11.16.2020 Press Event County back to Purple Tier

The County of Santa Clara
November 17, 2020
Live Stream - Press Event: Santa Clara County Moving into State’s Purple Tier
2:45 PM


James Williams: Good afternoon.
(Audio trouble)
Earlier today, at around noon today, the State made some important announcements about the placement of Santa Clara County and many, many other Counties across the State of California, under the State's four-tier color framework. The State has made some adjustments. They've applied what they call their emergency break, given the significant increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations that we are seeing throughout the State of California, and also here in Santa Clara County. And so as a result of that, the State has placed the County in the Purple Tier, which is the most restrictive of the four tiers. I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Sara Cody to talk a little bit about the current situation here related to COVID-19. I will come back and speak at some more length about what the Purple Tier means for Santa Clara County and then turn it over to Supervisor Chavez.

Dr. Cody: Good afternoon, and thank you for being here. I know we were just uh all together at which time I announced that we were likely to move to the Red Tier, and we're adding some additional restrictions, because of our concern about the rapid and steep rise in case counts in our county. As Mr. Williams mentioned, today at noon the State announced that the County of Santa Clara has been placed in the Purple Tier. That's the most restrictive tier. That's the tier that we were in in the early fall. I think it was through the middle of September. Mr. Williams will go through a bit more about what this means.  We've been here before, and we're back there again. But I want to say again, this is happening, the State put this emergency break on because our county, like many counties, is seeing a significant and rapid uptick in cases, so it's not just the number of cases it's about how fast this happened this this rapid surge has been, uh we first noticed it the first few days of November, and it has continued. We are now also concerned, we're beginning to see a rise in COVID positive patients needing hospital care. I could tell you that today we had an additional 388 COVID page, COVIDcases reported to us um our hospitalization numbers are going to be coming in, but every day and over the weekend, they were higher each day, so this is a cause for concern. What I want to leave our community with, is the following, we have done this before, we can do it again. We really need every single person living and working in our county to take this extremely seriously, extremely seriously. We know that this virus can spread silently, and it can jump from person to person, and then show up somewhere like a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care facility, or in someone's home, and someone can get very sick and land in the hospital, and even die. We can all do our part to prevent that from happening and we need to, we, we really do need to. I also just want to say even though it's the holidays, and we all want to be traveling we strongly discourage travel outside of the bay area, strongly discourage travel, both for holiday travel and for any other travel. Travel increases mixing among people from separate households, introduces lots more opportunities for, for transmission, and we simply can't afford that now. Thank you, and I'm going to turn it back over first to back to, you? okay.

JW: So as I mentioned the State, at noon today, uh released its tier placements. It did so a day earlier than normal, so the State's normal cadence has been to announce to your placements on Tuesdays they moved it up, and also moved up the implementation of those tier changes, because one of the things that we know is the faster you act when you have exponential growth like you see with a virus, such as the virus that causes COVID-19, is that the faster you act the more meaningful the impact, the more lives you can save, and the more serious illnesses you can avoid. So the State did move up its announcement. It also acted to look at a more recent snapshot of time. it shortened the lag for the data, which is why we ended up in the purple tier instead of in the red tier, and that's to reflect that really sudden surge in cases that we have been talking about the last few days, that we spoke with you all about on Friday, and that has continued through the weekend and into today. As a result, the purple tear restrictions will take effect tomorrow, here in Santa Clara County. What does that mean? Well, some pieces of this, we actually had talked about on Friday, meaning that for example indoor dining will be closed, but there are other restrictions that come with the purple tear that are beyond the otherwise predicted changes that we had discussed. Among those, indoor gatherings, this includes places of worship, it includes gatherings for all other purposes, including movie theaters, any other place where people are gathering indoors. Indoor gatherings are prohibited in the purple tier again that's one of the riskier activities, which is why that difference between the purple and the red tiers, related to gatherings. In addition capacity limits are stricter in the purple tier, so in the red tier that for retail for general retail capacity was limited to 50 percent, and in the purple tier it's 25 percent, so all retail capacity limit is 25 percent. The other significant change, going into the purple tier versus what we were forecasting which was red, is that gyms and fitness centers cannot operate indoors in the purple tier. There are some other restrictions that come along, as well museums, zoos, aquariums cannot operate indoors in the purple tier. There's some other capacity adjustments, but the biggest categories that I think have the most impact for the most number of people are indoor dining, indoor gatherings, gyms and fitness centers, and the across the board general capacity reduction to 25 percent. And that's again, to reduce the density, the number of people in a space at a given time, because we know that's one of the important factors that contributes to the spread of COVID-19. These are really significant changes. We know that that has a huge effect on businesses in our community, but we also know that it does make a real significant substantial difference in the spread of COVID-19. Why do we know that? Because we have seen how we've been able to push back down, on the curve, two times before in this county. First, when we sheltered in place in March, and Second when we had a number of closures in to knock back the July spike that we saw. We need to come together, and do that again, as a community. We need to come together do that again to avoid the hospitalizations, to avoid the serious illness, and to avoid the deaths, but I'm confident that we can do that, here, even with the surge that we're seeing here in Santa Clara County. We know that we have placed ourselves in, in much better shape than many other parts of the country or other parts of the state, and so we're very confident that our community can come together effectively once again to flatten this curve here locally this one that we're seeing right now, which even though it's very steep, the same tools that we've been using: face coverings, social distancing, following social distance protocols, and de-densifying spaces, and avoiding more risky activities, such as the indoor dining closures and others, will make a very, very significant difference. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Supervisor Cindy Chavez, President of the Board of Supervisors.

