 or later. However, thanks to Rod, we were able to receive 200 doses from the health department on Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday, we did a trial run through the vaccination process, and it is a complex process includes considerable paperwork, much more than the flu. We anticipate it takes about 30 minutes per shot. And so we began to sign up staff for vaccinations. We vaccinated 10 on the first day, just to make sure that we were getting it right. We had to permit in, we were planning to vaccinate 30 plus a day. Approximately 25 of our employees have already been received their first dose directly from the health department. So in addition to the 200 doses, the health department has also helped us. We've sent our employees over there to receive the vaccination. A number of our staff are actually Duke employees, and they have gone over and Katie Duke regional, they have vaccinated the Duke employees that work out of our Lincoln site. And it's a significant number, it's probably 50 individuals or so. As far as COVID tests and we continue to do about 100 tests a week. And the positivity rate last week was off the chain as they say about 38%. We want to add that we've done over 10,000 flu shots. So we've seen little or no flu. So we look forward to continuing to work with our partners or community partners to see how we can get more during population vaccinated, especially the vulnerable populations that we serve. We last month, we still had close to 13,000 patient encounters. Already in general, there is a problem with denied or delayed care. So we're trying to make sure that all patient populations still receive a primary and preventive health care services as we try to make a contribution towards the vaccine vaccination efforts. Alrighty, thank you for that Phil. Any other questions about the yes mayor school. Thank you so much, petition thanks so much for to fill and Rod and Katie and the book and really appreciate it. I'm just trying to understand a little bit more about the numbers. Rod and Katie. If, can you maybe talk a little bit about, Rod, you said we give it 1100 so far at what rate do we think we'll be able to continue to give vaccines say in the next few weeks, what would you estimate. Good morning mayor school and I think, I think Phil did a good job of really explaining, you know, a little bit of a granular detail and how long it takes. And again, you know, the paperwork part of it may or should and others is really kind of daunting right now because the system that they set up for vaccine management. It is not working as it should. And we do feel that once that comes online and it's tweaked would make things a little bit easier but that on the front end Mayor shield is what's really holding up the process, getting them in getting the resource getting them shot and observing and that's the easy part. Right now we are looking at just at the health department trying our best to get to at least 200 individuals per day. And right now that's not where we are where we like to be is anywhere from 200 to 250 in an effort to really get to about 1000 or more individuals per week. I have no doubt that we'll get there. But again, it's been slow going primarily because we've had to really, really, really sort of like what fills that that first week that we got the vaccine where we made the press release that was our soft launch in an effort to really learn the intricacies and make sure that we do it the right way. And then of course you know with this vaccine being so precious, you know, we just did not want to waste anything. So again, we, as I mentioned to Katie and others, every day we get a little bit better, more methodical, and we're able to vaccinate a lot. You know, again, we're also having to deal with different populations so different industries I said so you know again, coordinating the appointment skating them scheduled, having to deal with, you know, first responders for example, individuals who've just done like a 12 hour shift and then we're having them to come to get vaccinated. It's not necessarily a easier streamlined process is outlined by the feds and ACIP but we're doing the very best we can. And I'm pretty sure it's going to get better. Thank you, Rod. And I wondered Katie. So, I was thinking about what Rod was saying, you know, if we just had the health department numbers and we were at 1000 a week which we're not out yet. Let's, that's 320 weeks before we get everybody in Durham vaccinated. We're going to have more vaccine. And as Rod said with the new administration I'm sure we'll be able to do better than that but wondering what in terms of vaccine vaccines for the community on top of what the health department is doing what is what will Duke health be doing do you have a sense of that at this point. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's still a little bit of a moving target to be honest, because again we're, we're, we're learning more every day, and we're refining our processes every day and and we're learning more about that allocation and how much vaccine will get in. I certainly think that expected across the system we will be able to do several thousand a day in the coming, you know, weeks and that that can ramp up over time. It's important to just point out though that this is a two dose vaccine so the there's, you know, the first doses and then and then we still have to be scheduling for those second doses. We've been able to manage that very well. I think I expect that again across the community between the health department and Duke we will be able to ramp this up over time, but we're still in that as as Rod said the sort of soft launch right but but again several thousand. Thank you that's really helpful. We're going now having said that we collectively as a state are going to have to ramp up as you point out the math doesn't work for that right 330 weeks is not is not an option for us. So we are going to have to come together and work on a different, different options as we move forward, but we need to have that steady allocation of vaccine coming in. Thank you so much. Absolutely. Oh, here's