2.28.21 Press Event Mobile Vax Monterey Mushrooms

County of Santa Clara
February 28, 2021
Press Conference: 1,000 Farm Workers Receive COVID-19 Vaccine at Monterey Mushrooms Facility in Morgan Hill

[Music]

Ricardo Romero Morales: Good morning, everybody. My name is Ricardo Romero Morales. I'm a lead public information officer for the Emergency Operations Center in Santa Clara County. Today, we are gathered here to announce the first mobile vaccination clinic focused on the frontline workers here at Monterey Mushrooms. Today we are honored to be here with the following speakers: Dr. Sara Cody, Health Officer and Director of Public Health for the County of Santa Clara, Dr. Marty Fenstersheib, COVID-19 and Vaccine Health Officer for the County of Santa Clara, Supervisor Cindy Chavez, Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, Bonita Rivera, National Vice President, United Farm Workers, and we have Diana Tellefson Torres, Executive Director of UFW Foundation, Sharhi Sahad an employee at Monterey Mushrooms. We also have Shah Kazemi, CEO of Monterey Mushrooms, and Mayor Rich Constantine from the City of Morgan Hill.

We will begin our press conference in English followed by American Sign Language. we will also have a questions and answer period in where speakers will repeat the questions back in English for the purpose of our Facebook Live audience. After that we will be moving into the Spanish segment and we will also have Spanish speakers. Right after that we'll have statements from the podium in Vietnamese, Chinese, and Tagalog. Without any further ado, it is my honor to introduce Dr. Sara Cody.

Dr. Sara Cody: Good morning. I'm Dr. Sara Cody. It is a real pleasure to be here, at Monterey Mushrooms and to everyone here getting vaccinated. Um Today, marks the first day of the County's expansion to offer vaccines to people who work in critical frontline roles, in food and agriculture, in the education sector, and in emergency services.

And thanks to a wonderful collaboration between the County, United Farm Workers, Monterey Mushrooms, and the United Farm Workers Foundation, we will be able to provide vaccines to approximately 1,000 farm workers this week, through the clinic today, as well another clinic taking place on Wednesday.

Our goal in the County is to make sure that everybody has access to vaccination when they become eligible, and especially those who are working in sectors that have been hardest hit by COVID and who are working in communities that have been hardest hit by COVID, here in our County.

So combined with the mass vaccination clinics that we already have, our community-based clinics, and many many outreach efforts, these mobile vaccination clinics that come to communities, that meet people with and where they work and where they live, this is how we will get ourselves out of this pandemic.

We are hearing more and more each day about these vaccines, they are safe, they are extraordinarily effective, and now have three of them. They give us ah hope. I want to say, "Thank you to all of the organizations that have been, made this possible, and I particularly want to thank the workers, the farmworkers, all the farmworkers, and those who are getting vaccinated today to extend our appreciation for the work that you've done throughout the pandemic for ensuring that we're nourished and that we're fed."

This is a wonderful day! I feel hope um I want to thank everyone, and I just want to say, on a personal note, I'm here today with the original members of my public health family. I um they are all here, and so next,  I want to introduce Dr. Marty Fenstershieb, who has served throughout this pandemic, who has been my mentor and served as the previous Health Officer for the County of Santa Clara, Marty.

Dr. Marty Fenstersheib: Thank you, Dr. Cody. I am so thrilled to be here also. This is just wonderful and this shows you what a community-wide effort can accomplish and we are very happy that we have been able to work with the United Farm Workers and Monterey Mushrooms staff and we're so happy that all the workers could be here today.

We have done an amazing job. I think, as a community, we started vaccinations in late December, here we are about two months later, and we have vaccinated nearly 20 percent of our County. That's quite amazing! We have been able to also to vaccinate and outreach to our seniors, 65 and older, and we are nearing 60 percent of our seniors being vaccinated. That will go a long way at decreasing the number of deaths in our community and our hospitalizations, and it will make it safer for all of us.

We hope that with additional vaccine, which is what we need, we have great capacity. We have lots of clinics. We have providers all over the county. We just need more vaccine and we're hopeful that we will see more vaccine come through the State, from the Federal Government to us, especially now with the third vaccine from Johnson & Johnson being authorized by the FDA. But I do want to remind everyone that as you are waiting for your turn to be vaccinated, to please, continue wear your mask, stay socially distanced, and be very, very cautious about being in large gathering and groups of people, so be safe and be healthy, when your turn comes to be vaccinated, and please get vaccinated when your turn does come. And I want to turn it over to our Supervisor Cindy Chavez who will ad her remarks.

