Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald joins Business as Usual for a third time to provide the latest updates on the COVID-19 pandemic in Allegheny County.
Transcription:
So Good afternoon. Welcome to Monday. This is Audrey Russo, president ceo of the Pittsburgh Technology Council. And I'm joined, as always with my co host and all things media vice president visibility, Jonathan Kersting. And before we jump into today's call, a deep appreciation of our county executive, being able to join us, given everything that's going on, I feel very privileged that he's taken the time. A few things. First of all, we've muted all of you that we've muted you only just to make sure that there's nothing in the background and any noise, any birds, any family, that we are not distracted. The second thing is we have a chat and the chat is we use the chat. So use that for an opportunity to ask questions. We'll try to get to those questions, too. Jonathan will make sure. And this isn't a time for you to sell your wares. We're here to make sure that we're tethering the community, and that we're talking about the topics that face our constituents each and every day. That's why we're very thrilled to have rich here. But before we get started, and I bring rich right on, I just want to give deep appreciation to our sponsors. And that includes sheets sheets, while they might be headquartered in Altoona, and everyone knows sheets and the kinds of services that they offer to all of us each and every day from gas to food. They also have an innovation center that's based in Pittsburgh, and that is focused on all things innovation to the next generation sheets, Deloitte, we're thrilled to have Deloitte join us this morning as well. They're very active in our community, both civically and professionally, providing lots of services to many of our organizations and their deep partners in our region as well as Huntington bank, who has been with us right from the beginning and has Always been on our side whenever we try new experience experiments as well as their leadership in terms of all things related to the cares act. And then finally we have at&t. at&t joins us as leaders in making sure that there's going to be addressed the issues around the digital divide. They have been with us also from the beginning, as we've tried to gain access, provide access to our regions, and particularly our city schools, as those schools actually went virtual. So they've been a key member in terms of the partnership there. And they're also a sponsor of our public policy series. So really thrilled for all of them. And and for tomorrow, just to let you know that we have Jake trinsic. He's Managing Director of Draper triangle ventures. They've been involved in Pittsburgh tech scene for I think, 35 years at least. And then on Wednesday, we have David Morehouse president ceo, the Pittsburgh Penguins Thursday we have state representative Valerie gatos and Friday we wrap up with Ryan Scott who leads up Carlos University social justice Institute's which was very timely for all the things that are happening. So I'm going to enough of me now I just want to jump in and thank our county exec, rich Fitzgerald, who has been very, very busy. They it's amazing that they've made themselves available to us. And this is the third time that he's joined us. And he joins us because it's really, he knows how important it is to make sure that the communication is strong, and that we have some level of intimacy in terms of the kinds of things that he's leading us through and grappling with. So good morning, county executive, and I like to call you rich. That's okay. I know you've had to make some really, really tough decisions over these last few weeks these last few months. And can you walk us through that? Can you talk to us about you know what the progress has been? What are the options unities what are some of the issues?