our saw your hand did you have a question that you wanted to raise. Yes. And thank you. So, I'm trying to. And maybe this is a questions a little too early for but looking at members of the community who are receiving the vaccine are we seeing particular communities have a propensity did not want to go in or difficulties in reaching different folks in vulnerable communities. And like I said it may be a little bit early right now but you know, I think it's. Rod may rather even can may want to speak to this from my perspective I think it's too early to really fully understand that simply because we're we're only three weeks into vaccinating and we've been focused on healthcare workers that that one a group so far. So it would be a little bit skewed. I don't know Rod or you can jump in Katie. You know, again, I agree it's a little too early to tell, but we can only go by what's been survey survey results. And, you know, at present, we have seen, you know, the, what they consider to be historically marginalized populations to have reluctance to. The American community per our survey was the major group that was a little reluctant, followed by our Latinx population, which in turn, you know, reflects, you know, why, over the next few weeks I'll be making several public references along with Doc Doc and Julio and Cam Wolfe and a number of individuals. And that's why you know again, where you guys as the recovering rental task force be so critical in helping us to dispel rumors and provide, you know, all the scientific information necessary for individuals to make that informed, informed personal choice but to answer your question at present that's that's the population. However, I believe that there's a difference between surveys and ground truths. And I think the more that they see individuals like yourselves, individuals like me, who was who truly taking the exact, you know, taking the vaccine. Now, the side effects. Yes, I did have pain at the injection site. Yes, I did have somewhat of a headache. I don't know whether or not as my kids over Christmas time or whatever but I will say a little bit of a headache, but definitely pain at the right. But I will say that a few hours later after some rest a little bit of a little bit of talent or whatever. Good isn't it. But those are the those are the real troops that we need to provide to individuals and more importantly let them see us, you know, still here. Don't have a third eye. I'm good to go. Yeah, I could be cool but you know. Yeah, it is it is early. I think the we've seen headlines that may be leading to some confusion around people either differing or so to speak refuse in the vaccine. We need to really know what pattern. So what groups in the population what reasons they have for refer differing their vaccine in general. They're not a lot of contraindications to this vaccine so what I mean by that is that it's not a large number of people that by nature of something with their health or some reason cannot get this vaccine it's safe and effective. So with my vaccine have had many people ask about the process how it was made side effects long term effects, and there are many avenues to address those. Certainly we talk about it so as a physician I talked to my patients about it, but I think there's a lot of trust with people that are just in your community it doesn't have to be a physician patient relationship. It could be people that again remotely try and keep this virtual but that are in your church in your religious community. People that you socialize with in other settings that you can start to have that conversation, as long as it's based in fact. And so it's early to know what groups are differing. There's a lot of inherent mistrust in the sum of our health system, and that is valid. We've had a very, very long history of people having different experiences in the healthcare system so I think there's a lot of validity in having questions as long as people are seeking true answers through physicians or providers, but also through all of your trusted communities. And that's the reason to ask us guys, as we're formulating kind of our vaccine, you know, outreach plan and social media work and you know all that that goes into that campaign. It's helpful to know if there's things that that are popping up as as things go so I might be asking that question as we move along just to ensure that we have our updated and be that might have told you this but we also have a new radio program with the radio station for local here in Durham that reaches a lot of folks in the Latinx community who we are having these conversations so that's part of why I asked a question and I'll probably asking again. I will talk a little bit more about the proposals that we put forward and particularly the next semester worth of communications efforts but part of that focuses on encouraging people to take a vaccine pledge and really raising visibility in the community of those who have committed to getting it. And I think that's helpful given, especially that it's a kind of slow roll out to be great if we could say all of these people have gotten the vaccine so you should too because we can't do that. I think being able to promote the idea that they're that all of these people have taken the pledge to get it and and perhaps have some high profile folks who we really make an emphasis in the campaign will be something that can help. All right, so in the essence of time this has been great conversation and I imagine that we will continue to have conversations about vaccinations. In our future meetings and we also have some time at the end of the agenda to talk about 2021 priorities and we can tie this conversation about what the task force can do to support. People getting vaccinations, we can tie that into that conversation, but I'm going to move us on to our economic recovery subcommittee and have Jeff and or Anthony give us an update on how we trend and as it relates to the metrics that they've been monitoring. Thank you everybody. Also, good morning and happy New Year's great to see everybody's face again it's hard to believe