2.23.21 Press Event Emmanuel Baptist Church

County of Santa Clara
February 23, 2021
Press Conference: COVID Vaccine site added at Emmanuel Baptist Church in East San Jose


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Ricardo Romero Morales: And thank you for being here. My name is Ricardo Romero Morales. i'm lead public information officer for the emergency operations center in Santa Clara County. We're gathered here today to announce the opening of a new vaccination site, here at Emmanuel Baptist Church. Today we're honored to be here with the following speakers, Pastor Jason Reynolds, senior pastor from the Emmanuel Baptist Church, and Dr Jennifer Tong, associate chief medical officer from Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. We will begin this press conference in English and American Sign Language. We will then have a period of questions and answers. After that we will have statements in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Tagalog from the podium. With that, it is my honor to introduce Pastor Jason Reynolds from the Emmanuel Baptist Church. Thank you.

Pastor Jason Reynolds: All right. Well, let me say uh welcome to Emmanuel Baptist Church. So thankful that we get a chance to be light in this dark time, a space where people can come and get help, and hopefully, as we've been a partner with the county and testing that this partnering for vaccinations will really help in this particular location. uh One of the things that I am so happy to be able to represent for our church is that we recognize during this time when our building was closed we weren't able to use it in the same ways, that we didn't just sit there when the opportunity came, that we could continue to use this same space to touch so many people, so many individuals who are having lives that were adversely affected, we were able to answer that call. And to know that almost 40,000 people have been tested at our site, we're hoping that as vaccinations will roll out, we'll do that and especially to touch some of those communities most, most affected. African ancestry, the indigenous population and even the Latinx community that's right here. So welcome to Emmanuel Baptist Church. We say where God is doing something special, but we really do believe that something special is happening in this time. All right now i'll hand it over to dr. Tong.

Dr. Jennifer Tong: Good morning. I'm Dr Jennifer Tong, associate chief medical officer for Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. I'm really excited to be here today to announce our county's partnership with Emmanuel Baptist Church to expand our COVID vaccination efforts in East San Jose. Emmanuel's generosity, in opening their doors to give back to the community throughout this pandemic, is really unparalleled. The County has been so grateful to partner with them on COVID testing for the last many months, and now to expand to include vaccinations here. I'm happy that this site will continue as a COVID testing site, along with our newly launched vaccination efforts here, making this a true hub for the community.

We know that the East Side of San Jose has been incredibly hard hit by COVID-19. We also know that the African-American, African ancestry community has experienced a disproportionate share of COVID-related deaths. The Emmanuel community is no stranger to the challenges that this pandemic has brought our county remains laser focused on ensuring equity in the vaccine distribution. This site will be a critical part of our multi-faceted strategies to reach the the communities that are hardest hit and have the most difficulties in accessing health care.

Our strategies involve large vaccination sites like our Levi's Stadium site, which is designed to vaccinate communities at scale, but our strategies also involve these smaller sites, as well as mobile teams that are designed to go into highest risk neighborhoods, apartment complexes, agricultural businesses, and other areas most in need of vaccine access. I also wanted to provide you with some updates about our County's progress in achieving vaccination of our community. Our county health system alone has administered one, sorry, 164,000 first doses and we continue to expand our vaccination sites. Overall we are making great progress, despite the challenges with vaccine supply. More than 57 percent of our population age 75 and up, has received at least one dose of vaccine, and almost half of residents aged 65 and older have received at least one dose. Within the coming week providers across the county will be expanding eligibility to frontline workers in the state's phase 1b eligibility tier, including education, child care, emergency services, and food and agriculture. Even as we expand to these other populations, we'll be working to ensure ongoing access to the older individuals in our community who face the highest risk of severe illness.

I'd like to take this time to thank the many team members who are making this uh this enormous effort possible many, many county staff, traveling nurses from around the country, uh the national guard, many volunteers from the community, all coming together to serve our community seven days a week, many hours throughout the day. For additional information about how to make an appointment you can visit our website www.sccFreevax.org, that's free vax.org thank you very much.

Roger Ross: well now the question portion of everything, so we'll start with KRON.

Media question: sure the question is for Dr Tong ... about turnouts ... locations ... and no-shows.

