you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you I will now call the City Council meeting to order and ask Martha Garcia or Deputy City Secretary to please call the roll. Thank you Mayor Williams. Present. Council Member Moeys. Council Member Moeys. Present. Council Member K Part. Present. Council Member Sutton. Present. Councilmember Sutton. President. Councilmember Peele. President, I can't hear you some though. Councilmember Nunez. President. Mayor Pro Tem Shepherd. President. Deputy Mayor Pro Tem for our mayors. Excuse me. President. Councilmember Odin Wesley. President. the committee. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. I will be assisting with some of the technical aspects of this meeting. I'd like to mention a few items before we begin. This meeting is being held by video conference so that we can advance the public health goal of minimizing face-to-face meetings, also known as social distancing, to slow the spread of the COVID-19. Governor Abbott has suspended some of the requirements of the Texas Open Meetings Act which is allowing us to meet in this manner. The link to the online location where video of this meeting is available can be found by going to the city's webpage at www.arlingtonTX.gov and clicking on Agendas. This meeting can be watched on AT&T Uverse, Channel 99 and Spectrum, Channel 16 and 15.1. It can also be watched by going to the city's website at www.arlingtonTX.gov and clicking on the I Want button at the top right and selecting Watch City Council meetings. Here are some pieces of basic information we want you to know about this meeting. This meeting is being recorded and this recording will be posted on the City of Arlington's webpage. The City Council will not be voting during this meeting. For the members of the council, please ensure that you are in a quiet place where you will not be disturbed during the call. Background noise can be very challenging in a meeting like this. If you can have your own device on mute when you are not talking, that would be helpful. If any member of the council has to leave the meeting, you are requested to identify yourself at the time you leave the meeting as well as a time that you return. When a member of the council wants to make a comment, please hold up your card and wait until you are recognized by the mayor before you begin to speak. Do the members of the council have any questions for me? Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Ms. Garcia. We will now begin the meeting. And this meeting is dedicated to an update and discussion of the COVID-19 response. So with that, I'll call upon our fire chief and head of our emergency operations center, Mr. Don Kraus. Thank you, Mayor. Don Kraus and fire chief, Director of Emergency Management with me is Dr. Cynthia Simmons, our Public Health Authority and Medical Director for the Arlington EMS system. So let's move right into the slide presentation. First, here's our timeline, and you can see the yellow box represents a 14-day period. We tagged it that way for the incubation period of the COVID-19 virus. You can go back 14 days and see where we were at. Well, if you do that, you can see that many of the actions taken by this council, by the governor and by the President of the United States have already taken place. Social distancing has been working and we are way ahead of the curve, we believe, regarding the impact of the virus on the city of Arlington. So I want to talk about first about statistics, lots of projections we've talked about and with you regarding what the virus may do. And what you have before you hear is a copy of a slide I've shown you before from April the 10th that projected the track of the virus in Texas. I also showed you in a previous presentation, three days later, the same model projecting lesser numbers. And now, even as late as this last weekend, the numbers have dropped dramatically. If you compare what was initially projected as far as what we were expecting from a peak and a death rate in Texas. At one time we were projecting 71 deaths on April 30th and now we are projecting 34 deaths on April 19th, a date that's already passed. So the reality for us is that these models are not steady, they're constantly adjusting. And for us luckily, favorably they're constantly adjusting. And for us, luckily, favorably, they're adjusting downward. Our numbers are going downward, and we see things getting better, not worse. Additionally, the same model projected back on April 13th that we'd have 2,700 deaths by August 4th. The model readjusted itself on April 17th. Where now it's projecting, they were going to see 957 deaths in Texas by August 4th. I would expect this model to work even further down as we move forward. So if you look at the projections from this particular model, we started on April 10th. We were paying particularly attention to the number of beds in Texas. Where are we going to have enough beds? Well, all along Texas was going to have enough beds, enough ICU beds, enough ventilators. But notice how the numbers have changed based on the date of the model. April 10th said we needed 3,300 beds, normal beds, 732 ICU beds and 613 ventilators. Three days later, the model reduced down beds and 613 ventilators. Three days later, the model reduced down to a lower number, to 2,800 to 661 ICU beds to 300 ventilators into April 17th, it dropped even further to 1,300 and something beds, 300 ICU beds, and 267 ventilators. On April 13th, we were predicting a peak date of April 30th with 71 deaths and now on the latest model projected to peak, the peak death date count to be April 19th, which has already passed at 34 deaths. So you can see our numbers are turning down again that the total projected deaths from April 13th, about 2700, April 17th, about 950 or so. So you can see our numbers are heading in the right direction. But it also tells you this, the models have not been completely accurate. So we adjust to what we see, we adapt to what we see, we work through these numbers, but we understand the fact that the numbers are always moving on us. So, moving into these numbers, but we understand the fact that the numbers are always moving on us. So, moving into absolute numbers, we know this. This is from the Tarrant County website itself. And we can tell you about the confirmed cases in Tarrant County. And here the number is 123 confirmed cases. While in Arlington, we certainly track the suspected cases along with confirmed cases. On the website for Tarrant County, they are showing you that we have a 123 confirmed cases in Tarrant County with a total bed capacity count of about 5,500. So you can see what the number is versus the bed capacity. And the reality is there's more than enough capacity that our count is stable and the county isn't very good position regarding the COVID-19 experience. Now of an issue concerned for us and we still pay attention is that deaths are occurring and while the county side currently says three we've actually had four deaths in Arlington. Three of those will come from nursing homes. Another indication of fact is that the COVID virus is impacting the nursing home population dramatically. Across the country, it's happening here. Our metrics have been very good. We've developed a strike team. When nursing homes become an issue, we swoop down on with our public health authority, Dr. Simmons, Tarrant County Public Health, the health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health health the last one that we have been working on. And the result of the settlement for those occupants and the resulting. Equation is that we're we're in good position. The sonic lodge has already been resolved. They've cleared their 14 day isolation period. We have another nursing home that's just cleared another one's midway through it. So. Our strategy appears to be working on stabilizing these hotspots of the area. The strategy appears to be working on stabilizing these hotspots in the city. It is clear though from a county level that the COVID-19 virus is hitting the elderly. Certainly that's where the elderly do reside in the nursing homes. But generally those over the age of 54 and up, negative impacted, second group, those 45 and older, negatively impacted. And then from another perspective, it is clear that the virus is also disproportionately impacting the African-American community and the Hispanic community. Those are two factors we're paying attention to right now in our planning efforts. And as we're trying to get ready for a testing site here in Arlington. So from a field perspective, from a firefighter perspective, our guys are very busy. They're out there every day. They're responding to COVID-19 calls, whether they're actual or not. A lot of these are the worried well. But you can see our volume has been increasing and has stayed steady. Our firefighters have been doing a tremendous job serving the community in an environment not normal for them. But they are all medical people who know how to handle emergencies and fear and how to work through those things and help people through their desperate times. And they've done an amazing job for our community and I couldn't be more proud to be their chief because the job they're doing today, and that they've been doing for the last month has been beyond miraculous. They're just tremendous outstanding community servants and they've done our community proud by stepping up and answering the call. So I want to give you a generalized perspective though. There's a lot of talk about cases and we certainly watch hospitalizations, which we think is the primary drive from the most important number in the COVID-19 experience. These are the numbers for Dallas County, and you can see they too have plenty of capacity. You can also see that they have plenty of capacity for ICU beds, they have plenty of ventilators, and you can see the far right column of what the suspected COVID patients are in Dallas County hospitals. Those numbers are very stable. They're not growing dramatically. They do go up and down, but they've been relatively steady. The same thing for Tarant County. Our numbers are slightly lower. Our capacity is about the same as Dallas County, but you can see our numbers are relatively stable as a county. And these numbers are not just confirmed patients. They are suspected patients. That's the way we monitor patients in Orlington. That's the way the region is now monitoring. So we cover both sides of the equation, just not the actual confirmed, but those who are also suspected. However, you can see the numbers have been relatively stable within the last week. Same thing for Colin County. Smaller jurisdictions, smaller hospital beds, plenty of capacity from a percentage perspective, and their numbers have been relatively stable, same for Denton County. So