Hello and welcome to PBS39n WLVT community update on coronavirus.

It's presented by Capital e Cross and brought to you wh help from our community par Lehigh Valley Health Netwo.

We are coming to you live m the Public Media Center in Bethlehem.

I'm Brittany Sweeney with vaccination rising in case counts following our show s winding down and that means significant progress in the fight against Covid-19 next week will be our last for s show, but we still have a t to cover before we wrap upr guests today include a physician who's been monitg infection rates and vaccins distribution every step ofe way and will also meet a dentist whose practice has changed because of the panc changes that are here to s. Regardless of what happensh Covid-19, our guests will e with us in just a moment.

If you have a question, ple give a call.

The phone number is four et four eight two one zero zeo zero eight.

We'll answer some of your questions alive.

Plus, for the latest coronavirus updates, you cn sign up for our newsletter.

You can do that at our webe coronavirus Lehigh Valley.

.Org.

There you'll find helpful information in both Englisd Spanish.

Now let's take a look at today's top headlines.

Pennsylvania is closing inn 11 million vaccinations.

The state says more than 48 million people are fully vaccinated with another min and a half having at leasta first dose.

Today, the State Departmenf Health reported 703 new coronavirus cases and 30 nw deaths, 900 people are in hospital with Covid-19.

212 of them in intensive c. All told, the virus has cld the lives of 27,300 and 25 Pennsylvanians.

Locally, the case counts continue to tumble.

State data shows Lehigh Coy with 11 new cases today and Northampton County with jut eight new ones.

Lehigh County has totaled 1 cases since Tuesday.

Northampton County is at 2.

Since then, those numbers e in contrast with counts ine hundreds during the peak oe pandemic early this year, e than half of the adults inh counties are fully vaccinad and today hundreds of Allen school district students received vaccinations in te second of two clinics helds week.

Shots were given today at e Allentown Fairgrounds.

Now these photos and smilig eyes that you see are from yesterday's clinic held at Dezhurov High School 300 students and their families received first doses there.

Allentown, of course, condd most of the pandemic school year through virtual learn.

It is time now to meet our guests for the day.

Dr Alex Benjamin has been h many times.

He's the chief of infection control prevention officert Lehigh Valley Health Netwo.

We're also joined by Dr Aza Sharifi.

She's a dentist who runs Es Berg Family Dentistry in college Montgomery County.

Thank you both so much for joining Dr Sharafi.

We'll be with you in just a couple of minutes.

We want to begin today witr Benjamin.

Dr Great to have you back.

Good to see you.

How are you?

I'm doing OK hanging in th.

And Doctor, first off, I wt to say thank you for beingo gracious with your time and insight this past year anda half.

We really, really appreciae you and what you've the information you've given ul this time.

You're very welcome.

It's nice to have a way to It's nice to have a way toy about all of these issues Absolutely.

I've done a great job keepg us informed.

So let's continue to do th.

Can you give us an update?

Cate's case counselor at te lowest levels, almost 11 million vaccinations.

Most of the restrictions he been lifted.

So where are we in this bae against Covid-19 at this t?

Just like you said, you kn, case counts are tumbling.

I think it's given a breatf relief to many people in te health care field.

health care field.We are sn the hospital.

No, some of them are in the intensive care unit, just e have seen before.

I people feel more confidet about how we manage them ad what we can do for them and their outcomes as well.

I will tell you that the majority of patients who ae diagnosed with Covid come o the hospital are unvaccinad and I think that is one.

It's a testament to the por of the vaccine when you ge.

But we really do encourage again and again that vaccid is your key to staying Covd free in these sort of wanig weeks and months of the pandemic.

Have you seen any breakthrh cases?

Anybody who is vaccinated coming in with Covid-19 anf so, how severe were those cases?

So we have seen some of the cases.

I would say probably amonge hospitals we have less tha5 cases of people who have ae considered fully vaccinad d coming down with Covid now, many of them are mild.

The ones that are in the hospital do have other medl risk factors and other diss that make even a mild illns very troublesome, many of m with respiratory illnesses, heart failure, high blood pressure.

So it's those little thing.

So even if they have mild disease, it tips them overd to requiring hospitalizati.

Gotcha.

And can you walk us through what the hospitals look lie right now?

You kind of mentioned it, t what about the ICU right n?

Is it manageable at this p?

There was a point during te pandemic it was getting unmanageable.

Yes, absolutely.

I would say the ICU from Cd standpoint is manageable, I will also say that we you , the hospital is still veryl with non Covid cases, justs you would expect this timef year, more activity, not so much about respiratory illnesses other than Covidn the community.

So, you know, it's a busy e in the hospital.

It's not overcrowded.

I think, again, people are feeling pretty comfortable.

We are looking at, you kno, even starting to close somf our what we would call Covd specific units.

