1.29.20 DRAFT Press Event

DRAFT County of Santa Clara
January 29, 2021
Press Conference: Santa Clara County

[Music]

all right good afternoon my name is ricardo romero morales i'm a lead public information officer with the county of santa clara emergency operations center thank you for joining us for today's press conference today we'll be providing an update regarding the distribution of kubernetes vaccines through our community this weekend also marks the one year anniversary of the first confirmed case of cover 19 in santa clara county as well as the unfortunate milestone of passing 100 000 cumulative cases in our community today we're honored to have the following speakers with us dr marty fenserscheife covet 19 testing and vaccine officer for the county of santa clara and dr jennifer tong associate chief medical officer for santa clara valley medical center we will begin in english and american sign language portion of the of the press conference followed by questions and answered period our speakers will repeat the questions before answering for the benefit of our facebook live audience following the conclusion of english and asl portion we will move to statements from the podium in spanish vietnamese chinese and tagalog with that i am now honored and pleased to introduce dr marty festerchev

thank you ricardo good afternoon everyone well it's been one year since our first confirmed case of cobid in santa clara county and one year later we are now surpassing a hundred thousand cumulative cases it's quite a milestone which none of us i think ever wanted to see we've also reached a milestone of over 1 300 deaths and more importantly to note is more than 80 percent of the deaths are in persons over 65 years of age we're here today to provide the community with some updates regarding distribution and the eligibility for covet 19 vaccines in santa clara county and it's really important to realize that getting these vaccines safely into the arms of our community equitably and efficiently as possible is really our absolute top priority and a key step in ending our pandemic in santa clara county we're really proud of the health care providers across the county that have really rallied and collectively have provided at least one dose of vaccine to more than 28 percent or one in four county residents who are over 75 years of age and again as i mentioned with the high mortality in the senior citizens getting the vaccine into the arms of their seniors in this community will go a long way in preventing further deaths and hospitalizations in addition we have reached over 8 percent of all county residents who are 16 years of age or older with at least one dose and that that will be increased as we move forward and get more vaccine of course there are certainly challenges that we've had to follow and have faced but we have a really massive and efficient vaccine delivery system in our community the infrastructure is poised to deliver as much vaccine as we received through many different sites across the county the more vaccine that we receive into the county the more persons we can vaccinate so providers across the county have vaccinated about 6 600 persons every day and that's gone as high as 7 500 vaccines a day and we have appointments in the next seven days to vaccinate over 60 000 persons again in the next seven days the majority of the vaccines are being done by the county health system but the bottom line is the bottom line is we have the ability to give the vaccines what we don't have are enough vaccines provided to us again equity remains our focus we are deeply committed to ensuring that our communities that are hardest hit and are most impacted by the pandemic have the information and the resources they need to accept getting vaccinated and to access the vaccines that we do have we have multiple strategies to ensure the equity and much work remains to be done partnering partnering partnering with closely with our community leaders our community organizations and and the clinics we are really pleased to have the support of the gardner clinic as well as the other community clinics especially at the mexican heritage plaza where trusted community partners have been providing vaccine to the community of east san jose yesterday they were able to provide 450 vaccinations purely to the community and so we want to over the next several weeks to ramp up that capacity at the mexican heritage and increase the ability to provide more vaccines to the community with that i'm going to introduce dr jennifer tom

good afternoon i'm dr jennifer tong associate chief medical officer for santa clara valley medical center as a community santa clara county is leading the way in vaccinating our residents even though challenges remain with the supply of vaccines our county health system and our other partners have risen to the occasion along with the other healthcare providers in our county to create an infrastructure that is strong and continuing to grow

this week our county health system expanded eligibility to include all residents who are 65 years of age and older we continue to have a capacity that exceeds 6 000 appointments per day we are working to ensure equity and access to vaccine for all in our in our community some specific actions that we've undertaken to support equity to the most at risk populations include vaccination sign up fairs to help those with limited access to technology be able to obtain appointments partnering with the cities in our county and organizations serving seniors to assist with vaccine appointment sign-ups a vaccine phone bank in partnership with telemundo and nbc occurred earlier this week to answer community members questions about the vaccine and next week we will be expanding further our ability to schedule vaccines via phone i'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the many people on the ground who are helping to serve our community by participating in this massive effort to make vaccinations available this brings an entirely new level of public service beyond what any of us have experienced before they this week have been through power outages they have been through hours in the cold rain helping to direct folks to the right place they've helped manage the emotions of those who are hopeful but not yet eligible to receive a vaccine if you are at a vaccine site or if you know some of these uh staff members please thank them for their incredible service for the duration of this pandemic our system and our county as a whole we stand strong with an infrastructure that is ready to further expand our capacity however we need more vaccine available to us to best serve our community with that increased capacity with that i will turn it over to roger ross for our q a session

