The Fall River Board of Health held a virtual meeting on Thursday, April 21st, 2022. Board members Thomas Corey and Michael Coughlin were present, along with agent Tess Curran, and Dr. Gagliardi joined later. The board approved the minutes from the March 24th meeting with a unanimous 2-0 roll call vote. Key actions included granting a request from Brian Ferreira of 16 Chase Street to keep eight chickens, subject to stipulations such as a rodent contract, no roosters, and a maximum of eight chickens. This was approved with a 2-0 roll call vote. The board also approved a tattoo apprenticeship license for Colin Gilmet of 785 Madison Street to work at Up in Flames Tattoo at 228 South Main Street, also with a 2-0 roll call vote. The Director's Report, presented by Tess Curran, provided an update on COVID-19 vaccinations, noting 65.9% of the community is fully vaccinated and 47% of the eligible population is boosted. The city is averaging 9-9.5 cases per day, with hospitalizations remaining low. Outreach efforts include promoting vaccination, offering resources for rental and utility assistance, and distributing test kits. The next meeting was scheduled for May 19th, and the meeting adjourned with a 3-0 roll call vote.
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0:22good afternoon to everyone in the land of zoom and welcome to the board of health virtual meeting on thursday april 21st scheduled for 4 p.m my name is thomas corey present with me via zoom is michael coughlin and tess curran our agent for the board we're awaiting the arrival of dr gagliard obviously we are not in the city council hearing chambers all are participating remotely tess if you'll please roll call
0:49the roll thomas corey president michael poffman president okay the first item of business is approval of the minutes from the meeting of thursday march 24th are there any additions deletions or corrections to be made to the minutes of the meeting is printed move to accept motion to accept i'll second can we have a roll call thomas corey yes michael coughlin yes next item on the agenda is the request
1:22for the keeping of chickens from brian ferreira at 16 chase street here in fall river mr ferreira is present um mr ferreira if you could just state your name and address for the record uh name is brian ferreira uh 16 chase street four of a mess okay lisa you're presenting yes um okay we have brian here who just purchased a new property down on chase street it's almost at the corner of bay um
1:51and i went down there and at the time he did not have a fence around his property his property is pristine it's a brand new home um he's looking to um obtain eight chickens on his property and i never do it there were no um uh i didn't get any letters um what i'm talking about yeah i didn't get anything from anybody all the way nothing from me no that's that's yeah be about it thank you
2:23okay so i i see for the application it's for eight chickens okay yes yeah it is eight okay the board usually has some stipulations to go with these these permits and these licenses uh one you have to have a rodent contract in place okay uh no roosters okay right yeah okay no roosters and you're telling us you have eight chickens so eight chickens and less is fine please don't have nine
2:50chickens or attentions okay as long as you keep it at eight um so lisa you the property is okay looks good yeah it's a brand new development down there on the corner of bay and in chase and um you know i did go down to his property and at the time the fence wasn't up but it is now i went by over the weekend and he put a fence all around the property
3:12and it looks it's nice it's clean you know chicken coop's there it's it's it's good okay do we have a motion to grant most of grants okay i'll second uh if we can have a roll call tess thomas corey yes michael conflict yes mr ferreira good luck thank you and enjoy your chickens thank you uh one question so it was the the fifty dollars i put down now i have to pay the other 100 right yes
3:48how do i go do i just come in and just give you guys the check you can you can you can mail it in or you can come in and give it to me right in my office i'll do that okay thank you thank you thanks thank you thank you next we have a request for approval of a tattoo apprenticeship license for colin gilmet of fall river uh to work in up in flames tattoo at 228
4:11south main street yes we have colin yes we have colin could you please state your name and address for the record yes my name is colin gilman i live at 785 madison street okay lisa you're presenting on this everything in order yes everything is in order this is uh the son of aaron gilman who owns up in flames um and he's he's ready to go he's he's been looking forward to uh learning his father's business
4:45and uh yeah everything is in order he's tax foreign everything he's good okay any questions for the for the candidate so okay can we have a motion to grant the apprenticeship license congratulations and good luck bruce are you going to see you next month absolutely okay very good bye-bye congratulations thank you next on the agenda is the director's report tess if you would okay carlos i just
5:26wanted to kind of quickly give you um an overview of the numbers in terms of vaccinations so um 65.9 of the community is fully vaccinated uh 72.2 have received a first dose and 47 percent of the community of the eligible population is boosted um so we're really kind of uh barely kind of picking up at this point we are still seeing people have you know first doses um we are still out there in
6:01the community um we are still promoting the frvax.com website and working with our community partners to coordinate share of the information the united way is having an upcoming vax giveaway series for um fall river uh seniors in high school for the prom um if you're vaccinated and you enter to win you can get um money off your you know your tuxedo rental or your prom gown um or florist um so there's a number of