So units that were designad for people with Covid where those were filling up and e were needing to create new units for Covid patients.

Those are all starting to e shut down.

So I think that's a great thing.

Obviously, again, still vey busy the hospital, but nots much with the Covid overflw that we have seen in the pt or health care workers in general have a busy job jut taking care of so many peo.

So what's it been like at s point?

What's it like for you andr coworkers?

It's been nonstop for the t year and a half.

Are things starting to slow down for you?

Are people starting to be e to take their vacations and take some time off and kinf regroup at this point?

Ye, absolutely.

But I think so.

The focus right now for our group, especially in infecn prevention, is twofold.

One is we continue to rollt vaccines and we're actually going to have our final Doy Park mass vaccination next week.

Those are second doses from doses we gave previously ad that'll be the last one.

We've already closed down Pocono Expressway, a Pocono Raceway and the Northampton Community College.

One.

We're seeing less and less activity in our Palmerton e North Whitehall clinics.

And the other thing that we working on besides vaccines getting back to normal in e health care settings.

So people are asking us, h, can we have in-person meet?

Again, can I colleagues in groups that have been workg remotely, can I bring themk into the office?

Is it safe to do procedured testing and elective surges again?

And how can you make that e for the people conducting e surgeries?

So lots of things going ono try to get us back to norm.

Certainly we have vaccinatn is a part of all that becae having a safe workforce mas easier and safer for patie.

It seems like there is pros being made finally on this front fight, this pandemic.

You mentioned closing those mass vaccination sites, but seems like LVHN efforts arw being shifted.

You're helping out in schos to get the kids vaccinated.

Could you tell us a littlet about that?

Yeah, absolutely.

So we've in through two I k 10 school districts in the counties that we serve providing support for vaccinations of those kids.

I think that's gone exceedy well.

I think our models of doing vaccination at the Palmer d White Sites has served very well to make things very efficient and safe.

It's very organized.

And I and hopefully it's gg some relief to families asy finish up their school year that they're going to be protected this summer.

Dr Benjamin, in terms of vaccines, where is their wk to be done?

Who is the group you're trg to reach right now?

And what's LVHN doing to to reach that group?

The last couple of people o still haven't gotten vaccinated?

Yeah, it's becoming a litte more difficult to find somf these groups of people.

I think we know that theree communities of of people of color that we are still trg to get to.

We're doing actually a vaccination clinic and we'e working on trying to get a vaccination clinic at one f the Hispanic grocery storen Allentown and sort of shifg our model in the way of dog things to accommodate peopn those settings.

So I think we're trying to creative and we're trying o more outreach to find grouf people that need to be vaccinated.

Still.

And Dr Benjamin, I wanted o kind of switch gears and tk about you personally.

You started your position h LVHN in the midst of this Pande.

You step in, you're tryingo kind of control this infec, this infectious disease ths deadly to so many people aa disease that nobody has evr seen before.

What was all of that like?

Take us back and bring us o today where we stand with o many people vaccinated.

And what's that been like r you?

Yeah, so quite a journey.

I will say that I started n early May last year.

So coming down on the end f our first surge, certainlyy devastating.

I had been working in anotr health care system, seeing patients through Covid.

So I know exactly what evee has been going through up .

But you know, the principlf infection control and how o protect yourself, how to protect yourself from patis who are sick, ming sure wee not transmitting disease te hospital, those princes bus are grounded in in our infection prevention is the very well trained.

Those many things that cros over from other respiratory illnesses like influenza im us on how to take care of e things.

You know, we have dealt wih other pandemics in this nek before you, including Ebol.

So all of that training, af those principles translatey well.

And I think obviously the t step in that infection prevention is to teach oths people who are new to this, people who are scared about disease, about bringing ths home to their family membe, to their community withouta lot of information.

But again, those basic fundamentals of infection prevention don't change vey much.

And I think the second parf all that from the first sue to the fall and even the wr time you we had a better he on a couple of things.

One is how to manage paties in the intensive care unit.

What are the strategies to trying to prevent them from needing mechanical ventilan or to being have a breathig tube?

We had better access and br understanding of medicatiof how to treat Covid such asr steroid dexamethasone, the antiviral medicine remdesir some of the monoclonal antibodies and when to wheo initiate those properly.

And then of course, the fil piece is vaccination and Il tell you that I think was y Eye-Opening for me.

It's not that it's not just enough to say, hey, we've a great vaccine.

It works really well.

It's 95% effective.

It's how you roll that out logistically.

How do you make that avail?

To as many patients as pose and as we roll that out, ws you mentioned before, whert populations that are really critical critically need ts vaccine, how can we get ito them?

And so that's been very, vy educational for me.

I tell people the one of te best ways to be all the pee in your business network io go through a pandemic.

I met a lot of people, a lf brilliant people, a lot of passionate people about ths work.