we'll now begin with questions in english we'll start with kpix

thank you

again the question is you know we've gone through a lot this year we have 1300 deaths could we have prevented them you know that i think that this county we should look at what we have done and the fact that we were the first county really to have a stay-at-home shelter-in-place order most likely prevented a lot more deaths and a lot more hospitalizations in this community could we have done better of course every community could do better but again the idea is that we have the information we have the knowledge um so that our community can respond and be safe and protect one another and now with vaccinations hopefully we will see an end to this pandemic soon as well as we move forward but again i think it's really important that you brought that up that we continue to wear our masks and to social distance and to stay out of crowds and not travel and we as we do this as we move along we can prevent any further deaths in our community

good morning

yeah it's been looking at that number it's every one the thing that it strikes me in looking at that number it's it's very i'm very sad every one of those people it's not a number that represents a person it could be your your parent your brother your sister your mother your father and so every one of those is important to remember and to know that as a community we are working very hard to try to keep from getting any additional cases to try to protect ourselves and that everybody in our community needs to work toward that effort and to remember that those hundred thousand represent the community members that have fallen to this pandemic and to this disease and that we should all do all that we can to keep from seeing additional cases and deaths in our community

is

yeah balancing the issues of the public health versus the business i mean there's no question that the toll is taken not only on people's health and lives the ability to meet with your family and your loved ones but also to be able to provide for your family it's certainly been a very difficult balance we certainly know that we need to keep people safe and healthy and in once in doing that we can all come back open up our businesses and be a more um healthy community as we move forward but i think it's a dif it has been a difficult balance and a challenge to all of us

yeah we we established a goal again um hoping that we could get enough vaccine and um that would require us to basically to give anywhere from 13 to 15 000 doses per day seven days a week and then by doing that by august sometime in august or the summer we should get everyone vaccinated that's still a goal i think the government the federal government is doing its best also and we're confident and hopeful that we'll get enough vaccine we will basically need twice the amount of vaccine that we have now if if we don't get the vaccine it's going to take us longer and people are going to have to wait longer however on the other hand if we get more vaccine that starts to roll out and additional manufacturers come out with approved vaccines we might be able to beat that goal and come up even you faster

as dr tong has said the county has done an amazing job in getting out the vaccines um increasing capacity up to five to six thousand doses a day i reported that we're seeing on average about 6 600 a day so you can do the math and see that the county system is bearing the brunt of providing most of the vaccine however it is an issue of how much vaccine we've gotten and the other systems are also awaiting more vaccines in the future so that they can also ramp up so that's it's mainly been a uh the county that's providing the bulk of the

vaccines and yesterday

again how important it is for us working with our community partners and the resilience within the community i mean we are just thrilled to be able to work with our community we have a stakeholder group of over 150 people made up of all all aspects of our community but we really really want to make sure that we focus on the hardest impacted communities in the east side especially the latinx community south county also and it's amazing we have people on the ground there's certainly we know there's some vaccine hesitancy in many of these communities of people who need more information in order to be comfortable getting a vaccine and trust the people within their own communities so that's why it's important to work with those communities community partnership gardner the community clinics in establishing credible information coming out and encouraging people to be vaccinated especially those at highest risk

oh yes i think in typical times uh health care is already very difficult we are already um facing you know challenging uh life-and-death scenarios um stressful situations uh high capacity even at baseline before the pandemic so this pandemic has added um uh significant work stress uh and increased demands on our healthcare systems and our healthcare workers i am continually impressed by the perseverance and the resilience of our healthcare workers throughout the county but i interact most directly with those in our county healthcare system they are being asked to to um take on roles that are different than their typical roles we continue to um try to provide patients with the service that they need um recognizing that during the pandemic some of that has been disrupted so as we expand our vaccine capacity we continue to leverage entities like clinical volunteers who've been vetted and onboarded so that we can get some of our own health care worker workforce back into the typical settings to provide that ongoing patient care which which continues to be so important for people's health

thank you we will now move into the spanish portion of the press conference.

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