04.02.20 COVID-19 Briefing Live Stream Transcript

The County of Santa Clara
April 2, 2020
Live Stream - Live with the County of Santa Clara
10am PT


DAVID CAMPOS: Good morning, my name is David Campos, I’m a deputy county executive for the county of Santa Clara, and today I will be playing the role of public information officer for the emergency operations center for the county of Santa Clara. I want to thank you all for tuning in this morning. I am joined today by Dr. Tong who is overseeing the county’s effort to prepare for the issue of surge. She’s in charge of the surge branch of the county’s emergency operation center and she will be providing detailed information about our efforts to prepare, and we will be hearing from our board president, Supervisor Cindy Chavez. I want to note that our chief executive, Dr. Smith, has been called on a different matter that he had to attend to.

But today is an opportunity for the county of Santa Clara to provide our residents additional information about two very important subjects, and we want to note that two databases have, actually dashboards, have gone online and are now live that are accessible to the public. One of them is a dashboard that actually provides information about hospital capacity, which we know is a very important issue for certainly the county, but all residents have been thinking about that issue and worried about that issue. And then the second subject is the issue of testing. There is a dashboard that actually provides detailed information on testing, and you’re going to hear more specifics from Dr. Tong in a couple of minutes.

I do want to note that hospital capacity in the data that is included in the dashboard includes the following: The number of acute hospital beds that are available, the number of intensive care unit beds, the number of ventilators, and surge beds. And with respect to surge beds we want to know – we want you to know – surge beds are the additional beds that are not normally used in the hospital system, but that are actually, that may be needed, in light of this event of COVID-19. And just for the public we want you to know as of March 31st there were 936 available acute hospital beds in the county. There were 92 ICU… volume for COVID-19 for the county of Santa Clara. Laboratory testing for this virus is provided by commercial laboratories, by academic laboratories, and the public health laboratory. The public health laboratory is essential in bridging laboratory in this kind of an emergency. The testing capacity in this county becomes more widely available depending on the availability of these players to provide more testing. The capacity is as dependent on the availability of commercial and academic laboratories to grow capacity rapidly. Lastly, as of April 1, there were 8,246 residents of Santa Clara county that were tested for the virus. 956 residents of those tests were positive, 11.59% of those tested tested positive. So with that, I’m going to turn it over to Dr. Tong, who has been leading with her team the effort to get ready when it comes to capacity with our hospital system. Dr. Tong.

DR. TONG: Good morning. My name is Dr. Jennifer Tong, and I am the director of the healthcare surge capacity planning branch of the county of Santa Clara Emergency Operations Center. We have a team of almost 50 people who are dedicated full time working 7 days a week to strengthen the preparedness of our county to manage an increase in the volume of hospitalized patients and otherwise patients who need medical care. We are collaborating with each hospital in our county, focusing on multiple areas but there are three of which I want to speak about today.

First, personal protective equipment or PPE. It is crucial that every person who is taking care of patients in our community has access to the supplies they need to stay healthy because their ability to continue working is one of the most important parts of our surge capacity planning. We are working hard to understand what volume of patients we might need to prepare for and what volume of personal protective equipment we might need to prepare for.

Likewise, we are working hard to understand the inventory across our county of such equipment. Our next task after that is to try to close that gap between what we anticipate we might need and what is currently available. Due to the worldwide demand for these items, we are focused on local expertise and supplies to help close that gap.

Dr. Tong: The second key item that we’re working on is bed capacity. Each hospital in our county is adding additional beds and, in many cases, entire unites to help care for an increased number of hospitalized patients. We are all collaborating to identify the equipment, supplies, medications that we all need to prepare for to take care of such an increase in volume. We are adding 250 beds at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Those beds will be primarily for patients who have been hospitalized, all of whom will be COVID-positive and who need a safe place to go after the time of discharge. We are also working on increasing available beds in our county for patients who have skilled nursing needs. That means they might have been in the hospital, are no longer sick enough to require hospitalization but continue to need enough nursing care that they’re unable to go home or to another independent living.

Our third area of focus is around staffing. With an increase in bed capacity that I just described, our staffing needs changed dramatically. Each hospital is working on plans on how they can creatively restructure care teams so they can incorporate volunteers from the community. They’re also working on ways to expedite hiring practices to bring in new staff to their care teams. Within the next couple of days, we will be releasing an online intake form for those in our community to express their interest and experience and expertise to contribute to the care of patients throughout our continuum of care.

Finally, we would like to thank all of our people in our community who are taking care of patients, we would like to thank all of our hospitals for collaborating with us, the multiple elected officials, government entities and industries. The collaboration of all of these different individuals and groups are what will strengthen our preparedness for a potential surge in our patient volumes. Thank you.

DAVID CAMPOS: Thank you very much Dr. Tong, and thank you to your team for making sure that we are prepared for this crisis. Next I’m going to ask our president of the Board of Supervisors who, along with the board, has been making sure that we as a county are as ready as we can be. Board President Cindy Chavez.