it. It's been a month these times are certainly flying flying by. You know obviously with the holidays, you know the numbers that we're looking at remain somewhat stable, but certainly weren't improving for small businesses and that's, I think with the caveat that these are kind of prior to holiday numbers I think we'll start seeing some extra data roll in as spending habits and things like that through the holiday season. So you know December's federal leaf extension provided a little more help for individuals and families and even some businesses but it's important for our community to understand the critical nature of continuing to support our small businesses, while also supporting education, training and upscaling opportunities for our growing industries. We appreciate also I'd like to give a quick appreciation to our interns that are helping us as a group in thinking about what additional metrics we could be uncovering as we move forward. Now before I turn it over to Dr Nelson to talk about specifics on the KPIs. I'd like to point out that there were two more job announcements since our last meeting and so you can imagine just how really quite amazing during a, not just a pandemic but the holiday season so from December until the first weekend January two more job announcements that show that you know many sectors in our economy continue to grow and I think it's important to note that many of those jobs Durham Tech is actively training for and we're looking at the back to work initiative as it continues to enroll students in it. Tastes of gene therapies will invest at least $75 million in our local economy and create 200 jobs in South Durham. And yesterday we heard that a verna biotech will invest at least over $82 million and create another 200 jobs to create a new gene therapy manufacturing facility manufacturing facility in RTP. I'd like to also point out that the majority of those jobs do not require advanced degrees and trainings and certifications are available through our local education systems. And so that's something we want to continue to point out as we try to get our community back to work. So with that I will turn it over to Dr Nelson to give an update and after that we'll hear from from Susan regarding some other initiatives. Great. Happy New Year everyone. And I'll just echo what Jeff said. We do see improvement but overall there is still cause to be concerned. We do have the support of the federal government but we still need to support our small businesses. So if we look at unemployment, unemployment is improving somewhat in September was at 6.6% now or in November and October as well it was at 5.6% so slight improvement there. In using January 2019 as a baseline, if we look at the change in employment for our low income workers and those of you who were on the call I guess a few months ago that was one of our areas of concern. So we're down about 45.7% from January 2019 in terms of employment for low income workers those who are making less than $27,000 per year. If you look at the change in employment for all of our workers. As compared to January 2019 we're down about 19.7%. And these are October numbers of course we don't have the latest, latest numbers. So we're showing a little bit of improvement there, but there is still cause to be concerned. If you look at the small business activity. The change in the number of small businesses that were open in January 2019 and compare it to December. We're down about 26%. If you look at the small business revenue from January 2019 and compare it to December. We're down about 47%. But even though we're down, we're not down as much as we were in April when we were at the height of the pandemic. In April of 2019, or 2020 I'm sorry, we were down 42%, almost 43%. And in April, we were down in terms of small business revenue 62%. So we're down but not down as much as we were before. In terms of consumer spending, which is very important to stimulate the economy. We've seen an improvement there. We're down about 4.8% compared to January's numbers. And if you look at where we were at the height of the pandemic in March and April, we were down about 38%. So again, we're showing some improvement overall. So those are the economic metrics that we're looking at that we have looked at. And as Jeff said, we've got interns who are looking at additional metrics who will help us to consider using some of those other metrics. So, Jeff, I don't know if you have anything else to add, but overall, again, the economy is improving. Nothing additional on Dr. Nelson to appreciate that update. Thank you. Susan, you're up. A couple of things you're working on. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I wanted to talk about a few of the things on our mind. And one of those two. Dr. Nelson's points about the economy. It's better. The place where you heard the most dire numbers was among low income workers and among small businesses and we know many of those are our bars and restaurants retailers, many independent Durham based businesses and many of those are in the hospitality field, who we work with most closely. So one of the programs that we have been doing and you've heard about many times is Durham Delivers, which I just want to thank Mayor Schull who gave an incredibly generous personal donation from him and his wife. And also has been recruiting other donors and brought in a second donor already and those funds are going to allow Durham Delivers to continue operating for several months into the spring and work on growing. We've had some restaurants that have said that having a midweek bulk delivery that comes through Durham Delivers can be the make the difference in making payroll that week. So this, this effort has been ramping up we've had we've got 41 restaurants on board about 31 communities. And that's without having had any, any funds to market this up to now so now with these donations will be able to start doing some digital promotion to expand it. We had done about four we're still waiting on end of your numbers but we've done about 40,000 in revenue for these restaurants through the end of