Okay, well, I will take my mask off now, but I wanted to have it on because I think it's so important. We've learned how important masks are particularly indoors. You know, we've learned a lot about this virus as we're still continuing to learn as time goes on. And it's one of those things that has literally affected everybody. Nobody has not been affected one way or the other, whether they've contracted or had a family member, their business, their organization, their school, their all their activities have just been so affected by this. But yeah, back in mid March, when the state as well as Dr. Bogan and the county started to shut things down. And we went into something at the time that was called the red face, and the red face basically kind of basically stay at home, don't go out. And those of you who might have been driving at that time would see no traffic because very few people were out and about people did stay home as we started to see some of the scary things about this. disease, death rates, all kinds of things that went on. We in western Pennsylvania and Allegheny County in particular, did extremely well, with low cases, low positive cases, low hospitalizations, low intensive care units, low death rate, etc, compared to other major urban areas across the country. And as the state started to slowly move into a different phase, the yellow phase, we were granted one of those yellow phases, which started to open things up, it started to open things up, in which people could be away from each other things like construction or manufacturing, certain types of retail, etc, etc. And we were in that phase for a couple of weeks. And then in early June, we were given the green face and I think green in many ways is probably misleading because those of us who learned to drive figure Green means go and everything's okay. And I think a lot of people took that signal as a as almost a meaning that we had been This disease that we had beaten this, this virus, and people started to really get lacs, not wear their mask, we saw a lot of numbers start to go up. So in early June, we saw the bars and restaurants and hair salons, nail salons, gyms, etc all open up. Pretty much most things were open other than big gatherings, like a concert or a sporting event festivals, things like that. But then it takes a couple of weeks for the numbers to kind of catch up and then in late June, we started to see our numbers in elegant economy start to spike. When we were testing early on, we would be to 3% positivity. Well, starting around June 26 27th 28th. We started to see towards 10% positivity and we've had over 200 cases on a number of occasions. In a day. We would go in May or April would go three weeks without too hundred cases total. So it really changed the dynamic. So about a week and a half ago, two weeks ago, Dr. Bogan ordered a shutdown of bars and restaurants, the contact tracers and the investigators case investigators really isolated the fact that it was the bars and the restaurants that were mostly the bars were young people were standing congregating, not wearing masks, not socially distancing, staying there for long periods of time, which is what you know, a lot of us do when you go to a bar. And there were also people coming back on travel places like Florida that started to become hotspots. Texas, California, Arizona, the Carolinas, people bringing the disease back, then go in the bars are then going to other places where they would be in contact. So Dr. Bogut and her team set that shut that down. Just this week, they opened up partially in restaurants where you could have to outdoor seating. Again, in restaurants, you could order a couple of drinks, I think it's a three drink limit that you can have, you have to be seated, to be wearing your mask, all those kind of things that we all know about. So we've seen a level of plateau, where around 10 or 11% positivity right now, it hasn't gone up over those 200 into the three, four or 500 that, you know, we were fearful that it would occur. But we also haven't seen them come down yet. So we're hoping over the next few weeks, the next few days in the coming weeks that we'll start to see those things go down. And then maybe within the restaurant association restaurant business or could be even some indoor dining that can open up I would be very doubtful if we're going to see people be allowed to congregate in bars again, in the large numbers that we did, I think you'll see things in which people can go but they have to be seated. They have to be six feet away from each other those type of things. So the good news is on the economy side, the health department hasn't had to shut down all the other operations, you know, manufacturing, office operations, r&d, you know, all those type of things, it's still been able to operate, as well as retail, the gyms, the hair salons, nail salons, manufacturing, construction, those things have been able to remain open. But I think what it has done is brought back into focus, the fact that you know, wear your mask, be responsible for everybody. Otherwise, this thing could get out of hand very quickly. We don't want to be like some of those states I mentioned, where they're really literally getting started to shut things down, and their hospital system is being overrun. Ours is in that position yet. We certainly don't want to get there.
And so, we suggest the recommendation is masks outside and inside Yeah, yes, well outside if you're what you're within six feet of people, I mean, if you're outside, you know riding your bike or going for a walk all by yourself out in the park, you probably could take your mask off that, but it's the distance, the social distance to keep away from people, but definitely indoors, it's an indoor, with a lot of people in a room for a long period of time. That is really the high potential for spreading the disease.
So many people do not realize that Allegheny County is one of the few local governments in western Pennsylvania, that even has a health department. Even the city of Pittsburgh doesn't have a health department that's gonna, you know, talk about this and how it, you know, helps you to respond and exert local leadership during this crisis.