Dr. Tong: Sure. Thq question is about about turnouts and no-shows.  Our no-show rate continues to vary, day-to-day. Yesterday our no-show rate was 10 percent, which is really really impressive, um given that no shows in healthcare are actually quite common. um A few of those individuals are people who were determined, for example to to not have a connection to our county, and may have been turned away during the process, but others are potentially people who were unable to come for various reasons, work, child care demands, and we hope that they will be rescheduling to come back to one of our sites. Again, we continue um overbooking so those doses do not go to waste. We continue ensuring that our doses are utilized each day.

Media question: (unclear).

Dr Tong: So each time that we open a site, we do what we call a soft launch uh to work out any any processes that still need refinement. For example, setting up new technology requires quite a bit of technical support and troubleshooting on day one, so our goal for today was between 100 and 200 people, and we'll be slowly increasing the capacity at this site up to a projected maximum capacity around 500 per day.

Media question: ... like in Los Angeles ... with people using access codes intended for underserved communities through the state's my turn of appointment system are there any plans for santa clara county to integrate with that system or will the county continue to use its own system as a standalone separate from the state?

Dr. Tong: We continue to be in communication with the State and Blue Shield about their requirements, and we're prepared to meet those requirements. Information is still forthcoming to us, the extent to which we're required to use their system, versus the extent to which we're required allowed to use our own system. We've certainly invested a lot of time and energy into the system that we use at our sites today, but again we are we are prepared to do what's required of us and what's best for our community.

Media question: Do you have any idea when we will be getting ... ?

Dr. Tong: We expect to have more clarity on that within the next few weeks, as the state makes its way through different counties, in their new approach to the technical requirements for vaccination sites.  The bay area is actually in the latest wave of of those requirements being sent forth.

Media question: location question.

Pastor Reynolds: Absolutely, so the question was about how our community has been impacted. And so the church has uh really been well 2020. We kind of made it through all right and then we opened up this year, and we had family after family, who contracted the disease. We've lost a number of members uh to the disease, and um having those conversations.  uh Knowing loved ones couldn't see their um their loved ones again. Having to say goodbye via Facetime was just really really challenging, um and then even our grief process, which is totally changed in the in the era of COVID. uh We just desire to to try to help, to stem that time. And then our exterior community, those around us it has greatly been affected. We have a number of essential workers, a number of individuals that uh aren't able to stay home, uh and not have to go into the locations, and put themselves in harm's way, and so if we could be here where they are, that was our hope and our goal.

Media question: (unclear).

Pastor Reynolds: absolutely especially in the space that we we can't use it in any other means. We might as well use it for a means that's still beneficial to the community. thank you.

Media question about supply.

Dr. Tong: So we we continued to be on a week-to-week basis, of allocation, in terms of vaccine supply. uh Last week was complicated further by the um uh severe weather across the United States, impacting supply chain delivery. We currently have enough supply for this week, and uh each Tuesday we find out what we have for the following week, so we will be anxiously awaiting to to uh match our allocation with our appointments available for next week. And we continue to adjust what type of vaccine is offered at each site, whether it's Pfizer or Moderna to ensure that those who are due for second doses get what what they are due to receive, and then shifting our operations as needed to make sure that we can safely give whatever is um available to us in our inventory for first doses at each site.

Media question: WHat is being done to address ... issues site to long wait times to cancel appointments through the call center? And secondly with Emmanuel now being a vaccine site will the capacity for the walk-up testing change at all?

Dr Tong: To, I'll answer the second question first, that was about if capacity for walk-up testing is changing, um here at Emmanuel Church. uh No, we're prepared to continue the same amount of testing that we have been doing um to date, um and we we continue uh to see people coming for testing, particularly um essential workers, who are testing routinely, um asymptomatic, but just ensuring that uh they continue to test negative uh due to the nature of their work.

The first question was about cancellation of appointments and efforts that we have underway to make it easier for individuals to cancel or reschedule appointments. The current process is a phone-based process, but we have multiple efforts underway that we anticipate being available within the next few weeks to cancel via automated voice reminder, via telephone, via text message, and via the email confirmation that is sent. Each of those require separate technical efforts, so we're working on all three simultaneously to see which one we can achieve first together with our various technical vendors and partners.