2.20.2024 Board of Health

good afternoon everyone this is the Board of Health meeting scheduled for Thursday for Thursday for Tuesday February 20th at 3:30 my name is Thomas Cory I'm joined by Michael Coughlin and Dr Steven gagliotti Tess Currin our agent of the board and various guests pursuant to the open meeting a any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium

attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or Transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible can we have a roll call thas Corey yes Michael Coughlin here Steven Gagliardi here okay the first item on on the agenda is the approval of the minutes of the uh Board of Health meeting held on January AR 23rd are

presenting who who's presenting on on Chris's behalf uh I believe that's supposed to be Josh that Josh yep yep that be me okay Josh all of Christopher's documentation is in order yes it is any complaints uh no sir gentlemen any questions no no do we have a motion to approve so mov second can we have a roll call Thomas Corey yes Michael Coughlin yes Stephen Gagliardi yes Christopher good luck thank you

awesome thank you thank you good luck next we have a public hearing for 1191 Wood Street it's a septic system repair I that's why Mr agar is with us today Mr agar give us the story here I want to thank you for the 82 pages of delightful bedtime reading well we try to do things right and a lot of this know for this one specifically was the technology that was being proposed for the septic repair

which is one of these Presby systems so it's an Innovative design that's been approved by D for tight situations like we have here I don't know if there's anybody here on behalf of the applicant but if not I'll give a quick little presentation of of what um I'm here with alac engineering uh representing them all right why don't you rip first and then I can give you my my comments okay yeah so

um basically Sergeant Mr Sergeant could you state your name and address for the record yep uh Jack sergeant of alac engineering uh do you want our company's address yes uh 165 East Grove Street Middleboro Massachusetts okay thank you welcome um do you all have the uh plan or do you um yeah well we we've I have looked at the plan yet yes okay so what we're doing um based on the

constraints of the site um we're using a Presby system out in front of the house to avoid the um the uh Pond there as well um we based on uh Dan agar's comments we pushed the um system a little bit to the north uh so we'll be able to drain it so it wouldn't be draining to the ab Butter's house a Butter's property I'm sorry um and I believe we also

um modified it so we mooved the uh water line and uh have it so it'll encase it in concrete as well um I guess uh and uh we're asking just for uh some local upgrade approvals really um set back between the uh proposed luchin field and the existing property line um based on the site constraints uh we have it from the uh front uh the I guess it's the front or side property line uh we

have it about a foot and a half from that instead of usual 10 feet uh reduction in the between the uh proposed septic tank and the existing Foundation from 10 feet to uh 5T based on the site constraints again as well and the uh reduction of the required setback between the proposed septic tank and the existing water service from 10 feet to 1 foot and the reduction of the required number of

depes per disposal area from two to one so Mr chairman if I could again Dan agar director of engineering and planning for the city of Fall River um Jack is correct we've gone back a few times with some comments regarding this proposed design I can offer that I would recommend approval of the four local upgrade approval variances U specifically with regard to item number one it should be called out

that the request to a reduction to one and a half half feet set back to the Westerly property line and 5 feet to the southernly property line and the reasoning for that was to make sure that storm water that was being directed towards this property did not run to the adjacent property which is Diane Gua she has been notified of this hearing they have submitted the Green Card certified

mail letting her know uh of the date and time of the meeting so you do have that in your package as well other than that um although being very tight and in a very specific location near the South wupa Pond this is about as good as you're going to get without a tight tank on this property luckily this is a situation that the house is on Municipal Water it does not have a well the abing

properties are also on Municipal Water so that alleviated um a big issue down here in this location so I would recommend approval of the plan the way that it has been presented okay gentlemen any questions oh it sounds like they have it under control motion to approve I'll second but I I did have a question have we heard any opposition from anyone in the neighborhood no we have we have not um and I had maybe

about a year ago subsequent or be before this petition came in I had met with Miss go about a seaw wall issue that she was working on and her property and it is is a very it's a very tight area everyone is on top of each other that's why I wanted to make sure that you know that she was notified in accordance with the rules and regulations of Title 5

which she was um if you recall last month's meeting we actually tabled so that we could make sure that this notification took place so no we have not received U any call comment or notification about it okay all right I'm I'm good can we have a roll call Thomas Corey yes Michael Coughlin yes stepen gardi yes okay thank you very much for your time gentlemen and I hope it all works out well great thank you

thanks okay I'm going to introduce Michaela Perry she's our epidemiologist and I guess she has a report for us today welcome hello thank you um yes I do have a respiratory season update with um you know actually Michaela can I just interrupt you really fast before before you start because I don't want to interrupt your presentation once you get going but um uh Tom it looks like we

have some folks from our last meeting on the on this Zoom um regarding the um the chicken Coupe but um fa and team there we hadn't put that on the agenda um so we won't be able to discuss that today regarding because there was the issue regarding the the coupe not being finished so that hadn't been placed on the um on our agenda um and so we won't we won't be able to have unless

unless Tommy you want to try and um discuss that in at the end of the the agenda regarding things that couldn't be added um but it hadn't been put on so I'm hesitant to have a discussion today in terms of above butter notifications and and the like um because our office believes that there is a Butters that do want to be present and voice their concerns um so will Al or Josh or F you have anything