Well, we're fortunate in that regard because it's it's tougher for the state out of Harrisburg, where they've got 67 counties to to focus on to maybe be as nimble as you can be when you have a health department, on the ground with people on the ground with contact racers, with the relationship that people like Dr. Berg and have with our great ecosystem of healthcare that we have here in Allegheny County. So I think it's allowed us It certainly helped us in March, when we shut down things much more quickly than other places did. And then kept us in in good stead throughout. As Dr. Bogan and her team were able to go out and pinpoint, and you know where the problems might be. So we don't want to go back into the yellow or certainly not the red face, where we were in March in April where we everything was shut down, and people couldn't make a living people couldn't do normal activities, whatever that normal is now, but at least if we can pinpoint an area, if it is just bars, if it is just travel, if it is just whatever application it might be, then you can take some Some action. And as she says it's it's a strategic focus rather than taking just a scattershot approach and hit everybody, because we're only a month away from schools starting to, particularly our universities that sometimes go back in mid, mid to late August. And, you know, we're now going to have, you know, however many 10s of thousands of of college students that are coming back into our community, and we don't want to be in a bad place when that starts, because that's, that's a challenge that we're going to have to deal with all into itself.
And that's a critical part of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County. It is, do you have one acolyte of shout, and then I want Jonathan to just ask a question, but I see Bobby watt gear is saying, very lucky to have local health department under bogans leadership with rich as the county executive and I she lives in a suburban County, and the information and guidance is very hard to get but Jonathan, can you take the next question? ones that are in there.
Be happy to and once again rich thanks for being here for your third time your I trifecta guests and we really like that. And my dogs are barking like crazy right now. So this is our first question is from john school bonus he says what what appears to be our second wave of Coronavirus taking hold in Pittsburgh, he'd like to hear what the county will be doing in regards to contact tracing.
Well, they've got a lot of folks out on the, on the field doing this, I think over 100 right now that are making contact with people who test positive, finding out where they were at they traveled, where did they work? Who Have they been in contact with? And so that's that's kind of how they came to these determinations as to what was the problem. So when the numbers, you know, they were, you know, witzy positive cases for the longest time to be 1518 sometimes 2025 Well, then, about two weeks ago, we started to see 90 then over 100 Then over 200 Well, when it started to hit that 92 days in a row, Dr. vogon knew something was was up, it was much different than what we were seeing their contact tracers had really come down to the fact that it was a lot of the bar activity. That was that was causing it. That's when they made a decision to do the the shutdown of that industry. While the numbers have still stayed where they are, because it's a lagging indicator. You can't shut it down on Monday and all of a sudden, on Tuesday, the numbers are going to get better. It's going to take a couple of weeks for all those those tests and then the virus to make its way through. Same with the things like hospitalizations, they're very concerned about seeing the hospitalizations now begin to rise. They haven't risen to some of the numbers we've seen in some of the southern states. But it is a concern because it is a lagging indicator that often follows when the tests get high. Then of course, the third indicator, or third or fourth We'll be the ICU, and then the fatality. So we're hoping we don't get to that point. But that's why they did what they did a couple of weeks ago. Yeah.
Our next question here is do you foresee reducing or eliminating the quarantine for travel to the 19 hotspots or the hot spot states?
I don't know. I mean, the governor put out a recommendation I think it's a recommendation. I don't know if it was it was actually an order. But if you traveled to certain states, you should quarantine a doctor bug and also made a recommendation during that in addition to the order that you made a couple of weeks ago, that when you do come back from one of those hotspots, you should either get tested within a couple of days or quarantine for a couple of weeks. While you do that. I understand they even have some testing that you can get done at the airport. When you get off the you get off the plane. I believe there's a rite aid or CVS, one of them are out there that will that you can get it With more questions, Jonathan? Yeah, these are they're rolling in. You got a big crowd here today. Absolutely. Let me see here. So here's a here's another one. Regarding from from Glen Ford, asking, rich for those traveling to Pittsburgh for business, would you suggest that we stay home?
Um, well, it's look, people are going to have to do certain things in business and my understanding in talking to the folks in the travel industry, the folks that are traveling right now are actually traveling on leisure as opposed to business. I think a lot of businesses have decided to do the zoom meeting, the remote meeting, that type of thing. But some businesses, you physically have to be there, you know, for whatever reason, so there are precautions that the airline industry has taken, you know, with wearing the masks all the other cleaning of the surfaces, keeping the middle seat open, things like that. So I think there's a lot of things that can be done. But if you're going to travel, hopefully, you know people could travel by car and stay isolated that way. But obviously, if you're going pretty far, you're gonna have to travel by plane or by train, and you're going to be in that enclosed area.