December. We've got so far we've got 60 deliveries. January and we think January may get to 30,000 in that one month alone so we are working to try and ramp this up exponentially and are very pleased to see what kind of progress it's making feel like it's, it's on a good track. It's, it's not, these aren't enormous numbers but for some of these small businesses, it seems to really make a difference in allowing them to survive. So very excited about that. Second thing I wanted to talk a little bit about that the festivals and events piece because that really relates to a lot of these small businesses and we, we, this was part of the proposal and we are moving forward and I mentioned earlier and trying to make this work. Our top 10 festivals and events in 2019 contributed about $20 million in economic impact, and a lot of that feeds the small businesses. I feel like it's incredibly important for those for us to work as quickly as we can to get those events back and recognize that it's not time today to start encouraging large gatherings but it will be at some point in the future, but it's going to have to be done carefully it's not it's not going to be the case that suddenly this is all over and and events can start happening the next weekend. It's not going to be going to be gradual, it's going to require guidance from our public health partners and these festivals plan months or years in advance. So we would like to see as soon as we're able and we're hoping that that's starting this summer. You know those those timelines move constantly, but we need to have these things in the pipeline for them to be able to take place and so the idea behind the commission as Mattisha said earlier is about bringing together people who can do more than what's happened in the past we've had lots of people who are willing to help and lots of city and county departments who are part of this and do a great job. We need a commission that would have a mandate of helping some of these events have feel like they've got the support to be able to plan for their events. And so and we stand ready to discover Durham will be helping along the way and helping them market those events when the time is right so that we know that they can be successful so we feel like this. We recognize it's a little difficult to contemplate now and we're talking about how we can eke out more vaccines for people that are so incredibly important. For us to be thinking about something that's a little more intangible like the festivals coming back at some point in the future but we really like to make sure. If we want to focus on economic recovery that's one piece that we're a concerted effort together can help some of those things happen so I know we were talking with some of the city staff about how we can move forward and organizing around that. And then I want to talk for just a second about the communications proposal and as Matisha said earlier, the funding committee whatever we call that group asked the communications team to go back and do a little bit of pencil sharpening and and one of the things we did was go back and look at what are all the communications efforts going on around the community related to this recovery work. And so we talked to, I want to say we Margaret Pintrack on our team talked to Duke Health, to the Department of Public Health, to Durham, we got information from Durham Public Schools and from the City Department of Public Affairs. All of whom have efforts their own efforts going on. And what we find is that those are focused on particular things they're very important efforts. They are not communicating in a mass way to the public. And, you know, some some are focused on rolling out the vaccine and some are focused on students and their family so. And in a lot of cases there aren't a lot of funds there I know in talking to the director Jenkins, just before the holidays he was talking about the shortage of resources needed to roll out this vaccine statewide in general. And it wasn't clear and it may be more clear now about how much would even be available for communicating about the vaccine. And, and we know there's, there's going to need to be a lot so. As we so we've made a few adjustments in the communications proposal and it will go back to the committee with this additional information now. I believe that the back on the bull to put that name on it messaging could would compliment a lot of those efforts. And it would be focused in the fall we focused a lot on businesses and what they needed to do. Now we've got the community health ambassadors who are doing a fabulous job with the businesses and we've got green light Durham who's working with a lot of these businesses hands on. What the where the real opportunity is and what this task force can help accomplish is the broader communication to the public about what to do what to expect. We know over the coming months as hopefully some of the requirements and restrictions roll back a little bit that that's going to be confusing to people to get clear messaging out there about what's allowed and what's safe. We want to roll out information to encourage people to get the vaccine, which might take the role of the play. The path for that might be encouraging the vaccine pledge for example, or highlighting some local leaders and celebrities who've gotten it. So there are various ways that we could do, we could make sure that we're encouraging that. And then, over time we want to continue encouraging people to come back out to support businesses in safe ways and so helping people understand what's needed there is a piece of that. So, those are three of the things going on from a recovery and communication standpoint. I think that just based on those numbers that Dr Nelson was talking about, we really do have to think about these small businesses the funds that were provided back in December were fabulous and that's a very important part of allowing these businesses to survive. Clearly, what we need them to do is to be able to regrow their revenue and so we're going to continue to look for opportunities in ways that hopefully modest levels of