HomeMy WebLinkAbout2020-09-02 - Minutes -Fayetteville City Board of Health
9/2/2020
4:30 p.m.
Virtual Meeting
Members: Hershey Garner, Lenny Whiteman, Gary Berner
Ex-Officio Members: Stephanie Ho, Meredith Lowry, Lioneld Jordan, Brad Hardin
Health Officer: Marti Sharkey
Guest: Kit Williams, Dr. Magre, Dr. Karas
1. Call to Order and Roll Call — Hershey Garner, Chair (5 minutes)
2. Schools reopening discussion
a. Schools are being very transparent on their dashboard with low reports of
positive students.
b. Virtual learning is going much better than this spring. Lots of small classrooms of
8 — 11 people. Most of the concern right now is coming out of the lunch time at
High School.
i. Would like to have Melissa Thomas and Dr Slocum attend next weeks
meeting to talk about the schools.
c. The dashboard is reporting student that have had the antigen tests. Schools
have a thorough game plan laid out on how and when they have come back to
school. Students do not have to take another test before coming back to class
after they have tested positive. Just follow CDC Guidelines
d. If a parent has been infected, the children would need to stay out of school 14-
day post exposure.
e. Fayetteville Schools, how many tests are needed? Minimum of 25 -50/ day.
i. 150 swabs were given at Mana South; 130 were college kids. Not had
many high school kids yet. Clinics are trying to save tests for symptomatic
patients. The main issue is that anyone can get a machine, but the test
kits can only be ordered every two weeks and they are in short supply
f. Saliva tests — any updates? Will get with Dr Campbell to get answers.
g. Community Clinic — turn around time is good. Getting tests supplies regularly
h. Turn around time is going up since testing is increasing
i. Type A flu is already been noticed in the area. There will be a drive through flu
vaccine event on September 12t". There are not enough tests to swab everyone
for COVID before taking the flu vaccine.
j. Having a hard time getting flu vaccines for Medicaid and uninsured patients.
k. NWA Pathology and Children's hospitals have the ability of performing the
antigen test. Dr Sharkey requested that anyone that knows of any locations
giving the tests, please let her know so she can contact them to get results.
I. Over 700 tests statewide since yesterday
3. Testing update
a. Dr. Sharkey
Mailing Address:
113 W. Mountain Street www.fayetteville-ar.gov
Fayetteville, AR 72701
i. U of A — dashboard is showing 135 new cases; number of active cases is
399 from August 31 to September 1 st. No results from mass testing from
yesterday. Should have results by Monday next week.
ii. Students are very hesitant to report where they are going to school after
they are tested positive.
1. Mostly sororities girls coming in rather than males from fraternities.
Most positives are coming from off campus parties.
2. U of A has a good plan on keeping the students safe while on the
university grounds.
a. No buffets, box meals, no water machines, hand sanitizers
installed thought the facilities, and cleaned twice a day.
No visitors allowed inside the buildings. Dining areas
outside under canopies.
iii. Will get with Dr Huda on how the cluster data we're getting validated and
if there a way to know what kind of active recording is being reported.
iv. Is there a way to get granular data in terms of restaurants and bars where
clusters are occurring? Not really any way to get this data
v. Having problems with crowds that are showing up outside the bars in
large groups, but inside they are doing good with masks and socials
distancing.
vi. Officials be out this weekend to enforce wearing of masks and social
distancing.
4. Drive -through voter registration and Testing
a. Sent email asking for direction XXXXX
b. Lindsey Leveret -NWA MLK Council
5. Messaging for the community -Update
a. Education of Students — vaccines, social distancing, masks.
b. The community needs to know what our goal and mission involves, which is
aggregating and analyzing data to come up with a coherent health care policy to
keep our citizens safe and that education is a critical part of this. Educating the
students, both in public schools and private, and the University, letting them
know that we're entering a critical time with the overlap Covid and a regular
influenza peak, and what they need to do to stay safe and keep our businesses
going as best we can. And about our kids getting their education in a safe way
and keeping our hospitals in reasonable admission level. We're going to need to
really be figuring out a way to get education about the vaccines about reinforcing
mask wearing and social distancing across the board.
c. We're going to get our meeting minutes and the daily charts of testing data from
Washington County on our website soon
i. Monday admissions went up to 36 in Northwest Arkansas; 15 at WRMC,
back down to 12 this morning
6. Other Business
a. Hannah Withers
i. Maxine Taverns — concerned about bars and restaurants closing down.
Would like to be a liaison for information for bars and restaurants. She is
trying to learn what they can do differently to keep businesses open. Will
get with Meredith Lowry and Hannah on looking at ways to help look at
this problem.
b. Scott Alexander
i. Doubles Tennis
1. Email sent out how doubles are so active and running into the
same place as their partner was before.
2. Singles only rule keeps the court from being crowded from other
groups. Would like to see a larger sign posted.
3. Dr Berner — if you were to play double you would have to adapt it
to be social distanced. No data on comparing singles versus
doubles concerning infection rate. No out breaks from single or
double tennis events.
Adjourn
Agenda items for next week:
1. New testing options added — add to agenda