when you compare the four counties together and do original comparison, you can see the occupancy rate in Dallas County a little bit higher than the rest of the counties. Down, Fort Worth a little bit, sorry, Tarrant County a little bit lower. Colin and Denton also about the same as Tarrant County. From an ICU bed perspective, you can see that Dallas County has a higher occupancy rate from an ICU bed perspective while Tarrant, Colin, and Denton counties are a little bit lower. All very good numbers, though. From a perspective of ventilators, you can see that ventilator use in Dallas County a little bit higher, Tarrant County ventilator later use a little bit lower and stable both in Collin and Denton counties. And then when you get to the actual patient counts of COVID individuals in hospitals, you can see their fairly low numbers compared to the overall bed capacity of all the hospitals in North Texas. We have plenty of capacity for patients. We have plenty of capacity in our ICU's. We have plenty of capacity in our ventilators. And the current patient count load is very steady. Has been steady. So when it comes to Arlington, we've been watching these numbers. We've been watching the number of patients in our hospitals, how many on ventilators, how many COVID-19 deaths in Arlington. I can tell you today, April 21st, that we have 38 patients in Arlington hospitals, that we have six of those patients are on ventilators, and we've had four deaths in Arlington directly associated with COVID-19. These numbers have stayed steady for us all along the way. We've been monitoring this for over three weeks. You can see our trend line. We started at 60 patients. We got to about 76 on April the fourth and we have been trending down ever since. We have stabilized somewhat but we would expect some normal up and down in our numbers. But our numbers have been very steady and quite frankly you can also see the number of ventilators in the blue, very low, very consistent, not coming anywhere near, threatening our capacity in our community. We have been in very good position all along and we feel good about that. So another way of looking at it, the orange represents the actual confirmed COVID-19 patient and the blue represents the suspected. We count them both as the same. However, these are our numbers. These are the same numbers that the region is now monitoring so we can be in right position on this issue. And we have been, and I feel good about our numbers and our numbers continue to stay where they should be and hopefully they'll be trending down further. So testing, testing does a lot of things for us. One, it tells us that people are positive. Testing, as we move into it and we're about to moving to testing side as I mentioned to you over the weekend, testing will help us identify potential clusters in our city and if we can see a clustering of positive cases, we can move quickly to contain it. And if we can contain it, we can trace other individuals who may have been affected by the virus, and we can work to mitigate those issues too. We are currently mitigating those issues. We feel very good about our ability to identify people, but as we do more testing, we know this. We will see more positives in Arlington. That does not mean we'll see more hospitalizations, but it'll tell us that we have that the COVID-19 virus is more prevalent and we'll work to mitigate it. Because most COVID patients or people who are affected by COVID do not wind up in the hospital. Okay? Many of them simply just heal at home or sometimes they don't even notice they have it. They may be walking around with antibodies. So we're working closely with our partners in public health. Dr. Simmons is leading the way for us, keeping us connected with the folks in the Tarrant County Public Health and other hospital agencies as we, as we're working through this and we're carefully moving forward in a manner that is consistent with the data and with appropriateness in our effort to match up with what we're experiencing. We don't want to underdo and we don't want to underdo our effort here. So we're looking at a testing site. We are hoping it will be implemented by the end of this week that is currently our goal. We're not in control of all these things, but we're working through the logistics right now. It will be located at the Park Small and South Central Arlington. It'll be near some sectors of the city that are negatively impacted by the COVID-19 virus in certain populations. It'll be accessible to all of Tarrrent County, but we'll serve predominantly the east side in the south portions of Terrent County. It'll be managed by police fire, the office communications, or public works team. Whole city effort will be connected and making this thing work. It'll be when we do do it, it'll be a great, a great site because we'll make sure it works properly. Tarrant County Public Health and other agencies are working with us. We're in the process right now developing an administrative system to support this effort. We've got to develop a website. We're working to deal out currently with a lab agency to process all the tests we do. And we're going to have a traffic management plan. We're very familiar with the parks, parks mall. During Christmas, we have a traffic management plan out there. We're gonna be leveraging some of those preexisting plans to help make this site be a great testing site for our community and Tarrant County. Now, we're considering a number of factors in our test site. These have not been fully determined, but these are conditions we will consider. First, you have to be over 18 years old. You have to be a Tarant County resident. If you have asthma, COPD, or other maladies, those will be factors we'll look at as far as consideration. If you're only age of 65, immune compromised, or if you're symptomatic, these are all people who will be looking at regarding our vetting process or who will be tested, but we'll be publishing those formally in a few days to make the community aware of that. So as we move forward, we know this, testing will help us. It'll help us in many areas. It'll help us identify potential outbreaks. If we see an outbreak, we'll activate our COVID-19 strike team and we'll isolate the outbreak. Hospitalization will remain or keep metric. We'll keep, we'll always keep track of what's going on at the hospitals because that is a primary driver of a lot of our decision-making. Testing will not solve the COVID-19 issue, though. It'll help us make good decisions. Testing will tell us how we should manage, how we should adapt. But we realize this, we're going to have to live with COVID-19. It's here, and we're going to have to adapt to it, and we're going to have to work around it, and work through it until a vaccine or other treatments are developed, because we believe COVID-19 will come back in the fall. If it trends all the way down into the summer and it seems to dissipate, we certainly believe it will come back in the fall. So we need to stay on top of this and we will. If the outbreaks in our city become a dominant factor and all the sudden for some reason, we see a significant increase in COVID-19 issues and hospitalizations go up. We may be coming back to you and asking you for sort of a reversing of course from our policy perspective because these stay at home policy did work and we may have to ratchet bets back some of our policies if we see our cases getting out of control. We're gonna try to take all the steps we can to make sure that it hasn't happened, but if it does, it'll be up to our policy makers to help us adjust course if needed. So we know this moving forward. First and foremost, we have to protect the vulnerable. Those are the elderly and those with immune compromised conditions, those folks who live in the nursing homes. We're on top of the issue. We're in record contact with them. And it's just how it's going to be for the next year or two, I think, as we work through this. We will test for COVID-19 as appropriate. We'll run a testing center. We'll do as much as we can. Hopefully, we're also going to be afforded a point of care machine. Well, we can do some 15-minute testing on these serious outbreak situations. We will work to contain the outbreaks that they do materialize while we're still monitoring the, you know, the hospitalizations. And then we'll communicate our data with our public health authorities. So there is some sort of syndromic surveillance effort, not just here in Arlington, not just in Tarrant County, but also in the state and nationally. So we as a country can understand the COVID-19 issue and work through it together. And then we'll look at implementing policies or work with you on implementing policies, allowing the community to return to work while keeping them safe while we're still going through the COVID-19 experience. And to do that, I think some of these things are certainly not in our local control. It's certainly under the control of the president, the governor, and then on down. But here recently, the governor did take some steps to begin reopening Texas. And so by Friday this week, Friday, April 24th, retail services will be allowed to open some watt through pickup and delivery services. And the governor's also taken other steps that as of today, elective surgeries are now authorized in many of the hospitals. State parks have been authorized open during the day. As I said, retail delivery and pickups been authorized. There has been no change in current church gathering standards. We're waiting for a new messaging from the governor. We didn't hear anything today specifically on new issues. Other than we believe he's going to activate the National Guard for testing sites in Texas. So that'll help us certainly augment the testing effort throughout the state of Texas. But we expect new directors to be coming from the governor. And we'll be working with the governor and his staff through the council to make the changes appropriate here in Arlington. Testing, you'll hear a lot from us. We're not, we're not, we're nowhere near antibody testing, okay? So we're, we're looking for positives right now. I will tell you from an Arlington perspective, we are resource ready, have been resource ready, we are still resource ready. I've said before, H1N1, told us a lot, told us a lot, what to do, we've done it, we were prepared for this, we still have resources to run a testing facility and support our nursing homes and other various agencies in Arlington. We are going to stay focused on protecting our vulnerable populations. We're going to watch our hospital group. There have been great partners for us. But now I think we have to start asking ourselves questions. Are our current policies appropriate for the current COVID-19 experience? Do we need to adjust? How do we get our community