investment can reap some great ROI on these efforts. And, and those are things as we get into the rest of this discussion that I think, if others in the group have some ideas about some initiatives that seem untapped right now, those would be some good things for us to talk about as a group. I yield the floor. Thank you for that update Susan and thank you Jeff and Anthony for the updates that you provided. Any questions for Susan Anthony or Jeff, not seeing any. Yes, I should. Thanks, I just wanted to give a quick, I saw everybody jotting down feverishly as Dr Nelson is giving his reports, we'll make sure we throw those those numbers into the briefing materials and so we can make sure that we align those so that's the last one. Great, thank you for that. Vice Chair Jacobs. Yeah, well thank you to all of you for for the great work that you're doing. And I, I had a follow up question to what was in our agenda packet. And I saw that there was a proposal, I guess from some of the student interns to create an economic recovery dashboard. And I thought that was a fantastic idea and I just like to hear from you, Dr Nelson and Jeff, a little bit more about that and what are the next steps to actually get that going. I think that would really be great to get us focused on on the recovery piece. I'll say from my point that's still early stages. And so we're trying to figure out what that would even look like if there's the capacities to do such a thing. I believe Dr Nelson and I are in agreement that that's a really important piece of it. We just need to figure out if we have the bandwidth and how to align that so it's early stages but we're very optimistic they'll be able to deliver it, but nothing specific to report from my standpoint this at this time. I agree the interns have been extremely helpful up to date, and Ryan has been working with them. So we appreciate all the efforts that they've given us but we certainly don't want to commit them to doing work, especially since they've been volunteering. So, we do believe that that is extremely important it would be very helpful. Yeah, I think especially related to what Jeff mentioned the fact that unbelievably, I mean, during the pandemic the jobs announcements that we have had in Durham County have just been unbelievable. So we, we are so blessed that we have, I mean, I don't even know the number of new jobs announced as we've had in the past few months but it's up in the thousands probably now. And just how do we really get our residents into those jobs is going to be so critical. I was wondering I don't know one thing I would be interested in hearing about is how we're going to get I know Durham delivers is fantastic, but any news on the takeout pledge or the drinks to go. I'm getting how how what we're hearing about our small restaurants getting through the winter without having the outdoor dining just curious what we're hearing from from the restaurants round table, or maybe from Nicole. It would not be good for you to see me this morning so I will stay hidden behind my, my lovely picture there. Technically I am still off, but wanted to sit in on this. The streetery while it did end a little early. Our, our hope is that once the number starts tracking down, we will come back out and do pop up streeteries. They may be at a different time. But you know ways to encourage folks to come out and remain distant wearing masks, but patronizing our businesses. I need to work with the city right now we have a permit to do that within the loop. But obviously, a lot of our businesses outside of the loop or asking when would this be happening in their parts of downtown. So we're working on a strategy of how we might be able to do roll this out over the next few months. And then we're going on into after March and through the end of the fiscal year. So I don't really have a plan for you we just started looking at what the pros and cons are mostly around street closures, timing of those. We know that we need to do this earlier in the day as opposed to at night, because it just gets so cold. But with the permit that we currently have with the city, I would imagine that as the numbers track down because I'm going to be positive and say that they will be tracking us, we will have warm days because that's just how North Carolina is that we will have one of these amazingly warm days, we will try to have about a week's notice where we'll let the restaurants know we'll let the city knows that they can make necessary arrangements and we'll pull it out and we'll do a pop up streetery and kind of do a push for that. So the streetery while it's not happening right now is not dead. It will continue within the loop and with plans to expand that out to other parts of the downtown business improvement district. About the to go carry out to go cocktails, most of our businesses that I talked to and in mind you that that you know with the holidays it was a little difficult but the emails that I received everybody was very pleased. I was disappointed that it took the state this long because they have been carrying that that inventory for since March and as you mentioned a vice vice chair, Jacobs. This was something that we asked for back in March. So I was indeed happy to see that the North Carolina Retail Logic Association was finally able to get that through. I do know that a number of businesses did take, take advantage of it and they immediately switched and tried to do what they could around that, and are continuing to do so through the end of this month and the hope is that it will extend on past this month and be something that another option for our businesses. I can't remember your third question. Oh, the downtown takeout challenge. That was something that was created as the brainchild of one of our downtown restaurants, both city burger and brewery and Pompeo pizza, Seth. And we are getting ready to push DDI is getting ready to push a big move around that about you know come and take a picture and do the challenge and be put your name in for a drawing. We have those spendable gift cards that we give out. We have about $10,000 and has not been