Okay, keep going, Jonathan. There's great questions. They just keep coming. They keep coming here. Let me see here. So this is from in Tamil. Oh, she says last week, the post Gazette reported UPMC, medical director of infection prevention said the strain seen in western pa seems to be more infectious, but less virulent. will that affect how the county decides to open or close businesses?
If that is the case, and I've heard that from from others as well, but in talking to Dr. Bogan this morning, they haven't really confirmed that yet at the health department there is they're suspecting that that could be the case. I'm sure that will go into effect. If it's less virulent and less dangerous. That certainly is good news. The bad news, obviously on the other side would be if it is more if it spreads easier, so I'm sure they'll make some there's some strategies and I'm sure nationally, we'll start to see that if that is the case that the CDC, the NIH, will come out with some recommendations. If what you're saying is what we're saying.
Jonathan, there's a bunch of questions in there about, like, Is there a way to report or any citations or any of the actions people are seeing people as they're walking around? Yeah. And he did, right. You could call the health department and I'll give you that number. We'll give it out a couple times if you want to, but it's pencil for 12350. info. So it's easy to remember 350 info and just call the health department and report something that you may see and the case investigators and they can contact racers. etc, we'll be able to to investigate. Okay.
Okay, that's good information that no notes here, that's for sure. there another question in there, Jonathan? Yes. So many it's like unbelievable. We're almost out of control here and I kind of like it. So, so um, what about sports? If people are playing basketball and outdoor courts, what are your thoughts is eight to 10 people too much. Is this a concern?
Look, I think people need to get out and be active. I mean, it's one of the things we've done in the county and other places have kept the parks open and allowed people to recreate whether it's biking, walking, jogging, you know, etc. Fishing, you know, all those type of things. The thing about basketball is that it's a contact sport. basketball, soccer, football, lacrosse, those kind of sports. You know, you're everybody's running towards the ball. You're congregating around the ball. And, you know, we know people Don't want to wear masks, it's very difficult to wear masks, particularly if you're, you know, you're running your day you can't you can't breathe as well. So I would say basketball is probably one of those kind of iffy, kind of things to do. But there's there's other ways in which you can play basketball, maybe you just, you know, play horse, you know, those type of things. There's, there's, you know, hockey, you could do with just one on one the person shooting and then a goalie as opposed to, you know, playing 10 people out on the court all at once or on the ice at once. So, I think these things will we'll learn more about I don't think there has been an issue right now with widespread in in activities like athletics and gyms, but I do think it remains to be seen, particularly as we you know, schools open up in the fall, and then you have all the false ones. So we'll just have to see.
So Griffin shorts, Jonathan has a good question. We haven't seen him in a while. He's been a regular on our webcast here for sure. So he says our asks, What is the state of City County state budget, what cuts will need to be made assuming the budget situation is challenging, and you're expecting more help from the federal government in what form?
Ah, it remains to be seen on the one thing about and I'll speak to the county budget, the county manager imposed a hiring freeze back a number of months ago. So far, some of our revenues been fairly consistent like property tax, because that's more of a stable tax. But we've seen certainly our sales tax, our drink tax, the gaming tax, the hotel tax, things like that have really obviously taken a huge hit. So those revenues will be down significantly. We understand that the federal government is looking to have another stimulus package in which state and local governments will be given Some sort of a, some sort of help whether what percentage that will be, I can't speak to that. They did provide some cares money that the county will be distributing. But none of that is for revenue replacement. That is all for COVID related expenses like health care, contact tracing, testing, those types of things, public safety, PPS that are being provided. So that I know that the bill, they passed one in the house, I know the Senate is working on one at the federal government level, the federal level, and hopefully they'll come together and reach some sort of compromise.
So what about camps? Are you seeing any spread from kids that are going to day camps?
We haven't. And I know camps have opened up in again, different ways than they have before. But no, that's not been one of the areas of concern that Dr. Bogan and her team have indicated she was a little more again, we talked about the restaurants and the travel. Okay. And I think there was just at least a little bit of a an inkling that that sports and other activities like that, that were starting to open up some of the high school teams and middle school teams that were, you know, starting to have practice again, we're but nothing yet that it's come to the to the level of what we saw with the bars.