otherwise we'll have to hold off I just don't want to keep you guys um as the meeting goes on well no this is the Blackstone Street 165 Blackstone we do have another lady here for um one that was for today okay um on the 165 Blackstone it's not on the agenda uh there was already two opportunities to discuss this and the the board decided to table it twice now um and there was some issues with the

with the building department as I recall Mr Hathaway wasn't uh satisfied with the construction of the coupe so I I I don't think I should let it on today's agenda if they want to reapply for next month we'll be glad to entertain it then yeah we didn't realize that they were going to be here today okay I just wanted to make make sure okay thank you all sorry to interject

and Michaela I'll pass it back over to you no worries um yes and I do have a couple of slides so I'm gonna share my screen real

quick

okay hopefully you can all see that yes okay perfect um so yes I'm Michaela Petty I'm the epidemiologist here with the city of PA River and just wanted to provide an update on where we're at in terms of respiratory illness season um since this is my first time presenting to you all um I do want to provide some background on where this data comes from and kind of get us all on the same page

um so when we're talking about respiratory illness surveillance um there's several different data sources that um I use to put together these reports there's the national state and local level data um and the overall goal of surveillance data while it would be nice to have examp case counts typically what we're trying to get is more of a sense of Trends overall using reliable indicators so at the national and state

level that looks like typically tracking emergency room visits Hospital admissions um at the syndromic L level which means looking more at symptoms um because testing isn't always done and then for the local data that I'll talk about today that's pulled from individual case reports which does rely on test results and um Wastewater data so just kind of wanted to orient where this comes from and um what those

different sources are to give an overview of kind of the big three of respiratory season which is RSV flu and now covid um this is the state dashboard which is helpful to just kind of understand the overall landscape and if you you'll look I've highlighted the current season um in the yellow box and this shows that Hospital admissions for Respiratory illness um are decreasing still elevated um but it

looks like we've hit the peak hopefully for covid flu and RSV um but one thing I kind of want to highlight here that's important that the state level data provides is those grayscale bars in the background indicate over overall Hospital admissions regardless of whether it's respiratory illness or otherwise um and here at the beginning of the graph is 2019 so before the covid-19 pandemic um and then you can

see now we've continued to see elevated Hospital admissions um and this has been come seen in the strain on emergency departments and and Hospital capacity um so this is just kind of something to be aware of and is helpful in the context of looking at the next couple of slides um so what this looks like in Fall River so this is that case reporting data that I talked about this

comes from um Maven which is the state Reporting System um and these are our case counts in Fall River um at various time points and and one thing I think I want to highlight the most in this overall picture is um the average number of cases in a month so we saw about an average of 60 cases per week in January of this year which is quite a bit higher

than what we saw in previous years um so while cases are trending down for this year um we're still seeing elevated Bubbles and when you break that down by age um the largest majority is um schoolage children especially those under five um and then after that being those who are um 80 and over and next we look at covid which is a similar but different story so in terms of overall Trends it is trending

down similar to the flu um this year we've seen a lower average number cases per week in January and February than what we saw in than what we saw in 2023 um but it's still a relatively high value um kind of given that we're now getting more into a seasonal pattern of covid and the age distribution is also a little different um still primarily in very young children and older adults um

but we can see that those over 65 are a little more heavily impacted by Co than what we see with the flu um at least based on our case reporting data um and one thing I want to highlight with this covid-19 data while we're seeing fewer cases reported to Maven that can kind of bring up the question is that just because people are testing at home or is that an accurate representation um and this is where

Wastewater data has been really helpful so anything in between the darker red line and this lighter red line is kind of the range you would expect to see during respiratory season so there's elevated transmission but not quite at the outbreak level um which is where we're hovering at the moment um and we'll hopefully continue to kind of overall trend downwards um but we're not quite at the peak that we saw in January

so that was a quick overview of where we're at kind of what the trends are looking like um and now wanted to open it up to any questions or any type of

clarification is the RSV data impacted by better testing now because I know there's a lot more tests uh for the RSV that's a really good question and um unfortunately not something I necessarily have access to in terms of like being able to analyze it myself um I know it was a big year for RSV um we saw an earlier Peak than normal um but that is tracked at the state level um so we don't

have I guess it's a good question I don't have a great answer for you right now um well a few years ago there wasn't there wasn't really a you know good testing for it so you would presume it was RSV but you didn't really know and now it's part of the multipack test um that everybody's using with the PCR testing so you're going to get you know more because you can test for it and get

an actual answer where before it was just kind of a presumptive diagnosis unless you did you know viral cultures and things like that back in the day yeah that's that's absolutely um a good point I think that's also why during respiratory season there's the like overall like acute respiratory illness more like syndromic to kind of track um the overall Trends uh but yeah actually that's

something I'll I'll kind of look for and maybe include in some future reports because RSV has been around a long time even when Tom was young how far back it goes just it a Michaela it was it was good to see that both the state and the local data but it was I I wasn't able to really compare how we're doing compared to the rest of the state have you looked at