Supervisor Cindy Chavez: I wanted to take just a minute to walk everybody back to when COVID-19 very first struck us, and you'll remember at that time we were worried about shortages of food, and access to grocery stores, and all of that. And one of the things I've highlighted was that the people who were doing the hardest work, picking the fruit, processing in plants, were the most hard-hit by COVID-19 and continue to do so. There was a lot of talk about how we honor our frontline workers, but the best way we can honor our frontline workers is what we're doing today, which is getting them vaccination. That is a celebration that I think is so exciting about today! And I want to acknowledge that one of the challenges we to get deep into our communities, is we need to do place-based vaccination like this, we need to door-to-door, we need to make the phone calls to remind people to sign up, and we gotta get them here for these vaccinations.

One of the best way we can do that is with partnerships. We have many of them. Monterey Mushrooms is an extremely important partner, as being one of the largest union um farmworker employers in the country, which is very exciting to us as at a local level. The United Farm Workers, which have been incredible partners, making sure that people in the fields have the message they need to stay healthy and safe, so it is really my honor here to say that we are honoring farmworkers the way we should which is making sure they're getting vaccinated. With that, it's my great pleasure to introduce one of the leader of the labor movement and the National Vice President for the United Farm Workers, Bonita Rivera.

Bonita Rivera: Hi. My name is Bonita Rivera. I'm one of the national vice presidents of the United Farm Workers um. This is a great start to getting farmworkers vaccinated. Um It's really important that we see farmworkers as essential workers and we treat them that way. Um We need to collectively get the vaccines to farmworkers instead of having farmworkers go and seek them out and this is a great example of a collaboration the works, with the employer, with the union, and the county, prioritizing farmworkers. Thanks to the county, we've been able to prioritize farmworkers. Thank you. Next up is Diana from the UFW Foundation.

Diana Tellefson Torres: Thank you so much and good morning, everyone. First and foremost, I want to say, "Si se puede"! We are finally vaccinating farmworkers in Santa Clara County. It's incredibly exciting!

I'm Diana Tellefson Torres I'm a executive director of the UFW Foundation, also a national vice president of the United Farm Workers Union, and just want to say, Thank you to Shah Kazemi, CEO of Monterey Mushrooms, for having this event here today and on Wednesday. Monterey Mushrooms is hosting vaccination events, not just for employees of Monterey Mushrooms but also for farmworkers from throughout the county. And I must say that Monterey Mushrooms is not only hosting today but they are also showing the example of an exemplary company that treats it's workers with dignity and respect every single day. So I just want to express my gratitude for that. In addition, thank you so much to the County of Santa Clara. I must say that it's exciting to have Supervisor Cindy Chavez here with us today, and we also have Mayor Rich Constantine from the City of Morgan Hill, Council Member Yvonne Martinez Beltran, Thank you so much! Council Member Rebecca Armendariz from Gilroy. We're gonna be in Gilroy soon. Council Member Claudia Rossi, also County Board of Education, thank you all so much for your support of the vaccination of farmworkers. It's important the we make events accessible to workers. The UFW Foundation as a sister of the United Farm Workers Union is working very closely throughout the state with the union to insure that we are helping farmworkers access the events on the ground when the priority status gets triggered in that county. I must say that also until now it's been a challenge to get counties to actually start to trigger the farmworkers as apriority, but Santa Clara County is showing us it needs to be done throughout the state. So I'm so excited that this is happening today. 1,000 workers and it's going to be many more, as we move forward in doing different events throughout the county, including Gilroy and other areas where farmworkers live. I'd like to now introduce someone very important here, the most important speaker in my personal opinion, which is here from Monterey Mushrooms, Sarbjit Sangha!

Sharhi Sahad: Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. My name is Sarbjit Sangha. I've been working with the Monterey Mushrooms, 18 years, so I would like to say thank you to County of Santa Clara Health Department and UFW Foundation and Monterey Mushrooms. Thank you.

[Clapping]

Good morning. My names is Shah Kazemi and I work at Monterey Mushrooms. I can tell you today is the happiest day I have had since last March. Today we are celebrating a significant event, and it's significant in so many ways. The most significant factor is the fact that our teammates and ag workers in the county are getting vaccinated. The second important fact is the recognition that finally, this group of essential workers have received, and I want to express my gratitude to the people who worked hard behind the scenes, the UFW Foundation, UFW , Dr Walter Newman, who's really been championing the cause of vaccinating, and started with the flu vaccine, so this is continuation of what we've been doing for many years and hope to continue to do so. But also I want to express my full gratitude to the County and all of the staff. Thank you very much for leading by example. That's what the other counties, other states need to do because we talk about national security, the food supply is a significant part of national security, and we don't need a disruption in the food supply. And our teammates, the ag workers have risked their lives every day to make sure there is no disruption. So we are glad you are here to celebrate a new beginning and thank you to everybody who came here to get vaccinated and look forward to a brighter future as you go forward. Mayor Constantine.