So rich since the information in the data that you released from the health department. My hat's off to the timeliness and consistency of reporting that data to you. Where are we going to reach an inflection point? Is there an inflection point that may say, you know what, these numbers just are continuing to get to a certain level that we are going to have to retreat a little bit and go maybe into another reversion of a hybrid model?
I don't know. It's a really good question because again, I think a lot of it isn't just going to be the test results and the positive tivity right, but also the hospitalizations and the ICU? And does our hospital healthcare system become overwhelmed with that? At this point, I think Dr. Bogan and her team feel confident on the strategic listing of the bar and restaurant association areas, and asking people to quarantine or test when they travel. And thus far, that's where we're going to be now. We're talking a month, six weeks from now, we're going to open schools, right? Things could certainly change when you when you bring, you know, all those students to an indoor facility for six hours or so, you know, that we don't know what that's going to happen. So I think, I think there's gonna have to be a lot of flexibility because I don't think there's any rules that you can say, you know, you're gonna be open for a month and then check it, it might have to get shut down right away, or it might have to get changed right away. So we really don't know once that activity changes after the end of the summer, where we'll be
So there's here's a question, Jonathan, if you want to take this one from Lindsey Falco, yeah, reading my mind, and this one is pretty important. So rich, what is the guidance for private event sizes when private events like weddings or funerals are up to the sole discretion of the attendee to make? Why are there limitations? Is this up to the private club to instill the 50% capacity rule?
Yeah, they're treated just like any other restaurant or anybody else, private Country Club or a private VFW or, you know, social club still has to follow the rules that they've put out, which is 25 people indoors and 50 people outdoors. That was a two week order that were maybe three or four days into right now. So that may change as time goes on. But during this two week period, it's 25. indoors and 50. Outdoors. Right And so again, if anyone sees any violations there, you can call the number 350. info right rats. Yes, and I can tell you it's affected the county executive because my son had a wedding that was planned. him and his fiance for August, they have canceled it and put it off until next year, hopefully things will be better. So it honors everybody.
Yeah, my daughter the same thing. So what about the as we wind down, Bobby, what gears back on? She's talking about the availability of testing in the county. Now, there are some reports of delay.
Ah, yeah, from what I'm hearing is that some of the private labs are being overwhelmed. And I don't think it's just locally I think it's because these are national labs, you're talking about places like quest and lab core, that are taking some extra days, I guess, to get results back. Used to be one or two days and now might be, you know, three or four days and I'm not sure where that'll go if they're going to be able to ramp up because we do see more and more tests being done. I mean, I mentioned you know, before when we For two or 3% 4% positivity, we're only running six or 700 tests a day. In the county now we're running oftentimes above 2000 tests per day. So you got a lot more people getting tested. Obviously, it just takes more and you need more infrastructure to be able to do that.
So what what about too many priorities for the county's Care Act dollars?
I think is those dollars cuz the requests come in to the various from the various municipalities and various organizations? I think a lot of its going to go to help people in most need Human Services and our social workers will be able to continue to hopefully, you know, care for people that are most affected by this. And I think that's where most of that funding will go towards.
And then, is there high need for plasma still do now?
I don't know the answer to that.
And then just a tactical question that allows Jonathan to ask the question after when the number of cases are reported on the Health website, is that cumulative weekly, daily number of cases, including recovered people, though, doesn't mean it's not all it comes in, in different batches. So, today, for example, we had 70. I think it's 71 cases with 750 tests. So it's still around that 10%, a little bit below 10% area. Tomorrow, we might have 2500 tests that come in, because it just depending on how those batches come in, and we don't have any control of that, by the way, they send those to the state that does all that information goes to the state and then the State Department of Health and puts it back on and we reveal ours or put ours out of 11 o'clock every day. I state then put stars out an hour later at noon. They Do the statewide results.