6:41options for folks um we're hoping that that might you know bring in some new you know new uh seniors who may be going to college and that's a requirement then um that might be another incentive for them so that that runs through the end of this month um we have a number of clinics scheduled this week for school vacation week we worked with the state on those um right now there's a clinic going on in
7:09swansea at the air trampoline park they'll be there today tomorrow and saturday um any child who gets vaccinated there gets an hour free of jump time um so hoping to capture some people not only from fall river but also you know in partnership with swansea getting those numbers up and there there's a few other options in new bedford as well that are kind of all part of this main program which includes
7:42access to the zoo and to um the bullet wonder bowl which is the bowling alley in new bedford so again really trying to get those numbers of youth um up as well as continuing to try and get folks um maintain you know being up to date with their vaccine so so getting you know the third and or fourth booster for folks who are eligible um in terms of our cases we're averaging
8:12about nine um nine and a half cases per day um over the last few weeks i'm anticipating that those that number will go up a little bit we have seen kind of just anecdotally a little increase over the last few days in our cases um and you know and are kind of expecting that just due to vacation and the holidays that happened over last weekend as well as um you know the more contagious variant being
8:44present in um in the us so um we'll see um where that lands and then also just trying to uh get the message out about where people still need to be wearing masks i know there's a lot of confusion now um you know with transit certain is no longer requiring masks uh in the community but you know it's still required in health care settings and uh congregate care settings um into the shelters
9:14um so there are still places that masks you know are required and then obviously recommended for people who are not vaccinated or who are immunocompromised or have an unvaccinated um individual in their home so hoping that people still um you know are doing those things um but certainly with the number of tests that we have out in the community that that daily average incidence rate
9:42really isn't you know giving us the accurate picture like it has um the last several so you said nine nine coveted cases a day we averaged on average whole city yeah give or take that usually hovering between nine till to about you know 12 um and it's and it is we're seeing it um primarily in that 30 to you know 50 age range is where the most cases are coming from right now so
10:24if we're getting nine a day what's our hospitalization it's gonna be nothing we have low rates um i'm still in communications with the hospitals um weekly um sometimes twice a week at least and and we are they they are seeing low rates of hospitalization so um you know that's certainly positive um direction that we want to be going in terms of that what does seem consistent with what we're hearing from elsewhere too
10:55current variants are not causing this disease so it makes sense that hospitalizations are way then especially with nine nine cases a day i mean that's is your do you do you have any sense of most of those folks unvaccinated do we do we know we don't have uh the best indicator because not everybody's picking up their phone when we're trying to do the contact racing in terms of hospitalizations it does seem
11:27from previous calls that the majority of patients you know are unvaccinated but our cases we don't have an accurate account not everybody's picking up yeah and our actually so and i i misspoke it was on the 20 to um 50 age range and that 20 to 29 is where we're seeing the highest number of cases at least over the last two week period and you wouldn't expect a lot of those people to be severely affected anyway
11:58just because of their age so so we're you know we're we're we are still um trying we still have our community um outreach teams engaging with folks trying to encourage vaccinations um you know we're trying to provide them with more information not only just about the covid clinics but also um directing them to resources in the community so um you know with the grants that we received we had a resource coordinator
12:32and she's in contact with the people who are testing positive or we are also calling folks who had previously tested positive to connect with them offer them information about where they could get vaccinated um and then any other you know resources they may need in terms of rental assistance utility assistance we're trying to kind of connect the dots on the back end um with with those folks um
12:57as needed and we've found that that um you know has been impactful and we are talking to a lot of people in that capacity and we're also distributing um test kits um our outreach teams um oftentimes go out in the community with test kits um and offer those to folks you know in the housing authority properties and elsewhere okay thank you did we receive anything for citizens input no we did not
13:31is there any business to come before the the board that did of such a nature that it could make the agenda no no no okay next is confirmed date for the next meeting following our usual patent it would be may the 26th that's just before the holiday weekend is that okay with everyone uh i think i'm off that week okay you want to go the week before the 19th sure
14:02may 19th test that out sound all right with you that works for me michael that okay yeah yeah i'll be done by three yeah yeah okay then if we have nothing else we need a motion to adjourn so moved in a second second and a roll call thomas corey yes michael coughlin yes stephen gagliardi yes okay thank you all enjoy the rest of your day thank you sandy thank you alex thank you