And so I'm very glad to hae worked with them during ths time.

Absolutely.

And Dr Benjamin, are there still questions about the coronavirus that you have t you'd like to learn the anr to at this point?

In, you know, moving forwao treat this and beat this, u know, for years to come?

Are there still questions t you have?

There's been a lot of information learned in a st period of time by our healh care providers, but we dont know everything yet.

Yeah, absolutely.

There's so much you know, f you're able to step back ae end of a long day and justt appreciate the science and ability of this virus to go our community memrs.

You know, we really need to know a lot more about who'o really is high risk.

We need to know more about whether vaccines are how wl vaccines work in our populations of people whose immune systems are not per, whether it's because they e on chemotherapy for cancerr for organ transplants.

People whose natural immune systems just don't work properly.

The other thing we need tow about is how variants come along and how can we predif a variant is going to be widespread in terms of transmission or if it's jut going to sort of be a passg passing interest that doest cause a lot of disease andI think the last part of alls is that we have to remember this is a global community.

We have a lot of work to dn terms that we talk about hw well we are doing here in e United States.

We have a lot of work to do making sure that vaccinatis reach people internationaly because that really is they we control whether more variants occur in they are going to occur in obviously vulnerable unvaccinated populations.

And so how do we reach the, whether it's in our own zip code or whether it's acrosn ocean?

We need to find a way to gt the vaccines out to people.

Great information, their cf infection control officer r LVHN, Dr Alex Benjamin, as always, thank you so much r joining us today.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

And we continue this commuy And you can hear the rebroadcast on the radio tonight at nine 30 on 91 te WLVT.

Now let's bring in our next guest, Dr Azealia Sharif.

Has been practicing dentisy for 25 years.

Covid-19 was a game changer keeping her patients and hr staff safe.

Dr Sharifi, thank you so mh for joining us today.

Well, thank you for havinge today.

I'm really happy to be here today.

It's great to have you.

I want tosk you about the changes you've made in your practice because of Covid-.

But before I do, what can u tell us about how the pandc has affected people's oral health overall?

There's been a toll there o correct.

Correct.

impacted dentistry in gene, especially the impact on or office, the patient's oral health.

There are many issues becae of the pandemic where patis were not able to come in.

We were shut down during te pandemic and that caused patients to not be able to continue with their dental health care, which caused y problems.

We were mandated for three months for closures and wee only allowed to do Telford dentistry and emergency strictly emergency medicin.

So that had issues to follw because of the patients tht were treatment planned for certain procedures and wert able to get out.

And some patients were also fearful of coming into denl offices and that caused may issues because their nmal hygiene routine and checkus and dental care has been postponed.

There is also studies aboue masks and we call it a mask mouth.

We have dry mouth because f that.

Our saliva is more acidic because of that, we have me erosion of dental hygiene a worse because patients, sof them don't brush when theye wearing masks because noboy sees them.

So there has been other iss indirectly that have been impacted by Covid-19 in res to oral health.

So Dr Srifa in 2020 when ts pandemic first began, whend you realize during that fit wave of coronavirus when dd you realize, OK, this is gg to impact my practice for e long run?

What was that moment whereu like?

OK, we have to jump on boad and we have to make change.

It was actually in March of 2020 where I panicked and m like, OK, I've practiced dentistry so many years.

We need to keep our patiens safe.

We need to keep our staff .

But how there are so many unknown factors during that time.

Dentistry very vulnerable e way it is.

We're exposed directly to patients and we are workinn mouths with no masks.

So that was very importantr me as protecting exposure m airborne pathogens in the office.

So we implemented many different protocols to the office for that.

The I mentioned that before when I was speaking with yu about the two transformatis in dentistry, one was withV when we realized bloodborne pathogens is a major problm and we had to control themd protect patients and staff.

The second one was Covid-19 where I early in the pandec thought, OK, we need to prt patients and staff from airborne pathogens which we generate in the office.

We produce aerosols, we generate droplets in our f. That's all we do.

Dentistry is generating aerosols and droplets and y are lingering in the officd in the air.

So it was very important to bring airborne pathogen col to the office, to the air.

So those are the changes tI decided to make.

I actually did construction during the shutdown.

I built a negative pressure room in my office, which I still use.

Every treatment room has a.

So suction machines, as yon see, there's a unit which s the filter purifier and a suction.

Hi, speed suction unit thas in front of the patient's h while we are doing our procedures, while we are dg dental hygiene treatments d they suction all the aeross and droplets lingering in e room, they get suctions ino the unit, the unit has ulta HEPA filters which are acty 100 times more efficient tn normal.

HEPA filters 100 times mor.

The filters are zo point zo zero three microns, which s way smaller and the virus.

So we have high protectionh that with those in each roe have the PPE obviously we e changed dramatically.

We don't look like now we e wearing disposable gowns.