that are we are our rates higher our rates when I've looked at them are pretty on par it's also difficult um to compare the state level data directly to local data just because they use the Hospital admissions so it's percent of visits whereas at the local level um all we have access to is the actual case reports in Maven um so they're a little bit different but I would say in terms of overall trends

when you look at B compared to the state they're pretty similar overall um so hopefully that helps answer your question but um yeah it's not easy to directly compare the two unfortunately because of a where the DAT comes from sure okay any other questions no that was helpful thanks yeah it's great it's great to have that resource I mean this this is wonderful um we hope to see a lot of

you yes and uh I don't know if my email's on there but if there's ever specific questions I'm always happy to answer things as they come up okay thank you very much all right Tess what do we have for the director's report um I I really don't have any um specific updates um other than we're continuing you know with the ongoing work in terms of opioid settlement um funds and the grant that micha's um a

part of in terms of trying to expand um expand that um some of the team members on this call we're getting them geared up for the new um software that we'll be uh utilizing um so those trainings are going to happen the end of this week and next week um and then the inspectors will be able to utilize um that software to help um just create um you know a more streamlined approach for them in

the field and then also Michaela will be able to do some more um data analysis by um pulling reports um with the use of that software that will um that will help us overall so um just moving forward in those ways um and that's pretty much it um for for my um piece um but I I do just want to um yeah so that's all I have what are we hearing about St an's

uh have you heard anything else I have not um I haven't heard anything um other than what I'm hearing in the news I haven't been contacted um by anybody at at the state level um in terms of making any preparations for for any anything I saw one reference in a in a longer news article that there were several deficiencies found there by this monitor that the state sent but I I wasn't able

to determine you know what what what the impact of those would have would be and if you know is it just wondering if there's anything around going around in the community I don't know Dr gagleard if you've heard anything over you Tom I I haven't I mean the things I've heard s an is one of the the only profitable hospitals they're better performer than some of the others yeah but they're all affected by the same

account so they're not able to provide services because like when I go there um there's no robotic Supply so you can't do that surgery or you have to do it a different way uh laundry you know basic things which when you don't have them you can't do certain things um but they they're still getting new stuff so they're hanging in there as far as I know but as far as the overall picture

um there's so much there's so much debt with that company that you know someone higher up is going to have to fix that right but the impact on the public health in this community will be significant if if they do close although we're fortunate in some of the other communities where they're where they're they have a hospital we we do have another institution in in in this town yeah I think someone would step in

before that happened I would hope I hope so I just thought I'd raise it as something that we need to pay attention to going forward not not there's much within our power to address the issue as you were saying but we'll make a declaration yeah yeah right and if I hear of anything um I'll be sure to keep you all informed but again yeah the state hasn't reached out um and I really haven't had any formal

conversations with um with Sans maybe they'll call it in the National Guard always seems to be helpful did we receive did we run the laundry you know maybe that that might I don't know how good they're gonna be at nursing but we'll see did we receive anything under the citizens input uh no we have not received anything okay next would be to confirm the date for our next meeting following

our past schedule the last Tuesday in March would be the 26th does that sound okay excuse do do do we not have Liliana Das on on the agenda today for keeping of animals no there's there was no other keeping of animals um agenda items today at least and if you're able to come off mute I was told to come wased to come today this is why she's here she had difficulty last time with the uh connect

calling in she was trying to call she was actually speaking to Sandy downstairs during the whole meeting um so she's here today they told me to come in today okay where is this from this is for Meridian Street for the keeping of animals Mariano Mariano Bishop Boulevard apologize Mariano Bishop Boulevard again it's not on the agenda and we tabled it the last time because twice no one had appeared for the meeting well

I didn't know the first time and the second time I couldn't get through it I don't know was my phone or was again it's not on the agenda today we'll be glad to take it off the table next time why I was told to come in today at 3:30 me ma'am it doesn't appear on the agenda to bring a check any so I it wasn't like like um chairman Corey's indicating it wasn't on our

agenda I don't know um I don't know if Sandy can come off mute but it because it wasn't on the agenda we're we're not able to to move forward with that I'm not sure how that was communicated to you um in terms of coming today well Sandy told her when when she was on the when that was in she was having that difficulty last meeting she was on the phone with

Sandy so but about but that's the not the agenda they can't take it up I understand but I was told to come in you know what I mean I took the time to come iniz so I guess we'll we certainly apologize for any misunderstanding uh but because of open meaning all rules and and such it's difficult for us to just add things to the agenda at the you know without them being publicized in advance but we'll

work with you to make sure that those things don't happen next time all right right we're sorry that's okay I mean it happens but you know a test can you check whether we're still able to hold Zoom meetings in the back of my mind I thought that expired sometime in March I will double check I don't I don't believe so but I will double check March was the original but it was

extended again and I think eventually it's going to be made permanent but again okay so we the 26 looks good yep okay keep any anything else was there anything else of such a a nature that it couldn't make the agenda no okay can we have a motion to adjourn so moved second we have a roll call Thomas Corey yes Michael Coughlin yes stepen gagley yes okay thank you all have a wonderful rest of the week