Mayor Rich Constantine: Thank you very much, and I would like to echo the sentiment of the previous speaker. Um Are appreciation for the county, it cannot be measured in words. Just last week, or earlier this week, the county brought their mobile vaccination clinic to Morgan Hill, again, showing that the county is going to go to the areas hardest hit by this virus. And today, 1,000 farmworkers are going to be inoculated, in the next two days, today and Wednesday. So, again, I wish to show our appreciation for the County and again I wanna highlight that the County is doing everything they can to get to the hardest-hit populations in our county. Thank you very much.

Ricardo Romero Morales: We will now move into Questions and Answers.

Dr. Sara Cody: Good morning.

Media question for Dr. Cody.

Dr. Cody: Today. Well, today, to be honest, I'm just thinking about today. (laughs) I'm just thinking about today and every single person who's been working so hard you know to bring us food and to nourish us over the last year and now has the opportunity to come get vaccinated where they work, that makes me so happy. (laughs) So I actually wanted to be here today for many many reasons and some of them are very personal. I want to see and feel the tremendous hope that we have here today. It's extraordinary and I, I just wanna soak it up. The people that are getting vaccinated today um can begin to breathe more easily um their families can begin to stop worrying so intensely about them and it feels so good. It's really extraordinary, so thank you for asking.

Media question about mobile vaccine unit.

Dr. Cody: Yeah.

Media question continued.

Dr. Cody: Yes, we and by we, I mean that in a very, very large sense, there are so many people and organizations in the "we", and so what we collectively tried to do is to offer vaccinations in many different ways like all, all different ways from mass vaccination, where we can get a lot of people in, because we need to vaccinate as quickly as, as we can and very high touch sort of boutique vaccinations so like mobile pop-ups, so this is our first big mobile pop-up, where we need to come to where people are and reach them and everything in between and so we are doing, "we" collectively, all of us here, and partnership are doing everything we can think of to get people vaccinated, um and roughly in priority order, which is very challenging.

Roger Ross: KCBS.

Media question.

Dr. Cody: Um we will have to say about that on Tuesday. Today is a day about vaccination. I think that we have talked for a year about this horrible, horrible pandemic. We've all had to make extraordinary sacrifices. um We can't let up yet, but having these vaccines and as Dr. Marty said, now we're starting to make progress on a population level. we're starting to make progress starting today in some key communities um and this is day of hope. this is really a day of hope.

Media question.

Dr. Cody: In Santa Clara County, we've tried to everything that we have the power to do to protect our community and it's been really hard. It's been hard for us and it's been hard for everyone. I would still say, I am quite worried about people gathering indoors because that's where we know COVID spreads so what I say to our whole community, if you do choose to gather, attend an indoor gathering, such as church, to please, please, wear a well-fitting mask, please keep your distance from people who aren't in your home. I don't want to, we are, we are you know we are not at the finish line yet. And these, it's so important to keep protecting ourselves and protecting each other.

Media question.

Dr. Cody: I can't speak to that, but yes.

Media question.

Dr. Cody: We've been fighting this pandemic for over a year. Right? We've been trying everything that we can for over a year. I think our community now is quite well educated, understands that this is very complicated. There are many risks and there are many tradeoffs. I hope that everyone in our community continues to play it safe, and that means doing as much you can outside, wearing your mask, and keeping your distance from people that are outside your home. That is the most important thing we can all do until we reach herd immunity.

RR: Final question from KCBS.

Media question.

Dr. Cody: I would say, in general, top-level um it's quite extraordinary that a little over a year in the pandemic we have three safe and effective vaccines to offer. I mean that is amazing! And with that,  I think that as of now in the pandemic, if you're eligible for the vaccine and you're offered a vaccine regardless of which one it is, take it. That's the top-level message. The vaccines are different. The Pfizer and the Moderna vaccine require two doses and they're kind of the same style of vaccines. The new Johnson & Johnson vaccine is single dose, and it's a lot less finicky. You can just keep it in the fridge. So that actually opens up a lot of possibility which is very exciting.

I think the top-level message is we have three safe and effective vaccines and when you're times comes and you're offered, take whatever vaccine you're offered. Yup.

Additional media question.

Dr. Cody: I think that what we need to do is we need to try many different ways to reach communities, such as the Latinx community that really needs the vaccine and will benefit from the vaccine. I think there, there are many barriers, including we need to offer the vaccine when people are not working or taking care of their children. We need to offer the vaccine in partnership with community leaders, and we need to offer the vaccine in many ways, both where people live and where people work, and that's the reason for the design of these mobile pop-ups.

RRM: Thank you, Dr. Cody.

Alright, everybody. That concludes the English portion of the press conference.  We will now be moving into the Spanish portion.

[Press statements from the podium in Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Tagalog].