We are wearing disposable .

We are delayering in 95 mas which our staff has been fd and medically cleared to wr at one point during the het of the pandemic we were weg disposable shoe covers.

So everything is disposabl.

We have shields and goggles well, which we had before e Covid I made sure that ally staff had shields and goggs before that.

Dr Srifa, it seems like eay on in the pandemic you made decision to invest in somef these safety measures to kp your practice up and runni.

Not a cheap investment at .

Can you talk to us about te finance, the financial sidf this?

This was something you decd to do, those machines thate some of e aerosols out of e air.

They can't be cheap machin.

No, they're not.

And they were difficult to obtain at the beginning.

So because I was early wity decision, I was able to get them.

And first I had them only n three rooms.

But I have equipped all fie rooms with those as well.

Now it was a decision thato not regret this will stay h me.

These aerosol suction mach.

This is my standard of carw and my staff and my patiens are so thankful and gratefl because these they feel safe.

I have not lost any staff.

I have gained more staff, especially now with Covid e there is a shortage on staf because they say we feel s, we feel protected, our famy feel safe, we don't transmt anything home.

So I'm very happy about th.

And I'm actually I see thas a great investment.

It was expensive, but it ws worth it.

Patient safety and staff sy is priority always.

Sure.

And moving forward,ow do yu think dentistry will change moving forward or be changd forever because of this pandemic?

In my opinion, airborne pathogens should be seen me strictly.

We should change some guidelines in regards to t. In my office, I've already changed them.

It may take some while to o change that in general.

For dentistry.

But you know, everybody can make their own decision.

We feel safe.

We are happy with how thins are.

And for us, the aerosol sun machines is Emus.

And we always thought, oh,y didn't we have them beforee pandemic?

So, you know, these are chs that you know, it's like gs in the 80s, no dentist wore gloves until the HIV rise.

So these are major changes.

And maybe one day we'll sa, oh, nobody had an aerosol suction machine.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And so what other impact hs the vaccines had?

You've put all these safety measures in place.

Now we are all getting vaccinated.

Many people are getting vaccinated.

How does that help in any ?

Definitely.

It's a very positive point I'm so happy to see more ad more patients getting vaccinated.

It is a great feeling.

But we still have the immunocompromised patients.

As we had mentioned our gut speaker before, Dr Benjamin mentioned we have the immunocompromised patients.

We don't know how these vaccines work on them.

We have to protect them.

It is our duty to protect m and we don't know what the variants are going to be, s you mentioned before.

So I think we still I'm vey hopeful and very positive,t we still have unknown fact.

Absolutely.

I also wanted to ask about access to dental care at ts point.

Are you seeing a drop off n patients at all because people's jobs have been impacted by this pandemic?

People are losing dental insurance, that kind of th.

Have you seen that at Impat Your Business?

I haven't.

I actually have seen probls getting the patients in rit now appointment wise becaue fell behind with our hygiee schedule during the shutdo.

We have still not been ablo catch up with that.

And now patients are coming more a more and we have no slots available.

So we have not seen that dg the height of the pandemic, there were definitely patis that were worried with it.

Obviously it is normal to e worried to enter a dental office and now they are cog back.

So we don't have that prob.

Great.

And what are you hearing fm your patients who say thaty see these safety protocols being set in place and allf the PPE everybody's wearin?

What are you hearing from r patients who are coming in?

Oh, they love it.

They feel safe.

They thank us.

I mean, we are very gratef.

I have a wonderful, excellt team that has helped me throughout all this and I'm very thankful for that.

And I'm thankful for the patients that have trustedu us with their care.

They are very thankful and appreciative of all the measures that we take.

They do feel safe.

Dr Srifa, you mentioned ine beginning different thingst are happening because peope haven't been coming and you have a message for people o maybe are still reluctant o to the dentist at this poit because of the pandemic.

What would you say to them?

Well, I would say oral cars very important, especiallyw while we're still are.

Well, someone wearing maskn the phase of maybe not weag masks, but we were wearing masks for a long time and l care is the key for overall health.

And it is very important.

There's a major connection between oral health and orn health and bodily health.

We definitely have to takee of that.

There is many, many connecs there and neglecting oral health is definitely not a positive thing to for youry and health.

Absolutely a great message there.

Dr Azealia Sharafi from Evs Berks Family Dentistry, thk you so much for joining us today.

Thank you for having me.

And we want to thank our gs for being with us today.

And we want to thank you fr joining us for community ue on coronavirus.

We'll be back on Monday ofr to talk about real estate s and what's driving the hot housing market.

If you have a question, yon leave it on our website, PBS39.org.

On social media or you cane us a call and leave it the.

The phone number is Fauci r eight two one zero zero zeo eight four PBS39 and WLVT .

I'm Brittany Sweeney stay e and have a great weekend.