The week in review
A BRIEF ROUNDUP OF THE LOCAL NEWS OF THE WEEK
One of the great things about being a reporter is witnessing history being made firsthand and passing along the account of it to your readers.
Staff writer Kris B. Mamula was witness Monday morning as Charmaine Pykosh,67, an acute care practitioner at UPMC Presbyterian Hospital, received the first COVID-19 vaccine shot administeredin Pittsburgh.
“I couldn’t sleep,” said Ms. Pykosh, who has more than 30 years of experience in the health field. “My heart was pounding.”
The first shipment of the long-awaited PfizerBioNTech vaccine, packed in dry ice, arrived about 9 a.m. Monday at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh in a UPS van, after which it had to be defrosted.
UPMC received 975 doses of the vaccine — a fraction of what’s needed for the hospital system’s 90,000 employees, said Graham Snyder, medical director of infection prevention and hospital epidemiology for UPMC. The hospital system had not received word on when other shipments would arrive.
Staff writer Mick Stinelli followed up with a report as Allegheny Health Network began inoculating its health care workers Thursday.
The first priority workers are those who care for COVID-19 patients in the intensive care units, as well as anyone who works within 6 feet of COVID-19 patients for more than 15 minutes, AHN officials said at a news conference Friday.
After that, employees who work with patients who do not have COVID-19 will receive the vaccine, before moving on to other personnel and ambulatory care workers. The health care system, which consists of 13 hospitals, anticipates it will have all priority workers inoculated by the week of Jan. 4, with all employees potentially vaccinated by the beginning of February.
AHN officials said the vaccination program not only protects those who are at highest risk of catching the virus, but it also helps to stabilize the workforce so its members can can continue to treat patients.
“They live in the community, they’re in the community when they’re not at work, they’re not wearing their [personal protective equipment] when they’re out in the community and their risk is real,” said Dr. Brian Parker, the network’s chief quality learning officer.
Foundation donates some cold, hard cash
One of the challenges of distributing the vaccine is that it mustbe kept in ultra-cold storage containers at a temperature of minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 Fahrenheit). You can’t just buy those at Don’sAppliances.
Staffwriter Joyce Gannon reported that UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh plans to purchase six coldstorage units with a $250,000 grant awarded recently by the Richard King Mellon Foundation.
The money will also be used for a refrigeration trailer to transport vaccines to communities where UPMC maintains facilities, as well as for software that will allow the health care system to track vaccine recipients and make sure they receive a required follow-up dosage.
“We will be immunizing citizens of the world for the next year,” said Dr. Terence Dermody, physician-in-chief and scientific director at UPMC Children’s Hospital. “We’re incredibly grateful to the foundation for supporting these efforts.”
Speaking of cold ... it’s pretty cold
Our reporters also brought us up to date on the midweek snowfall that blanketed the region with anywhere from 6 to 15 inches. Indiana County clocked in with 20 inches before the
storm front moved out Thursday morning.
Pittsburgh easily broke its record for Dec. 16 snowfall and hit another milestone as one of the snowiest December days here. By 8 p.m. Wednesday, the National Weather Service said about 5 inches of snow had fallen, shattering the 1.9-inch record seton that date in 1890.
Also, the weather service offices in Moon measured an official 10 inches — tying it as the fourth snowiest day in December in Pittsburgh. It hit that same mark on Dec. 31, 1897. The snowiest was on Dec. 17, 1890, when 22 inches fell. The service started keeping records in 1880.
Temperatures, meanwhile, hovered in the upper 20s. So you can expect those curbside piles to be around for several days.
And just in case you think this story doesn’t have a COVID-19 angle: The city said the crews charged with removing the snow had been doing so while short-staffed, as 25 of the Public Works employees were off “due to COVID-related reasons.”
Those nearby lots do a lot of good
The 2021 budget for the Sports & Exhibition Authority is pretty much the mess you’d expect, what with events at PNC Park, Heinz Field, PPG Paints Arena and the David L. Lawrence Convention
Center all being hammered by COVID-19.
The SEA owns those venues, and officials were looking for ways to cover their $11.35 million spending plan for next year.
The answer, in large part, came from the Pittsburgh Stadium Authority, which oversees the North Shore property between PNC Park and Heinz Field. The authority is contributing $10 million to the SEA.
SEA Executive Director Mary Conturo told staff writer Mark Belko that the 2021 budget assumes that convention center shows and events won’t begin to return to anything close to normal until at least July.
This year, the pandemic wiped out nearly all of the events that were scheduled to takeplace after mid-March.
Ms. Conturo, who doubles as the stadium authority executive director, expects that organization’s bailout to be a one-time thing.
The money, she said, came from a surplus built up over the years from parking revenues and the sale of North Shore land. She said about $4 million remains in that fund.
There is no legal issue with the stadium authority giving funds to the SEA, Ms. Conturo said. “The two authorities were created under the same enabling act and
they have the same purpose. Expenditures by either authority furthers their shared purpose.”