back to a state of normalcy? I think these are things for you to decide, but we do have some guidance on this. And the guidance have come from the general, from the federal government, and they've provided us a general framework where the president has set some fundamental standards and then the state governors are given the authority to make adjustments based on local conditions. And turn the state will provide the locals with resources to assist local communities get back to work and then the local governments will certainly work within the guidelines established by the governor to achieve those desired outcomes. A good document is basically outlines this is a document that's been promulgated by several business entities here in North Texas and nationally along with Vice President Pence basically setting the guidelines for what agency or what branch of government our governments are responsible for. The federal government responsible for setting the national strategy. State government responsible for executing the strategy based on local conditions in those states. The federal government has given us direct guidelines in which we can operate from. The state government has been given the opportunity to adapt and work within those guidelines. And then the federal folks are certainly providing us for resources and infrastructure and the states are managing those distributions to the local authorities and it's been very helpful. From the federal government perspective though, there are the fundamental things that we have to pay attention to and we have been paying attention to is the state and trajectory of the epidemic. What's going on? Is it getting worse? Is it is it localized? Is it broad, you know, is it broad spread across the community? And then and then from a healthcare capacity, do we have the capacity in our healthcare system with enough beds and enough ventilators and things like that? All those answers you know we're in good position. Do we have sufficient capacity for non-COVID health care operations and services? I think that is clear we have that also now. From a virus monitoring perspective this is where we were working to do our most work is the broad diagnostic and disease monitoring strategies. We are trying to work with our partners at the county and state level. And then, you know, we're developing our own capacity here in Arlington to test and trace and monitor and report at scale. And we're doing that. We've adapted as an organization. We now can do those things here locally in Arlington. There are some general guidance regarding the definition of what risk is. And you can see the categories for being the worst. One, getting back to work, back to normal, and somewhere in between, there are guidelines that the governors will be allowed to adapt to and adjust to based on local conditions, and we will certainly be working within these guidelines. And then the measurements themselves on the degrees of movement, the monitoring that needs to take place. And all these kinds of fundamentals are guidelines that we will use to measure public health and safety. And we have been and we've been reporting many of these measures to you. And lastly, you know, the reality is we have to be vigilant. We have to recognize the fact that that disease can come back and we will have to take a step back and readjust and reposition. We're not in control of this. The virus is going to do what the virus wants to do. Our job is to be aware of it, to react to it appropriately and to manage the virus down to its low as possible threat to our community. And I think Arlington has been working really hard to do that. I've really been overly impressed with the partnership between all the agencies here at the local level and certainly at the county level at the state level. It's been an amazing experience for me professionally to see government work and action towards a collective share goal. It's been really. It's been really exciting and really. A joy to see a community. A state region to come together the way we have and I think the numbers here in Arlington are proving out that we we do understand this. We are working through all the variables. We understand we are not totally in charge. We are guidance comes predominantly from the federal government through the state. And we're working with our partners here at the county and certainly with members of the council to make the best decisions we can for our community. And I think we've been doing that because I think our numbers are showing that. So with that, I'll stop the update and defer back to the council for any questions or concerns for myself or Dr. Simmons. Okay we'll now open it up for questions or comments and we'll begin with Dr. Nunez. Chief Krossen, Dr. Nunez, thank you. First of all, I heard this presentation or most of it when you gave it to the Chamber of Commerce. And I was very impressed with the presentation in your expertise and your command of the data and I couldn't be prouder of you and the department and what it's done for our city. And I think that some of our numbers are low primarily because of what you guys have done for our citizens. So thank you. I have a series of questions and so bear with me and some of this is more for clarification for our citizens because you've used some terms that even I need a little bit of clarification. So the first one is would you define for us exactly what your strike teams consist of and what is our capacity to actually trace contacts should we have a resurgence in numbers and I have a few other questions after you answer that one. Thank you, sir. And I'll share some of the answers with Dr. Simmons. I know she'll fill in some of the voids that I'll leave out. Our strike team is our squad units. I know she'll fill in some of the voids that I'll leave out. Our strike team is our squad units. Our community paramedic trained individuals, our paramedics who are sort of our frontline team for serious medical issues. We've got three squads ready to go to Moments Notice. We also have a decon unit for that we pull out of our hazmat team to decon a facility if necessary. These individuals will show up with AMR, medics and nurses to work with the doctors at Tarrant County Public Health and Dr. Simmons and nurse staff available from the state if they're available to test all the occupants in a nursing home facility. The firefighters will make sure that the testing is done safely, that decontamination is done appropriately, and if necessary, we'll build isolation wings in these facilities to cohort the positive cases together, to isolate them from the other individuals at the facility to keep everyone safe. So we do it as soon as we find out about it, we're usually on the ground within hours, testing within 24 hours, building isolation wings within that same period and waiting on the results. And the doctor will issue control orders to the facility that will help lock it down and we will isolate the facility to the greatest degree we can under the law. And then after 14 days of the facility clears, the facilities back in the clear, but they're still accountable to us for exercising appropriate infectious disease protocol and other procedures to keep the occupants of the facilities safe. Do you have anything you want to add? That's correct. We're able to come back. Thank you. In your presentation, that list of people who qualify for testing. Could you be a little bit more clear? Who should, once we actually get the test site up and running. And once we really publicize it across the city, who should and who should not go to this testing site? So with Dr. Nunez, I think this is an issue of current calculation. Initially it was first responders and healthcare workers. Those over the age of 65 and those with pre-existing conditions are symptomatic. Dallas is already adjusting some of their policies now. I think where our initial stance is and it may be adjusted after we have conversations with Terrent County Public Health, but we think we can broaden the spectrum a little bit wider for those with more notable medical conditions because I think that is a concern for most folks who live with medical conditions and they're a little more concerned about the COVID-19 virus. I think our goal would be to test as many people who should be tested, but not necessarily the people who don't need to be tested. Your typical 25-year-olds asymptomatic should not be tested. Because quite frankly, testing is also, it's only relevant for the day you're being tested, too. The number of testing materials still are not here to the degree that we would like to do widespread testing. So our testing efforts should be rather focused on those who are most likely in need of them. And so at this time we're currently calculating the number of people that we can, or the number of categories of people that we can test the most we can with the resources we have. And as more resources become available, we may adjust our categories accordingly. So we're trying to be careful in that. So let me give you an example. So I'm 65 and let's say I'm diabetic, but I'm otherwise healthy. I don't have any symptoms. I don't have a cough. I don't have a cold. I don't have a fever. Therefore, I should not go down to this testing site. That's, is that site. Is that my? Is that correct? I think that is true today. Yes. Now, tomorrow, I get a fever of 101 and I've got a sore throat and I'm concerned. Now, I qualify. I can go to that testing site. Correct? Yes. Yes. Okay. Describe for us in tray city manager, Trey Elvich, and sent out a couple of really good articles. And I understand the concept behind syndrome, syndromic surveillance. So tell me what you're thinking. What's your thinking or Dr. Simmons is thinking about what we're going to do here in Arlington to kind of catch those pockets of people with symptoms that maybe need attention paid to. Who ever wants to address that? I'll defer. I'll start and I'll defer to her. I think the reality is we have that ability. We can track cases in Arlington. We are tracking cases in Arlington. We have an act on these things because the data hasn't told us to do that yet. So there is a problem from a syndromic surveillance perspective that there's not a system sophisticated enough to share that data. I think we're working on that with county and other agencies. it's clear America needs this and we need to be part of that solution. We know that if we had to do something here in Arlington, we have the capability to to calculate actions based on our surveillance, but we also have an issue of privacy that we want to be careful with too. So that's an ongoing effort that's going to have to continue to evolve over the next couple of years because quite frankly the country's not in a good enough position on this issue. Thank