spent probably a little bit more, but I don't have the numbers in front of me people apparently went out over the holidays and purchase that for employees and gave them out as Christmas gifts and so we know how much is out there that money doesn't get into the businesses hands until it is spent so we will be doing a big push to encourage folks if you receive one of these come downtown use that money because that is when it actually starts hitting the the books of our downtown businesses. And that is not just for restaurants that is for any business that participates we have a list on our website of all the businesses that are participating. We are going to try to do a big push to get more more businesses to participate, but it is anyone in downtown it is a very simple process. So really what I have found is if I walk around and I have a iPad with me and I say hey are you joined have you joined. I can do it with them then, but also we're using the fact that we have so much unspent gift cards that we're going to try to encourage folks to use over the next two to three months. So just some of the things that we are doing. We are also looking at other other creative things that we can be doing, recognizing that with the weather and with the COVID cases we in no way want to encourage folks to do anything to make those numbers continue to trick trend up. So we will rely heavily on the information that we get from Rod in his office and as we see things trickling down, we will move and react quickly. And then we will go to the city and make sure that they give us the permission to do that. But they've been great to work with so far. So we feel that there are any number of things that could possibly happen but the street or isn't dead we will we will be bringing that back and we will be expanding it. There are spinnable gift cards. I'd encourage you to use those and give them out or just come and do that now. And then you'll see more about the take out challenge and how we will try to market that and encourage businesses and our people to use that. And to add on to that the DDI has been doing a great work with the downtown group we're trying to make sure the takeout pledge is countywide and so we've been pushing it out to some of our restaurants outside the downtown. Thank you, Nicole. Again, thanks, Susan, Jeff and Anthony for that update. You know, we've made some improvement but still lots of work for us to do as a community and it sounds like there's still efforts that we can support as a task force and looking forward to continuing on with anything that we can do to support. I'm going to move us on to our last agenda item for today. So we have about 15 minutes on this item. We wanted to have a conversation about 2021 priorities so we're at the beginning of the year. Currently our plan is to have the task force in existence through May so that gives us about 45 months to really think about what do we want to focus on and how do we measure our success over the next couple of months. I mean, it's easy when you establish priorities and goals and then that really gives you something to really work hard toward. So, I'm going to open the floor floor up first to Mayor Schurl, Chair Howerton, Vice Chair Jacobs to provide their thoughts on focus areas for the task force for 2021. And then open it up to the task force to provide your thoughts as well. I'm happy to start briefly. I had to pick up my notes, sorry. Just, I think I mentioned the things earlier that I think are things that I think are important priorities one is one big thing we've been talking about two big things have been talking about today vaccine roll out how we can help with vaccine acceptance how we can overcome vaccine hesitancy. You know, however, we're needed to help support that, and then the economic recovery, including not only our small businesses but also our, our workers. And it was, you know, daunting to hear some of those numbers is, you know, as Dean Nelson said things are better but not, but it's not good. And so I think, however, we can support the economic recovery. Things that we're continuing to support I think have been really great the back on the ball health ambassadors the green light campaign all those seem essentially continue to support. We've got how to support our public schools, thinking about how to, you know, not sure exactly what our role will be on this but you know, depending upon what happens with federal relief and so forth, continuing to grapple with the eviction the potential eviction crisis, and the need for rental assistance. And I would say just all of that in the context of the, the, our vulnerable populations and really looking at these issues through a racial equity lens we know that the inequality and the effects of the virus persists. And I think that we have to be continue to be paying special attention to that and see what actions that dictates for us so those are some of the things that are on my mind. Thank you for that. Well, thank you. So I agree with the mayor, since I haven't been a part of this for to know all of the, the roundtables and the things that you're doing, but I support all the things that he said, especially around the eviction and our and not an education public education. And of course that our economic coverage. One of the things that I have not heard anything about supporting our seniors, because that's that's a real key one as well. Making sure that not only that they get their vaccines but that they have food, food insecurity is one of our major issues at the county. And that's what we have right now. Thank you so much thanks for all of you the work that you're doing. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. I would just add I think that most, most of my top issues have been have been covered I think that these are really the key areas that the task force really has been focusing on. Focusing on the jobs that we have. And getting our small businesses through these next few months. And just the again, the economic recovery. As I said before, focusing on the job the new jobs that we have. And retraining folks and connecting them to Durham Tech and the Back to Work initiative. The only things that I didn't hear mentioned were I think around the schools now because the fact that it we are going to be virtual for the rest of the year, the reality of that. How are we really going to support all of our families with this? I don't have kids at home anymore, but I just, I know Matisha you do. I don't know how many of us here really have children at home right now, but I just cannot even imagine at this point that the reality of that our kids will have been since last March and this entire school year learning virtually and just all of the challenges that go along with that. I know there's a lot of concern about learning loss. They're, you know, just parents who are working at home and juggling that the what our kids have been going through in terms of the social impacts, the mental health impacts and so, you know, I think now for us the focus is going to be, I think we have to think holistically about what are ways to support our families. I know that the food delivery program that we're doing, that the county supporting through the food inside group is great because it supports local farmers and it supports local restaurants. That's one of those great kind of system wide approaches. But it's just going to be critical, and the reality that a lot of families can't do the virtual learning at home their frontline workers, the parent, you know, the parents have to leave their homes every day to go to work so I just that that reality we haven't talked a lot today about just the burnout of cobit I think Katie you've talked about. Yes, we're going to get vaccinated but people have to keep. We're going to keep being we're going to keep wearing masks for the foreseeable future we we you know just how we support our community. Mentally, um, I mean I'm so proud when I go out now and I mean everyone in Durham is wearing masks. We, our community is so amazing. But again, how do how do we just keep supporting each other to get to get through all this. I think the media campaign is going to be really key that Susan was talking about how to coordinate, how to coordinate that so. And then one thing that wasn't mentioned is just our homeless population, you know it's the food insecurity, the rental assistance utility assistance, and then of course our seniors and our homeless. So, yeah. Thank you for that by share Jacobs. So I appreciate thoughts from you Mayor shul and chair howards and as I look at the list that I've jotted down task force we have a lot of work to get done between now. But you've clearly demonstrated that you're up for the challenge. I do want to get any insight from the task force as you've heard the things that Mayor shul chair howards and by sure Jacobs spoke about or any other things that you want to add or anything that you want to compliment that they actually shared with us. The only thing I want to kind of like highlight and thank is that we're keep talking about using a racial equity lens when we're doing all this work. So that's part of the great leadership that Durham has and that we don't see another county so I do want to say thank you for that. I'm thinking of, you know, doing this work through racial equity lens we're also thinking of, you know, language equity and really addressing the vulnerable populations in our community so I do want to highlight that and just give a huge thank you to, you know, our elected leaders who continue to work with that equity lens. Thank you. Susan, were you going to say something. Well, I was going to just add regarding the communications efforts as a group. It's, I think remains this, the case that just like in the nine months that have led up to this point that it's hard to predict what things are going to be like a month from now two months three months. We have rolled out vaccines more broadly because we've been able to ramp that up will it still be slow will we still see a lot of resistance to getting the vaccine things like that and from a communication standpoint. Right now there's there's not a lot of communication going out over any mass media kinds of things to the general population. The last year's campaign and all of those funds are done. And we do have the one of the great things about it is that we have the flexibility to change the messaging as we need to over the course of the next few months. But I think as a, as a task force, it behooves us to think about what is most important for us and I know it's the questions we're talking about or what are the most important things for us to do but also what are the most important things for us to communicate. Thank you Susan. Lois I think you might be on mute. I can't. You're welcome to type your comments in the chat box if you want to. So, with about five minutes left, you know, again, great conversation around the priorities, what we will do because of course we only we're only meeting once a month now. So take a hard look at the priorities and determine which of these items we may want to put on future agendas and take a deeper dive on, as well as figure out, you know how we can use continue to use our round tables to help support some of the priority areas that we just talked about. Anything from you, Katie before I close this out. No, I just want to thank everyone this has been a really good, good discussion today. A lot of a lot of work to be done still, but a lot of great accomplishments through this task force and in this community over the last 10 months so I'm just really proud to be part of this, this group. Alrighty, well thanks everyone for joining in this morning looking forward to our continued great work together over the next couple of months. Stay safe in our current environment, stay safe in all the snow that we're going to get right. That's coming. And you don't even have to leave your home now in the snow because we have to stay in home. That's right. So thanks everyone for your time this morning and hope you have a great weekend and again looking forward to the great work that we'll continue to do and we'll plan to see you in a month or now. Thank you. Take care.