SUPERVISOR CINDY CHAVEZ: Thank you and let me start by thanking all of you who are at home who are doing your best to make sure we’re not spreading this virus. I’ll do a reminder that it’s been many days so it’s hard to remember to wash your face, wash your hands and not touch your face and all of those other careful things you can do in terms of wiping down your environment and making sure your space is clean. One of the reasons we’re so excited about today is that a number of you have been asking us about where can we learn more about how many cases there are, where can we learn more about how many beds there are, where can we learn more about testing… And I want to just say how much I appreciate the leadership of the Santa Clara County Public Health Department in making sure that these grids are public, because we want to be transparent. So if you go on sccphd.org/coronavirus you will see each of these dashboards. One that explains all the new cases that we’re getting, one that explains how many people are passing, one that shows you what we know about testing, and we don’t have all the information yet but we’re going to keep updating those databases, and one that reflects what our needs are for the hospital.

The reason this is so important is that we want you to know what you can do to help, and what is happening on your behalf. I think its very concerning, if I were at home I’d want to know this information and that’s why we’re making it public. Let me just close with this, and I’m going to try to remember to say this every time I get a chance to talk to you, the public. Let’s make sure that we’re being extra supportive and kind to our grocery workers, to the folks that are making food, to the truck drivers. Let’s make sure we’re thanking everybody in our health system. These are really challenging times and we have some people who haven’t been able to work, and a number of you who are working at home, some of you who have lost your jobs, but we have a lot of people – firefighters, police officers, ambulance drivers, people who are essential workers on the front line who are doing our very best to make sure our community stays safe so let’s stay patient with them and let’s stay patient with each other. Thank you.

DAVID CAMPOS: Thank you very much President Chavez. I just want, on behalf of the County Executive, I want people of this county to know, the county of Santa Clara residents to know, that we have hundreds of people at the emergency operations center who as we speak are working hard to make sure that if a bed is needed in this county, that that bed is available. That if a ventilator is needed, that ventilator is available. A lot of thought and energy has gone into this effort and we are doing everything we can to make sure that we are ready for any sure when it happens. But the only way we can ensure that we have the public trust is to make sure that we have the public trust is to make sure that we are transparent about our efforts and that’s why those dashboards are there and we will continue to update them on a daily basis to provide as much information as we can. So with that we’ll open questions to our speakers.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: [Unintelligible]

DAVID CAMPOS: I’ll turn it over to Dr. Tong

DR. TONG: The question is If we have data on how many beds in our hospitals have been taken up currently by COVID-positive patients. And the answer is that yes, we do have that information, in fact on the new dashboard about hospital capacity, there is some information there about the number of hospitalized patients in our county who are COVID-positive.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: [Unintelligible]

DR. TONG: The question is if that also includes the number of ventilators that are taken up. Yes, the dashboard also includes data on the number of ventilators in use as well as ventilators remaining available. Those numbers are definitely not static. Each day new patients are put on ventilators, some patients come off ventilators, and our supply of ventilators in the county is also dynamic as we receive some supplies and repair some supplies that are in need of repair.

DAVID CAMPOS: Thank you Dr. Tong, any other questions – yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: [Unintelligible]

DAVID CAMPOS: So the question is, is there any concern on the part of the county if by providing this information we will create some concern within the public about whether or not we’re ready in light of those numbers. I will certainly turn it over to Dr. Tong and President Chavez, but I will simply begin from the perspective of Dr. Smith. The reason we want to be transparent is because we want the public to be confident that we’re doing everything we can to be ready.

DR. TONG: I think you’ll see on the current dashboard that in many ways it is reassuring that we are in a  county with a large number of hospital beds, critical care beds, ventilators, so by sharing the data I some ways I think we’ll reassure people that our hospitals currently have a significant amount of remaining capacity. I think another reason for sharing the data is to highlight the importance of the social distancing order. With each additional effort towards social distancing we anticipate that our prevalence of illness in our community as well as our number of hospitalized patients should be impacted by increased social distancing. So there’s a close association between the social distancing orders and the measurement of capacity in our community.

SUPERVISOR CINDY CHAVEZ: Let me just add to points to that. It’s a very good question—will it make people more nervous if we have this information and we make it public? Two things I would say: One is that the public is asking us for that information, and I think partly they want to know how they can help, and so one of the points I want to raise is through the Valley Medical Center Foundation, we’ve received almost five million dollars in cash and people giving us money so we can buy more equipment and supplies. But even more important we’ve gotten help from the Silicon Valley Leadership Group in partnership with our foundation to help us locate places to buy ventilator and other equipment we think is important. And so one thing I would say to all of you who are looking for a way to help is to go to the VMC foundation and go online and make a contribution to them, and if you have PPE at home, if you run a construction company that’s not operating right now, we’re accepting donations as well. So the idea here is we’re going to ask for the public’s help because we’re really in this together.

DAVID CAMPOS: And I will close on that point about what this information should mean to the public. I personally think that its reassuring that if you’re a resident of the county to know that on March 31st there were 936 hospital beds availability .That there were still 92 ICU beds available, that there were still 392 ventilators that were ready to be used incase there was a need. But we also want them to know that these numbers can change on a daily basis, and that we’re not done. We’re going to continue to make sure we increase this capacity, that we find more beds, that we find more ventilators, and that personal protection equipment that has been discussed. Any other questions?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: [Unintelligible]

DAVID CAMPOS: …That were available, exactly. Just as a final point, we have many monolingual speakers in the county and there is an opportunity after this briefing to speak to someone in Spanish, in Vietnamese, in Chinese. So again, thank you for tuning in. and just as a reminder the county is doing daily briefings at 10:00 AM and we will continue to make sure the residents of the county have all that they need. Thank you.