you. And I'll call upon Dr. Odom Wesley. Thank you, Mary. And thank you Chief Krausen for that excellent presentation. I do have a number of questions. I know one of the slides that you put up showed, and I guess we've heard nationally, that African Americans are disproportionately impacted. Do you foresee any targeted efforts specific for African Americans in allington to try to mitigate that statistic? Yes, ma'am. I think one we're locating the site that's next to sectors where African American and Hispanic communities live. We want to be readily accessible to those folks. The other thing is I know the mayor has been meeting with the ministerial community, talking to the pastors about helping getting the message out on COVID-19 and making our various communities aware of the seriousness of the issue, to bring attention to it to help them recognize if they feel like they may have it. They should get tested and we need to be able to test as many folks as we can. So I think all these efforts we're trying to do is trying to serve our communities and certainly the segments of the community who are clearly being negatively impacted by the virus. the segments of the community who are clearly being negatively impacted by the virus. We also have one thing we are going to have some public service announcements too that will be coming out that are coordinated with Tarrant County. Dr. Simmons you want to add that? Yes, that's what I was going to mention. This morning I approved infographics. That is a graphic both in English, and Vietnamese, and all three languages. And those will be going out. We're going to go out neighborhood by neighborhood and canvas neighborhoods and put those fires and people's mailboxes on their doors that kind of stuff, specifically targeting areas that we are concerned about. So we, the answer to your question is, yes, we're specifically going to target areas and try and provide educational materials for those citizens. And actually, that would be based on some of our knowledge of where the cases are in Arlington. Good. Thank you. Yes. And I did want to share with the audience and with our colleagues about the PSAs. There's a group that has been convened of black elected officials in North Texas and Marvin and I both have participated in development of that PSA. So that'll be Sean, I think starting Friday. The other question I have is about the testing. I know there was an announcement in the start telegram that there were going to be testing testing sites at urgent care for kids and mid express urgent that both on Cooper. Do we have any information about those testing sites? Sure, those are private testing sites that are being run by the individuals. Hello? Okay, I'm sorry. Those are private sites that are being run by the entities that have those things. And I'm not sure if those are antibody tests, those seem to be the most common as opposed to a PCR test. We would have to confirm that, but those are specific to those entities. Those are not associated with the city. Okay, and the testing center that we're looking at at the park's mall. Is there a charge? And how many tests can be done per day? No, ma'am, there's not a charge, however. We're gonna start out with a relatively small number. We think our first day or two will be about a hundred. Then we'll move to 200. And then we'll see what our capacity is once we get our testing site running up and running. We believe we have significant capacity I think we'll only be limited by the number of tests available to us. Okay do the residents have to have a doctor's order to come through that testing site? Yes ma'am. Yes ma'am all of those orders will be run through myself as the ordering physician as the public health authority for the city. They do not have to they do not have to see their private physician to obtain an order before going to the site. What we will have them do is go through a registration process and we're working out the logistics of the registration process currently. So they'll be registered, we'll have their demographic data, and then be scheduled in an hour block time period to come through the testing site. So say, for example, come at 11 o'clock, 11 to 12 o'clock, and we'll have 10 or 12 people scheduled to come in that hour time frame and go through the drive-through center. That's what we're looking at currently. And is this the self-test or is this the one administered by the health care providers? So this is a laboratory test. So those tests will be run locally in two testing centers with quest diagnostics. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Mr. Peale. Yes, I have a question about some of the reports that I've been reading indicate that there are people who are refusing to go to the hospital when they have other things like a pain in their arm that's an indicator of a heart attack or a stroke because they're afraid going to the hospital means that they'll get the COVID-19. Have we, do we have any increased home medical visits by the fire department that indicates that people are avoiding getting medical care because they fear the COVID-19 infection at the hospital? No sir, we don't believe that's the case and I have no reports on that. Good that's great to hear. And the other thing is testing is a big, big deal. And while I get contact from residents wanting to open the economy up, because there are people out there suffering because they can't pay the bills, I also get emails from residents and contacts from residents telling me don't open the economy up because I'm really scared that I'm going to get out there and get sick. So has there been any macro broad overview discussions with the county and the state and the federal government about when antibody testing and enough testing will be available to just test everybody and really get an idea of how deep this is to reassure those who we need to have come out because if we open up businesses and 50% of the people stay home anyway because they're still scared, it's still going to hurt those businesses because they won't have any economic activity. And I'm certain somebody has been involved in discussions regarding that topic and I'm just wondering what you're hearing. Sure, I'll defer to Dr. Simmons real quickly after I give you a short answer. The answer is that is still a long way away. The widespread availability of antibody testing is not here yet. Well, one, I just was on a conference call earlier where there is still a lot of debate whether they would be accurate because there would be other competing viruses interfering potentially with the test. And so these things are still in development, still getting FDA approval and mass production of these tests are not quite to the point where we need them to be to do something like that. I know certainly theoretically it's something we wanna do, medical community wants it. point where we need them to be to do something like that. I know certainly theoretically it's something we want to do. Medical community wants it. And I just think it's a fairly distant reality for us. The thing we can do right now certainly is there is some limited antibody testing occurring and you can get the test, but the widespread available is just not here yet. That would be the same for the positive testing that we do now. There's just not that much here yet. It's coming. We know it's coming and we know we'll get better and we'll do more in the future. But Dr. Simmons. Chief Carlson is correct. The antibody testing currently is fraught with false positives and false negatives, and it's very hard to interpret. There's currently only one antibody test that's approved for use in the United States. There are other vendors that are selling antibody tests. They are not approved, and some of them have upwards of 20 to 30 percent false positives and false negatives. The difficulty with an antibody test too is that if somebody tests positive, they can test positive for multiple viruses, different coronaviruses. And so it doesn't tell us that they have COVID-19. We then have to follow that test up with a PCR test to confirm COVID-19. So it's really a two-step testing process, which makes that a little bit more difficult. As well as the science on antibodies currently does not show, even though you have antibodies, there's felt to be some immunity to getting COVID again. But the real question is, how long does that immunity last and how much is that? There are definitely case reports of people who have gotten COVID and Then being retested or reinfected and so the science is just not there yet to spend It might it spent thousands of dollars on antibody tests that will then require a secondary test and With information that we're not sure that it will confer long-term immunity So you can get re-infected. So I think that this point, our money and our dollars in our time is better spent on actually PCR testing. So we can localize those hot spots as we call them, where people are ill, we can isolate those individuals and keep this virus from spreading, spreading, excuse me. Mr. Yale, in to follow up on PCR testing, you know, I got myself tested after I came back from NLC and it came back negative. But I remained pretty ill for some period of time. As a matter of fact, I'm still not all the way back. My primary care physician who has done telemedicine with me several times in the interim, told me that there is. He thinks about, and he's being told about a 30% false negative rate for the PCR test, and that I very well could have had it. So I'm supposed to stay away from my 80-something parents with diabetes. Is that an accurate that the actual PCR test has false negatives to that extent? There are false negatives with PCR, you are correct. 20 to 30% is high, in my opinion, but there are definitely false negatives that have been reported. Many times, if we're testing one negative and somebody is still ill, they'll go back and test a second test just to confirm. But there is certainly a chance that you could have two false negatives very low, but that you could have had COVID with two false negatives. Retesting, I think, is important in symptomatic patients. Because my mom says I can't come see her until I get the antibody test, so that's why I'm so interested. Mr. G. Albertson, do you have anything to add to that? I just was gonna add a little more flavor to, just from anecdotes because you know, I like to follow all these various sources but there is a lot of anecdotal testing that starting to show up and you're seeing incidents where in Massachusetts for example they randomly tested people walking on the street found 300 people with no no symptoms but you know 40 50% of them tested positive You're seeing some things like that in California. So I think this is going to prove to be more out there than even we think is the case that'll ultimately be proven out by some valid science. But at the same time, as we look at this, and as our data substantiates the ability to start opening up certain businesses, it's important as talking to one of our council members that is not a good idea to start a business. We have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have for people to individually be cautious and vigilant in how they're taking care of their own space, but the space that they're going to. So if you're going to a place for takeout or to a place for a, you know, in the potential of future of a nail visit or something like that, it's gonna be very much a consumer-based decision on whether or not you're out there doing kind of public consumption and whether or not you go to the places that you think are practicing safe hygiene practices to earn your business. I think you're seeing that in some of the hotel and airline areas for example about demonstrating to the consumers it's safe to come back. Here's the practices that we have in place with our folks wearing masks or hand sanitizer at the front door. And it's very much going to be I think a consumer driven practice as opposed to government regulation practice. And we need to encourage everyone that if you don't think it doesn't feel right, if you don't like it because they're not practicing what you think is your standard, then it's okay to go to the next vendor. It's okay to go to the next place. And we're going to make sure that people meet the standards that are set by the federal and state government. But everyone's individual standards and practices will become very much relevant in the future as choices are presented to yourself and the new normal. So a grocery store could basically put out an ad that says, we guarantee to you that all our employees are tested three times a week for COVID and they're COVID-free and we clean our store four times a day. Come on down and get a competitive advantage. Something like that. That's pretty innovative. That may occur. It may not. I think it's going to be more of a what you see is what you get. And you go into the store and you see the markings on the ground to keep the six foot separation. When you see the Plexiglas barrier between yourself and the cashier, when you see their stock people wearing mask, those kinds of things I think are going to be more relevant to you as you decide where you want to be and where you and your family feel safe to interact in the future. And one last thing, and then I'll be quiet. You know, I heard Judge Whitley be interviewed today on CAROL D at length about the possibility opening up the economy. We've had some comments by the governor that were referenced by chief. And I also got a new executive order from Judge Whitley that I didn't have a chance to read right before this meeting. Can somebody provide us an update on where we are on these very, this plan to possibly open businesses up because I have gotten some contact from residents asking us, you know, what's the specifics? House is going to work. And we're going to do any of this. And I assume that they've been communicating with the city on their discussions regarding that. I'm going to start and then I'm sure all three, both Mr. Yeoverton, Chief Krauson, and Dr. Simmons, will all want to talk about it. But I think it's very important for our citizens who are watching here to realize that the governor has executive orders out that are falling in line with the president of the United States. And the governor has told us both in the public and in a call to the mayors and county judges that he is going to decide what businesses open up. That isn't supposedly going to be left up to the cities or counties. But however, within that, we don't know how extensive the restrictions and guidelines are going to be. And so consequently, we're preparing that. Our staff is working on that. We're going to get input from different industry clusters here. In addition to that, the North Texas Commission in conjunction with COG is also working on that so that we can be prepared there when we do a systematic opening. And then the other part of this is that we have got to not realize that we have to be opening up businesses within the presence of the coronavirus. And so consequently, our businesses are going to have to do everything they can to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and still do business. And that's where Mr. Yeilverton and even chief said that our citizens there have done incredible social distancing here as evidence by our numbers that we have will now it's gonna be even more important as we move outside of the home there and that we do an even better job there and follow the guidelines but we're going to be getting input there to be able to do that. So it's not an either or economy or public health. It's going to be public health with a sustainable economy that does not contribute to the spread of the virus. And of course, you heard a very important thing that Chief Krausin said was that if we do see it start escalating to where hospitals can handle it, we'll have to step back. But I do also believe that our citizens are crying out for the opportunity to try to do what the governor has been talking about there to try and work within the confines of public health and to try and operate their business. And then of course we also need to be, it's very important for all of us to be empathetic to the fact that we have lots of people that have lost their jobs. We also have a lot of unrest inside the home. And that also is part of the public health issue and one that we all have to take into account here is we move forward here through it. And then the last thing that I want to put that I don't want it to be misunderstood and I just want to say it is that Chief Kraus and Dr. Simmons have been leading our group in an incredible way, a high standard here for that, but they have been testing since the beginning. This testing side is not the beginning of testing here in Arlington, it's an expansion of testing. And then throughout the United States, there's not enough testing resources to be testing everybody. Just plain and simple, it's not there. And so they are being very smart in the way they're using the testing. The good news is there are more resources becoming available in the way of testing there too. So that's a very important part of what we're doing. But then the other thing that we need to continue and we talked about this last and our last council meeting is to continue to affirm our citizens that social distancing is our number one weapon against this virus. and along with our hygiene and and the practices and guidelines that are going to be becoming forth and so we've got to be even more diligent here is we start to venture out back into our economy to make sure we observe that. Mr. Yevverton do you want to go next? Chief Krauson want to go next? Chief Kraus, I'm going to go next. I'll take a little stab, and we may need Tarris to talk about what the judge has done in his updated order. But I have a feel that what it is is it's an update to be an alignment with the governor's efforts, because I want to echo the mayor's point. We're following the governor's lead as the tip of the spear. So as he tells us what we need to do, we're hand in gloveing that in a relatively short order. And so last week, he announced this kind of staged opening where some of the state parks are in the process of, I guess, as of Monday we're open and now we'll have the non-essential businesses that can do curbside pickup. We'll also now be able to open. And then as of today, the elective surgery is getting clear authorization. I think over the next several weeks you're gonna continue to see incremental approval processes to various segments of our economy opening back up with probably some of the things that a lot of people are concerned about being on the back end of that meaning the restaurants and some of the larger stadium scenarios where you have congregate interactions I think are going to have some of the latter turning on. But we're following the governor's lead. We're taking feedback from our local folks to send to Austin because the governor has invited that kind of commentary. If there's a certain segment of business that has a certain practice, a public health practice that they want to put in place to demonstrate how they believe they can open and operate a safe situation given the guidelines that are there of social distancing and masks or hand sanitizers and such. I do know that people are looking for that outlet in order to give a suggestion to the governor's strike team on how this segment of business should be able to be opened if these practices are being followed. We'll continue to monitor all the governor's executive orders that are coming out every couple of days and when necessary we'll tweak our own to be in alignment with him and the county judge which right now I'm thinking we'll probably come back and updated on Tuesday. I don't think we're gonna need to update it in the intervening time but I wouldn't think that we'll probably update our order on Tuesday given some of the activity that is going on. Miss Salis? Yes Mayor and Council the the bulk of the changes that Judge Whitley did today do exactly what Tray mentioned in that they merely are clarifying the order to tweak it to bring it into full compliance with what the Governor issued last week. And the bulk of it does revolve around medical procedures and the reopening of retail. There is some focus. There have been some clarification on certain essential businesses and what's been added to that list. And so they add a couple of things in that realm as well. But outside of that, there's not really any surprises there. And since the governor's order does take precedent over Arlington's ordinance, we have to comply with that order. And so it does make some sense since we believe the governor will be issuing additional orders on Monday to wrap everything together, come Monday and present something to you next Tuesday for your consideration. And I might add, council two, you're starting to see more discussion publicly, both at the state and within the region level of what needs to be done or doesn't need to be done. And it's creating a fair amount of public discussion. Governor of Georgia, I believe yesterday, took a pretty proactive, I guess you could call it, stance on how to reopen business. And even within our own county, you've probably started to see at least one of the cities within Territ county start to get ahead of what we think the governor's order says. And so it's hard to keep the one voice going when there are so many different governmental entities and the more and more that you see that one voice have a harder time articulating the broad interest. It makes all of our jobs a little more difficult to explain what we're doing and why we're doing it. So our duty really has been to stay in alignment with Washington and Austin and be right on point with what the governor's authorizing us to do and then trying to stay within a regional context in alignment, but that's gonna become more and more difficult I think in the weeks ahead as certain jurisdictions take some, you know, just some perspectives that they wanna go a little further, a little faster. Chief, did you wanna add to that? Sure, and Mr. Peale, I think the question you brought up about the grocery stores, I think we're learning from the grocery store model that business can occur through a COVID experience. And I think the fact that we've gone five weeks through this and grocery stores have been operating and our cases are not going up as a good sign for our community. I think the thing is we just have to figure out what those steps are going to be, what do they work for various industry or business classes? How do we make those recommendations to the governor's strike team or his team as far as understanding that we can do business through COVID? That's a that's a reality. We just have to adapt to and I feel that many of those things or things were right in front of us. We see things that are clearly working. Should we replicate those in other business classes, I think the answer to that is yes. Council Mayor stepped away for a brief phone call. So just with your permission, I'll call on people I can see because I don't think Mr. Shepherd can see it on the line. But Ms. Moise, would you like to speak? Yes, thank you, Tri. One of the things that we heard very early on, and this may go to Dr. Simmons, we recommended that people needing testing say their family practice physicians. And as someone who worked in the health care field from the management side of medical office buildings for years, medical office and many physician practices function very much like retail. And now what we're hearing is that so many people who don't want to become sick or afraid to go to their medical doctor for treatment. If they have a condition that needs tending to because they don't want to be exposed, have we considered, you know, testing 10 people a day, an hour or a hundred a day or 200 a day is not a large number. We may discourage some people from making, especially seniors in North Arlington from wanting to make the drive to the parks. I understand why we're putting it there and I totally agree with the location, but is there something we can do to when people call into the site, we tell them the testing is full, or if they want something closer, have we looked at putting together a plan where we can direct people to locations that are more exclusively for people who think they may have been exposed, and so we can get our medical practices back into business? Yes, there's mechanisms where people can go through their primary and care physicians. And so a multitude of the physician's offices have actually established hours where they have what they call well and sick hours. So if somebody's going in for a routine check or routine eye check or cardiovascular check or blood pressure check, they can go to certain hours. And most of the physicians are making afternoon hours for patients that are sick. And anybody that's concerned for COVID, they're actually pushing to the very end of the day, like the 4 p.m. appointments, so that they can then clean the office after those patients leave. But they can see their physician and get that personal testing. We really wanted to take into consideration all of the needs of the community with the testing site and the locations and there are definitely options for people if they cannot make it to this location that are within the community but we wanted to afford the populations that really didn't have access and very little access to be able to come and get testing done. As testing increases and the number of tests increase, that availability should continue to increase. We have just seen a limited availability until just recently. So one more question. On, when you get a call, I mean, if we blink this closely, someone believes that they may test positive and they don't have transportation. How are we handling helping with transportation? Because that would also be a concern for, for example, the via drivers may be concerned. So how are we handling transportation? Dr. for our miss Louise I'll take that via still operational we have seen fewer riders based on the state home orders but the testing site is is available to people in the via network that serves kind of that center to southeastern segment of the city. So it doesn't serve all areas because we're not in a full city availability yet. But everyone who does have access to via now, we're still operating and the test site would be available. But what I'm saying is if I'm a via driver and you call me and need a ride and you indicate you're going to the test center, then as a via driver, I have a concern about, I'm picking up someone who thinks they may test positive for the virus. So how are we helping make sure that if someone needs transportation, someone doesn't just refuse to take them. Refusing is not an option. The drivers all have guidance in that way. They have mask if they need it to be available. They have cleaning supplies for their vehicle. And then I should also indicate that that's the same for Handy Tran also, which is citywide. So people who have access to Handy handy train that would also be an available access point for seniors are disabled to get to the site. Okay. Thank you. Dr. Ferrar Myers indicated question. Thank you, Trey. Actually my question goes back to Chief Krausen and Dr. Simmons. I go back to actually the very first question. Sorry, I've been waiting for a while waving my white flag here. Question was about exposure tracing or contact tracing. I know we have a protocol right now, and I know we have protocols in place for institutions. But as we start to move towards opening, there are some groups that are starting to amass on volley and some others to try to help first responders and others to do that. Is that something we've thought through? Do we have a clear sense of that? Is that something as an individual? We should take it upon ourselves to make sure we're cognizant of what we're traveling in case we do test positive. I just I'm beginning a lot of questions because I think they're getting some mixed messages. Rotary, for example, has started an organization, a group to assist in the contact tracing. So can you give us a little bit of sense about how contract tracing is working now when someone is testing positive and as we start to open with what that look like. Thank you. Absolutely. So you are absolutely correct. It is a very limited resource. Contact tracing is limited, not only in Arlington, but certainly in Terrent County and even nationwide. It can take extensive time period to contact trace. The efforts at the beginning of this pandemic were to contact trace every single positive. And it has that has moved forward. The efforts now within the epidemiology departments and public health departments is not to contact trace every single contact, but allowed those contacts to develop those lists for us. So as you mentioned, somebody saying, if somebody's test positive, asking them to write down people that they have come within that six foot radius with and communicate to them or through the Health Department communicate and find the high risk contacts. So the high risk contacts would be engaged by health department, but the other risks, the other individuals would be asked to self-quarantine as a contact. There are a number of your correct. There are a number of entities, volunteer groups, and other entities that have helped with that. There's also technology advancements. Google has an advancement that has done that. Again, there are some privacy concerns associated with some of that technology. And so I think my answer would be we would be willing to look at and investigate any potential help that could help isolate those individuals because that will help us open and reopen as a community. So isolating those people that are positive and the context that they have is vitally important. And so we're looking at all options available. I appreciate the response Dr. Simmons. Should we if groups up here are groups who are wanting to assist? I know there's some training that's happening through Rotary International to help train people to do come side by side to do a network analysis. If others have that skill, is that something that we'd be interested in developing here as some kind of volunteer force to assist us here in Arlington? In fact, we've had this discussion within the last couple of weeks about groups that could potentially be accessible through UTA or other sites. Certainly, what we've got to do this in coordination with our partners at County Public Health. But these are things we have to look at because the scope of this virus is significant and the resources required to trace individuals is significant. So we've got to think outside the box and look for other opportunities. So yes, we were welcome those opportunities. Thank you, Chief Kraus. And I'd be very interested in pursuing such. I've done network analysis myself. I know Rodrigo International is working on. They actually have an eight hour training for individuals to do that. So that's something that we're interested in doing for, particularly for Arlington and have an Arlington focused groups. That might be something. If you're interested in exploring that, we'd love some guidance on how to might direct that energy. Yes, and I think I'm going to speak for her a little bit, but I would direct any of those contacts to Dr. Simmons and as a team, the fire department will look into it to see if we can facilitate something like that. That'd be great. And I might just follow. I might just follow that up in general so that we all individually because we're talking a lot about our own self awareness and consumer approach. One of the things that has been talked about from the county perspective that would be helpful in any effort in the future is that we that we kind of contract trace ourselves. And so for example, the meeting that we kind of contract trace ourselves. And so for example, the meeting that we're in here today and there's about eight or ten people in here, we need to know who those eight people were because we've had contact, right? And so as you go through your schedule at work or at home or the visits that you may, keeping a good log of where you've been and who you've been in contact with or if you're organizing a meeting, if you can have a sign-in sheet and some of those kinds of things where there's a contact log being kept by the rotary folks while they're having their meeting, for example, those are all good technical things that would help Dr. Simmons or any volunteers or any other epi team have a head start because here I've been I've been breadcrumbing myself the last couple of weeks. I know where I've been. I know who have been around and here are the potential exposures and then they can triage whether or not that was a high exposure a moderate or very low incidental exposure to where it doesn't necessitate any type of action for example or it does based on that situation so I think that's something we can all advocate with our constituents and our residents is to contract trace ourselves so that when the call comes we've got a lot of evidence that we can share with folks that are trying to try to assist. Did I see another question from someone, Marvin Sudden. Thank you so much, Chief Krausen and Dr. Simmons. Thank you for what you do for our city. But I'd like to point out that the bigger things goes through all of our citizens who through a lot of challenges had to do homeschooled and stay at home, some lost paychecks, but they comply with all our ordinance. They comply with federal, state, and county guidelines to keep us safe. And it's a direct correlation to the numbers that you showed or displayed on your presentation. But I have a couple of questions and hopefully you can help me through it. So, do we know our transmission rate, or is that something that the state looking to, or is that something we don't look into other than just the testing, the contact tracing? And the second thing is, can you walk me through a typical testing at one of the testing sites? If there's a positive test, what actually takes place after that if it's a negative what actually takes place? So our public understands what to expect doing the testing and then after the testing. Yes, so currently in terms of transmissibility, I can give you some broad numbers. There's not a scientific analysis associated with this, but if you broadly test people in this area right now, we're seeing about a 7%, 8%, positivity in broad testing, not in high risk populations, not in a nursing home population, but just general population testing. That's from laboratory data. With regards to testing that we're looking at implementing, if somebody comes back with a positive and a negative, if they're positive, we would communicate those results directly to the individual. So we're actually going to get a phone call. And the reason is for that is because it's important that they understand, first of all, what COVID is, what they have, the precautions that they need to take for themselves and for their family, the time that they need to have off, and also when and if they would need to go and seek higher level healthcare, when they would need to go to the hospital, when they would need to call 911. So that communication for all of our positives will be real time coordinated in person over the phone communication. The negative individuals were looking at different options. We have a couple of different options. The most commonly one uses a actually web-based app. So there is an app through the laboratory. You can go in, sign into that app, and pull up your lab results. It's hip-a-compliant, so we protect people's medical information. And a lot of people, anybody that has a smartphone can access that app. But we're also looking at other options for the negatives and people that may not have internet access or may not have a smartphone. We do have some ability. We're looking at actually individually calling those individuals, the small subset that don't have web access or also actually mailing those results to those individuals. Mailing takes a little bit longer of course, but it is an option for people if they don't have any internet access or web access. Dr. Simmons at what point does the tracing takes place? the vaccine. So, I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. So, I think that's a good idea. So, I think that's a good idea. So, I think that's a good idea. So, I think that's a good idea. So, I think that's a good idea. So, I think that's a good idea. So, I think that's a good idea. So, I think that's a good idea. So, I think tracing the Mr. Yeoverton mentioned, we want to know 48 hours from the time that they're symptomatic if they're indeed symptomatic. We will, they will, we need the assistance of those individuals to help us find out who do they live with, who are they, who do they potentially work with, where have they been, and we will categorize those as high medium and low risk contacts. Then that contact tracing and communication after that is sent to Terrent County to their epidemiology staff. And that epidemiology staff will then go through and figure out which of those individuals would need to be contacted directly and which ones would not need to be based on their risk. Thank you. Dr. Nene Yes. Thank you. So Chief Croson and Dr. Simmons, whoever wants to take this or maybe even both of you. So earlier I asked a question, who are the people that should go to the testing site? And certainly anyone who has symptoms, has a cough, has a fever, they're gonna go. They're gonna get tested. We know that this test has a false negative rate of anywhere between 20 and 30%. So what advice are you gonna give to every single one of those patients who goes through that site down at the Park's Mall, who's symptomatic of something. And they get a negative test back. What are you gonna tell them? We have a informational packet that's handed to every single individual that's gonna come through the drive test is through that drive line. So that informational packet has what to do while you're waiting for your test pending results, what to do if your test is negative and what to do if your test is positive. There's also a flyer that shows how to protect yourself from COVID and things to do like washing your hands, things to do like isolating yourself in your own bedroom separate from the other individuals in your home, isolating yourself in your separate bathroom. So we've developed that flyer, we've developed that information. Everybody who goes through the test line will receive that. We have it in English and Spanish and we're working on Vietnamese right now. So again, my question's very specific. So I have symptoms. I may have COVID-19. I get a negative test, but I know that the test may not be telling me the truth, 30% of the time. Should I go back to work? You should not. And our informational has that. You should not go back to work. And if you continue to have symptoms, I would say two things. Call us and see if we can, we will get you back in a retest or you can go to your physician to get retested whatever options are available to you at that time. Okay, so now for my second question. There are certain legal situations where safe harbors are legally needed and terrorists you can chime in on this also. So let's imagine that we have a citizen that goes through this line, they get tested in their COVID-19 positive. And they received this information and I would like to thank that every single one of our citizens is gonna be responsible, but let's just say they're positive. They received the information, they're supposed to quarantine for two weeks, but they decide, you know what, I'm feeling pretty good, I'm going into work. At what point does a governmental body inform the employer that they have an employee who is COVID-19 positive and needs to quarantine for two weeks. Now, prior to this pandemic, HIPAA would not allow us to do that. But now here we are in a different situation. And Mayor, you may have had this conversation, but tray in the articles that you set out. and Mayor, you may have had this conversation, but tray in the articles that you've sent out. That is one of the major issues from the National Chamber of Commerce, how in the world can we get past this issue of HIPAA when it comes to public safety? So I'll let whoever wants to answer that answer it. I'm not sure any of us want to answer that, Dr. Nguyen-Yaspin. Let me take a stab and then I'll let the chief and Dr. Simmons chime in as well. I think the more appropriate action would be for the public health authority to issue a control order to the individual who's tested positive. And once that is done, if they're still failing to quarantine, there's emergency court action that can be taken to have those individuals detained. And there have been processes set up so those things can happen very quickly. And we've been working through those processes. I'm not sure we've had trouble with anybody, but we have issued control orders. And so there is a legal process to do that without having to go to an employer and notify an employer of anything. And I'll follow up on that. I'm happy to report. We definitely have issued control orders. And we really have had very minimal difficulty with control orders. With the people that have been positive, they have really complied very well. They have stayed home, they have followed the orders, they don't want to spread the disease. Our citizens have been really amazing. We've had a couple of antidotal reports of people that have said they're positive, but when we really dig into that, they're not. And so we've had a couple of anecdotal reports of people that have said they're positive, but when we really dig into that, they're not. And so we've had a couple of those come through. But by far, the citizens have adhered to our guidance with regards to staying home and quarantine for those 14 days. Thank you. Next, okay, Dr. Odom Wesley. Yes, thank you. I was on a call earlier today and learned about a program that Fort Worth has. They call it micro business loans where they are providing some assistance to the small businesses that are trying to get back up and running. Very small loans, I think less than 50,000 and the many at the $5,000 range. Do we anticipate anything like that or any assistance for our small businesses here in Arlington? I'll call upon Mr. Yeoverton. Councilmember, I think the guidance that we are beginning people right now is to go through the the lending institutions like we talked about the other day through the Paycheck Paycheck Protection Program. I think there's been a legislative breakthrough today. I'm reading that there'll be an extension of that program from Washington so working with the various community banks and other banks, we would direct our small businesses to those areas. The program that both the Texas State has put together in City of Fort Worth has largely seated with private capital, coming through the local city. And so you all know through the discussion we had last week that our own capabilities are as equally as challenged as the business capabilities are out there right now and getting people into private capital resources through the lending, the traditional lending models and the paycheck protection program is the direction that we're giving. Until we have a large film-thropic person come forward and suggest this is what they can do for us, we're somewhat limited. And also, I'm a little fearful of creating competing programs. I don't want to confuse people about what a federal program is available and what a local program is available and such. And candidly, the federal program is gonna have much more robust capacity than anything that we could do locally that's a million dollars even. There's billions of dollars coming from the federal government. So we need to try to stay in the lane that we can do the most good with and the traditional lending model, I think is gonna be the best approach while we try to make sure that we're offering the public health and safety that our residents need to have as well. I just want to reinforce that this is a time for our business community to be looking to apply if they haven't already and we'll say a whole lot of Arlington businesses have already applied and are participating in the Paycheck Protection Plan there. But we need to encourage them to move forward. The paperwork is not that bad. They're with it and even banks that have not done it in the past. I think some of them are gonna be jumping in and some will be doing more. And we need to encourage our banks to do more. We also need to say thank you because many of the banks have been working not in day to get those applications in that first round. Now we have a second round and this is not a usual business there for us to have this widespread of application, but these are extraordinary times. And the money that is coming back from the federal government all came from us paying taxes. And it's important that we try to bring as much as we can back to Arlington for our businesses and our individuals because that will help us have an easier time to rebound and frankly can save some of our small businesses and enable them to go so it is it is all hands-on deck right now for us to be working to help our our citizens and our businesses to be able to apply and receive this federal funding and then I'll just go ahead and mention it also you know our be able to apply and receive this federal funding. And then I'll just go ahead and mention it. And also, our council is very much aware that we have a major effort going on now too to get relief here for our community, our city. Because our city government is experiencing huge loss in revenue there because of so many businesses being shut down, which is a major source of our revenue. So we also are working on that because that's important to our citizens that we continue to provide the services that they've become accustomed to at the level that they have. That's going to be a very important part of this also. So please encourage the businesses and citizens to apply. There are a lot of resources there and companies, the companies and individuals that do help you fill it out. And then of course, hopefully a lot of the banks will be helping with that also. Okay, I'll turn to Mr. Sutton. Thank you, Mayor. Mayor, I know we have a somewhat large population of ranchers in our city. And I think Austin passed ordinance that basically gives a little bit more flexibility to some of its renters. I think the term they use is opportunity to cure and I think Dallas may be working on some similarities. That's something that we may want to look at as well. Give a little bit flexibility. In fact, our governor has a call. We'll go ahead. Miss Solace is she's ready to answer this Marvin. Thank you Mayor. You bet. Mayor and councilor, we have been looking into this issue and following what Austin and Dallas. What Austin has done and what Dallas is looking at proposing. And I would recommend probably that at your council meeting next week, maybe an executive session that we have a discussion about those ordinances and some of the issues around them. And at that point, y'all could decide if that was something that you're interested in. But I think you're right on, Mr. Sutton. And already the state has been, you know, they have avoiding eviction and giving time and hopefully we can do more. Also, I'm encouraged there's some new federal legislation that actually does give relief for renters both residential and commercial lending there, but also the federal government is backstopping there. I hope that legislation has some opportunity there, but that just was just introduced. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Yeoverton. And while I bought a little time there, I did get some data from our housing folks today. As of this morning, there was 274 pending evictions in Arlington, JP courts. So it's a notable number and the work that Jennifer and Mindy Cochrane have done in our housing authority they have created some funding for emergency housing assistance payments. So the Arlington Housing Authority website, I think it's ArlingtonHousing.us if I recall has an application process that people can go on there and ask for assistance with RAN or utilities. It is a qualification-based program, but the housing authority allocated around $600,000 meeting about two weeks ago in order to try to provide some community resources directly towards that. And then we'll follow up next week with truly more legal advice along the lines and we're going to be able to have a little bit of a discussion about the other community resources directly towards that. And then we'll follow up next week with truly more legal advice along the lines of what Miss Salis was talking about regarding some of the other communities ordinances on this matter. Okay, other questions, comments? Okay, seeing no others, let me turn back to Chief I think we're still in good position. Hopefully by the end of this week we'll have a testing center that will help this community out and maybe with the next week or two we'll be reporting back to council with the update. I think we'll be back to the update. We'll be back to the update. We'll be back to the update. We'll be back to the update. We'll be back to the update. We'll be back to the update. hopefully stay in good position. Hopefully by the end of this week we'll have a testing center that will help this community out. And maybe with the next week or two, we'll be reporting back to Council with the update on how that facility is going. Sure. I think it's important. We've got the steps in place. We've had the steps in place, monitoring in our hospitals, monitoring. The testing capacity is the thing that we need to follow the President's plan, his phased plan for reopening. And so we're getting that in place. The citizens following, continuing to follow the state homeowners and social distancing is really vital at this point so that we can move forward to move back to normalcy as soon as we can as appropriate as we are as we can. Thank you. Thank you. Any other closing comments? You over to any of that. Well, let me just share with you our community is continuing to be kind there. I today we received an offer there from our southern mosque there in which they are going to be supplying meals to some of our first responders and to MCA emergency personnel here on Thursday there with it and then we can go on and on about the amount of kindness it's being shown but I also want to say that I was very very inspired by a lot of our citizens who led by Paul Fulkes and Cleet McCallister that put the American flags here at the Levitt Pavilion and also at Heroes Park in honor of our first responders. And then of course, you saw, I think that we're going to be actually lighting our two monument signs in blue. They're in honor of our first responders and then chief be sure and pass that on. We're very grateful therefore our emergency response teams and what they're doing and our entire fire department and then Dr. Simmons thank you to our medical department and our medical professionals and the hospitals and the many that are cooperating right now and putting themselves on the line for each one of us and doing incredible work. And then as we can see, the numbers that we have shown are very encouraging. But we are about to enter into a period which we are going to have to be more diligent than ever and be more aware of our surroundings and work hard to follow the guidelines so that we can protect our families and protect other people's families and also to be able to have a job and to be able to have our businesses to move forward. So it is a time in which Arlington is really going to need to step up. And they have been doing it. You have been doing it. The citizens have been doing an incredible job there through it. So we look forward to better days ahead. And if I see, oh, we do have, we do have something. Andrew Peale's got his hand up there. Mr. Peel. Yeah, one last thing, there have been some media reports that were sent to me about MLB, maybe playing some baseball games in Arlington. Have they contacted the city or said anything? I've told everybody that's way too premature, but I did read the article. Well, you know, this is one of about four or five different proposals and they are investigating that. But we don't know, you know, it sure would be nice too. You know, you heard the one plan where they would play the World Series at a neutral site. Well, I think we have a good spot for that right here in Arlington, don't you all? But we don't have anything in concrete yet, but I think that really, that was an intriguing proposal there that they would what 10 teams, Andrew, that they would move here to play at the our ballpark and the surrounding ballpark. That's moving off 10 MLB teams to the area to play continually because they said our since our stadium has a roof on it, they could play three to four games a day and get through the season for part of the league all here. That's fascinating to me. And, you know, we probably won't be able to go out and watch it, but I'd still like for it to happen anyway. Well, it'd be pretty cool for the TV cameras to be there in our ballpark, and it all being filmed and sent out to not only America, but throughout the world because I know that everybody's hungry for sports to watch on TV. There so that's an interesting thing. So we'll stay tuned. There were any other questions from the council or comments. All right, thank y'all very much. Appreciate each one of you and we'll look forward to our meeting next week and let's continue to stay together and pray together and hope these numbers keep coming down. Thank you all so much. Appreciate it. This meeting is adjourned. you you you you you Welcome back. I'm Andrew Tnullian with My Arlington TV and this episode of Arlington Eats brings us to the down system.