This pandemic is one for the books
Staff writer Bill Schackner passed along a joint statement Wednesday from the state departments of Education and Health urging higher education institutions in Pennsylvania to continue with remote instruction further into the new year.
A number of public and private campuses in the Pittsburgh region and elsewhere — including the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, Penn State University and some state-owned institutions — moved spring semester back by days or weeks or will start the semester relying on remote instruction. But then the COVID-19 numbers started going the wrong way again.
“We are seeing an alarming increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, and these trends are expected to worsen in January at the time when students normally return to campus,” said acting Secretary of Education Noe Ortega.
“Colleges and universities play a critical role in mitigating the spread of COVID-19 and creating safe
learning environments for students,” Mr. Ortega added. “By delaying students’ return to campus, our institutions of higher learning can help slow the spread of the virus, help businesses to remain open and protect regional health care systems.”
Pitt spokesman Kevin Zwick said Pitt was using its Flex@Pitt classroom mode and would start classes Jan. 19, pivoting between degrees of in-person and remote instruction as needed.
Gabriel Welsch, Duquesne University spokesman, said, “We already have delayed our original start to Jan. 21, two weeks later than the original academic calendar, and we have the flexibility thanks to our hybrid and flexible plan to adjust as conditions dictate. Our plans were built knowing that flexibility may berequired.”
Schools continue to use red ink
The Pittsburgh Public Schools board was mulling a 2.6% increase in property taxes next year to ease a longstanding operating deficit. The board put the kibosh on the idea Wednesday.
Staff writer Andrew Goldstein reported that the vote went three board members for, five against and one abstention.
The board then decided to keep the current 9.95 millage in place, 5-3-1, with the yes and no votes switching.
With a deficit of nearly $40 million, Superintendent Anthony Hamlet was pushing for the tax increase as a first step in fixing the district’s financial situation, and he promised that his administration would explore ways to save money in 2021.
But some board members said the district needed to take a closer look at where it could save money or create revenue before asking for more from the community.
“It’s up to us to make this right and come up with a good, solid plan, then revisit the tax increase next year,” said Bill Gallagher, who voted to keep the current tax rate.
So much for the ‘great conversationist’
How are you going to rate your Lyft driver if your Lyft car doesn’t have a driver?
We may find out. Lyft, the ride-hailing platform, is joining forces with Motional, a self-driving car company, with the goal of putting fully autonomous vehicles on city streets in 2023.
Staff writer Lauren Rosenblatt reported Motional, which operates in part out of Pittsburgh’s Hazelwood Green development, is already working on developing and testing the technology here.
“We’re at the frontier of transportation innovation, moving robot axis from research to road,” Motional President and CEO Karl Iagnemma said. “Our aim is to not only build safe, reliable and accessible driverless vehicles but to deliver them at significant scale.”
The partnership with Lyft is meant to provide both companies with different components they may have lacked individually. Motional can offer the research and development expertise while Lyft can provide a ride-hailing network that offers autonomous rides.
The strategy is a way to speed up commercial development of autonomous vehicles, Lyft said in a news release.
You’re kidding. We’re gobsmacked
You know how to stop a nonstop flight? Keep it on the ground.
Staff writer Mark Belko reported Wednesday that British Airways will not be restarting its nonstop flights between Pittsburgh and London on March 28 as planned. It’s the third time this year British Airways has failed to meet a promised return date.
“We are sorry that, like other airlines, due to the current coronavirus pandemic and global travel restrictions, we are operating a reduced and dynamic schedule,” the carrier stated.
British Airways stopped flying to Pittsburgh on March 15 in part because of travel restrictions imposed to try to stop the spread of the virus.
It missed Aug. 2 and Oct. 2 dates for resuming the flight, which operated four times a week, before announcing the March 28 return. British Airways did not set a new return date in its latest statement.
Nonetheless, the Allegheny County Airport Authority, which operates Pittsburgh International, was working with the airline “regarding when service will resume,” spokesman Bob Kerlik said.
Social distancing in camouflage gear
Staff writer John Hayes looked into how hunters are being impacted by the pandemic this year and learned that the answer is “not so much.”
Hunting — and nearly every other form of outdoor recreation — is seeing record-setting participation. Nationwide, hunting license sales increased 12%, adding 1 million new hunters, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms trade group.
License sales to new hunters and those who didn’t hunt the previous five years totaled 53,527, nearly 5,000 more than in 2019, according to the Game Commission.
Early sales of 2020-21 licenses were up nearly 5%. Steve Smith, Game Commission information and education bureau director, said in August that pandemic-related unemployment and new hunting opportunities were expected to contribute to high-volume hunting in the fall.
The strange part is that Pennsylvania’s increase was proportionally smaller than in other states. Still, Pennsylvania remains one of America’s top hunting states, ranking second behind Texas in numbers of deer hunters.
Game Commission analysts expect to have a greater understanding of Pennsylvania’s growing hunting community, and the pandemic’s impacton it by this spring.