Yes. Thank you for being so consistent with that. very reliable. So Jonathan Vince's here from the airport. just wants to make a statement about the airport.
Yeah, I'm glad Vince chimed in on this. Good. Glad to have you here, Vince. So the Pittsburgh International Airport has a complete set of health, safety and wellness measures in place. The behavior of those when they travel to any area by any transportation mode is separate from the actual travel experience. Although it could happen. The Rite Aid at the airport is not yet set up for any testing. Pitt works closely with and follows the county health department as it relates to its tenants in businesses. So we just want to get that out. Well, I'm glad fits for it. I know there was a rite aid out there and I know right next to the number of tests in other places around the county and maybe that could be something we could get done as well.
So with that Dr. Cogan here, I don't know if you can answer this but how accurate are the tests with COVID and the antibodies I think they've gotten better. I think that was one of the big concerns early on back in April and early May, that there were a percentage of false negatives, where people would test negative but that actually they might have been positive, but i think i think that's improved significantly. But Dr. bogey could probably answer on the panel. That's, yeah, that's what I thought. So what? Um, yeah, here's one from from Lisa. And she's at Lisa macola. She's asking as a parent, how concerned should we be in sending our kids back to school phone?
Well, you know, that's a that's a tough one. Because I think every school is probably going to be a little bit different. And then you know, what will be the plan? If a child or two does test positive? How are they able to isolate and mitigate those type of things. I think that's something that the Department of Education At the state level is still working on. I know our universities at that level, have some plans in place some pretty significant plans in place. But you know, the best laid plans don't always come about follow the rules if people aren't wearing their masks when they're supposed to, or keeping the distance as they're supposed to, etc, etc. So it really is one of these things where we kind of know what we need to do. If everybody does it, we'll probably have some success, but it doesn't take very many folks who don't want to do it, to cause the numbers to spike to ruin it. Right. So rich as we wrap up, what do you want to what are your final words that you want to say just for today, because every day is a different tape for you. What do you want to say to the tech community, I mean, many of us are working from home. We actually have the capability to be highly productive and working remotely but Long that can last.
I know. And a lot of us, I'm certainly with them that have COVID fatigue. You know, we're just we want to get back to normal, we really do. We want to go to a party, we want to hang out with our friends and our family members. But until the virus until we have a vaccine, or a cure, we're really no further along than we were in March. I mean, we're better that we know more about it now it spreads and all those type of things. But for certain people, elderly with immune suppression issues. It's a very, very deadly virus that puts people at grave risk, and we don't want to let that happen. So I know a lot of folks in the tech community tend to tread and tend to be younger. Luckily, they're not as vulnerable to some of the effects if they do contract the virus, but they can certainly spread it to others. And that's that's it. We all have family members and one thing I'll say about Pittsburgh, you know, because Part of family time generations, you often have the grandparents who are the childcare, folks, for the parents who were at work. And in this case, that's that can be very difficult, particularly when those kids are going to school. So we just got to stay vigilant, keep listening to what Dr. Bogan and our medical experts are telling us stay distant if you can wear this mask or mask, you know, when you're when you're around people and just try to stay distant and it's communicate this way, you know, communicate by, by zoom by it, you know, Microsoft Teams, etc, etc. It's not It's not my favorite thing. And I'm sure it's not the favorite thing of everybody. But until the viruses is eradicated, it's probably the new normal we have to live under.
How did we do today? ranch. I didn't see the numbers yet.
Today's number was 71. Oh, wow. But it was only 750 tests. So the positivity, right. Okay, a little bit improved. But again, we you know, Don't don't read too much into it tomorrow again, to be we need to see. And you guys in the tech business, you need to see more than a one day, one day blip one way or the other. So, anyway,
okay, well, we have extended our time with you, first of all, thank you for always being accessible. Thank you for being candid. Thank you for letting us know when you don't know the answer. And we need that and we appreciate that from a leader and it matters. You're a good partner and a good role model. And I know that you are working relentlessly through all this making very hard decisions that are affecting each and every one of us. Really, thank you for that.
Thanks. All you guys appreciate it and stay safe. Bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai