Bad COVID news, but also good news at Lorain County Community Protection Team meeting

ELYRIA — The Lorain County Community Protection Team heard about surging case numbers and promising vaccines at its weekly meeting, which has been ongoing for several weeks as local officials meet to discuss COVID-19 response and put together reports and questions that can be forwarded to state officials in Columbus. The group that met via video conference on Tuesday included Lorain County Commissioner Matt Lundy; Health Commissioner David Covell; Avon Mayor Bryan Jensen; Avon Lake Mayor Greg Zilka; Lorain Mayor Jack Bradley; North Ridgeville Mayor Kevin Corcoran; Sheffield Mayor John Hunter; South Amherst Mayor Dave Leshinski; Lorain County Probate Judge James Walther; Lorain County Chamber of Commerce President Tony Gallo; Lorain County Educational Service Center Superintendent Franco Gallo; University Hospitals Elyria Medical Center President Kristi Sink; Mercy Health Lorain Chief Operating Officer Charlotte Wray; and Lorain County Homeland Security and Emergency Management Director Tom Kelley. Also on the call were Clare Rosser, director of communications and community relations for the Mental Health, Addiction and Recovery Services Board of Lorain County; Columbia Township Trustee Dick Heidecker; Grafton Township Fiscal Officer Amy Richards; Dee Baker, director of outreach and community engagement for the Lorain County Urban League; Jen Kennedy, interim director of the Lorain County Visitors Bureau; and Kyle Rose, Vice President for Corporate Communications at Avient Corporation in Avon Lake. Public health Covell presented the team with the bad news first: Lorain County's case count for COVID-19 cases "still continues to go up." "We've gone from thinking that 100 cases per week was a really big deal, to 150 a week, then from 150 to 300 to 500 to last week, when we had 1,000 cases, and then this past week we had 1,200 cases that have come in in a week," he said. "When it comes to this surge, it's not slowing down." Covell said he couldn't confidently tell the group that Thanksgiving won't result in yet another surge in case numbers, and how that will affect local hospitals and their capacities as time goes on. "Mathematically, a certain amount of folks will have a bad health outcome," he said. "Some will end up in the hospital, some will end up in the ICU and some will end up dying." He said that community leaders should take a unified message back to their communities, and that between now and when the first of three expected vaccines arrives for distribution in the community, "we need to get serious about this not being the end of the marathon." "There is a light at the end of the tunnel if we just hang on a little bit longer," Covell said. Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine is expected to be approved by the second week of December, but the fact it has to be stored in "ultra-cold" conditions makes it a difficult vaccine to be fit for mass vaccinations. It will be beneficial for hospitals and health centers that can store vaccines at ultra-cold temperatures and is likely to first be rolled out to help frontline health workers and medical personnel, Covell said. Moderna's vaccine comes in two doses and is "very effective" and should be the second one to roll out, he said. AstraZeneca's vaccine should start to appear at the end December or beginning of January, Covell said. He said he was most interested in the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine that will make mass vaccination "much easier for everyone." It need only be kept at refrigeration temperature, he said. That means all 300,000 residents of Lorain County could be vaccinated against the virus "in just a few weeks" once the Johnson & Johnson vaccine arrives, Covell said. He also said he was willing to be one of the first people to "be on camera getting stuck in the arm" with a vaccine once it becomes available. Until then, Lorain County residents need to keep masking, social distancing and hand-washing to flatten the curve again and allow the hospitals to be ready for a surge in the number of patients they need to receive, he said. "There's no such thing as 'stopping' this virus," Covell said. "We can only slow it down. It's too contagious." Public information campaign To help get the word out, Kennedy is using $100,000 in CARES Act funding given to her by the county commissioners to push a public information campaign that will launch Dec. 20 and continue through March. With a combination of online/social media advertising, messages on cable TV and streaming services aimed at Lorain County residents, local radio, print and digital ads, county officials will seek to put a face on the pandemic to convince county residents to take all necessary precautions, she said. It will in part be a testimonial campaign, taking viewers into the community to tell the stories of people who have been affected by the virus and encourage the community to "stand strong, stay home and keep our loved ones healthy," Kennedy said. Rose said his company has had regular contact with Zilka and the administration in Avon Lake and shifted its internal communications to talk about hygiene protocols and standards, as well as prevention in social and recreational situations. Lundy said that was an impressive strategy. "The message people get at work, they take back home," he said. Mental health and recovery Rosser told the group that the MHARS Board has received a grant from FEMA for outreach to people struggling with basic needs during the pandemic. This will help the board provide access to behavioral health needs and addiction health resources. A surge in behavioral health needs in the coming weeks is expected, she said, with the isolation of the pandemic hitting hard in the winter months. Accidental overdoses have increased this year due to additional risk factors such as isolation and the risk of relapse for those battling addiction, Rosser said. The supply chain of illicit drugs has been just as disrupted as the supply chains of legitimate items leading to more dangerous mixtures of drugs reaching the streets with "highly dangerous and unknown components" among them. There has not been a significant increase in suicide deaths despite increased economic and grief-based risk factors, and MHARS is seeing people "really boost up informal supports and looking out for each other and helping each other out" during the pandemic, she said. "As fatigued as everyone is right now, we're going to have new outreach people specifically attached to finding folks who are harder to find" who might need help, Rosser said. Hospitals Sink said University Hospitals is continuing to meet needs as people need the hospital, "but our numbers are continuing to increase with admissions," including to the hospital's intensive care unit and in the emergency room. Some patients are being diverted to other hospitals and systems, "but we're keeping doors and beds open," she said. Additional staff also are being recruited to help out when that need arises. Wray said Mercy Health has 800 associates on-call to help the tide of new cases and admissions. Neither hospital system has made the decision to make vaccinations mandatory for staff, Sink and Wray said. Wray said Mercy Health staff members will be "strongly encouraged" to get the vaccine while Sink said vaccination will "likely be voluntary." UH leadership "wants to see final FDA reports before they make it mandatory," and that decision is forthcoming, she said. Covell said the Cleveland Clinic announced is moving into "surge capacity" with more sites and staff to treat COVID-19 patients. "I don't know what that looks like, but it's a very good sign we're starting to get overwhelmed," he said. "Having enough nurses and doctors to treat those patients is going to be a real strain." Schools Franco Gallo said schools are seeing issues with staffing the appropriate number of teachers, administrators and other service workers and some districts are changing plans prior to the end of the current semester. Avon went to e-learning and is taking two weeks off from in-school instruction to recover from a surge in cases, with plans to go back to in-person instruction around Dec. 9 "provided staff is healthy," he said. The vast majority of school employees are getting the virus outside the classroom setting, which has been made safe for staff and students in cooperation with health officials, Gallo said. Sports teams are taking the step of quarantining entire teams if one member of the team is exposed or tests positive, he said, and he added that he was to have more discussions with the sports conferences covering Lorain County on Tuesday. Courts Walther said five members of his staff in Lorain County Probate Court have tested positive for the virus since the Community Protection Team started up. "It's seeped into everywhere," he said. "I know three judges that have the coronavirus. Talk about a staff that has tried really hard to do all the right things. It still seeps in. I don't know how to explain it." Walther's fellow Common Pleas Court judges have suspended all trials until at least Jan. 4 due to the rise in the number of COVID-19 cases in Lorain County, they announced. Emergency management Kelley said the county has 2.2 million pieces of PPE stockpiled, including gloves, masks and gowns. He was accepting another delivery of 7,600 gowns on Tuesday, and hoping to add 500,000 masks bought with the county's portion of federal CARES Act money. Lundy said any questions or concerns the team had for state leaders would be sent to Columbus, after Gov. Mike DeWine requested that local officials do so. The Lorain County Community Protection Team will meet again Dec. 1. Contact Dave O'Brien at (440) 329-7129 or dobrien@chroniclet.com. Follow him at @daveobrienCT on Twitter.