JW: um i forgot to mention a little about the impact on schools because i know that's an area of a lot of questions, so i'll talk about that for just a moment. Under the State framework, schools that have not yet opened, cannot open in the purple tier, so once again, schools that have not yet opened, cannot open in the purple tier. Schools that have already opened for in-person instruction, can continue to operate as long as they're following the protocols that the State and that the County has put forward for safer operation of in-person instruction, and schools that are on a phased opening that has already been scheduled and put in place, can continue their phased opening. This is just kind of how we ... the the situation where we were at before um mid-September with schools. We also have the ability for elementary schools to seek waivers to open and operate those are individualized approvals based on individualized safety plans that follow the guidance that has been put together; that's only for elementary schools. And so that process, which we had in place, will once again resume. So again, schools that are already open, can remain open in the state's purple tier. Schools that have not opened, cannot open. Schools that already have a phased plan, can continue with that phased plan. Schools are not ... that have not opened and do not have a current plan, where they are in the active opening, those schools will have to wait under the State framework until we are two weeks out of the purple tier, just like before, so it's the same rules around in-person instruction, at schools that we had in place in August and through early September, and so one of the hopes, of course, is that we can get this curve uh back under control. Get back out of the purple tier, not only so that other sectors can reopen, but also so that those schools that have not yet begun opening for in-person instruction, can be in a position to do so once again. And now I'll turn it over to Supervisor Cindy Chavez President of the Bard of Supervisors.

Supervisor Cindy Chavez: Thank you, James, and thank you, Dr. Cody. um I i just had a couple of messages that I wanted to share; one, is that i know that a lot of people watching this feel exasperated, and if you're a small business owner, this feels personal, and it feels painful, and if you're a family that has your children still doing their homework next to you while you're trying to work, this is stressful. I'm acknowledging all of that because we all as a community want to get from where we are now to getting schools open. And there's a couple of just bright spots, I want to, I just want to acknowledge, one is that we're seeing announcements about vaccines coming online, so we know that there's going to be, you know really that this this will end. In the meantime, and in the meantime this is so critical, the most important thing as a community we can do is help get our children back to school, so we are really asking people, begging you to double down on your efforts to make yourself um safe, your family safe, and do the very best you can to follow what are pretty simple rules relative to wearing your mask, washing your hands, and staying socially distanced. The other thing is, I can't ignore that Thanksgiving is around the corner, and while it's around the corner, it's, it's so hard not to want to see your family members. And I just want to share something personal, and I'm sure this has happened to you; i got a text from one of my family members today, who said, "you know it looks like things are going in the wrong direction" and then the next sentence said. "will we see you for Thanksgiving?" And I I know this feels it feels normal to people because they don't feel like we're a threat to each other, because we know each other, and because we're family. But we really have to do our very best to stay with our households. It's really important. And let me just close with this last point for everybody watching this, if you have not gotten your flu vaccine, you can go to the County of Santa Clara's Fairgrounds at 9:30 on Saturday. Go get your flu shot, because what we don't want is people in the hospital with the flu, and having people who have COVID-19, and worse than that, we don't want any of you getting both the flu and COVID-19. So please, go get those flu shots. Let's act like a community, let's do what we need to do to help as many people get across that finish line, as we can! Thank you.

Roger Ross: And now open up for question answers; please identify yourselves, as you ask, and we'll start with NBC Bay Area.

(Partial question) ... reported today. Is that the highest number reported in one day? And also, can you address, if this surge continues, how are we looking at hospitalizations and capacity?

Dr. Cody: When we get cases reported, they may be from people who have had specimens collected over the past week. This is a high number. I would have to look at our dashboard to tell you whether it's the highest, but it's it's plenty high. The important thing to know is that the case rate, how many cases per population, per day are being identified and reported in our county, that curve is going straight up, that is what concerns us. It's how fast that number is changing, that's the concern. The total number is a concern, but it's how fast it's rising, is the concern. Generally, hospitalizations from COVID tend to lag about two weeks, behind when cases go up. We are starting to see our hospitalizations go up. You can see, you can begin to see that on the county's dashboard.

(Question about hospital capacity)
Dr. Cody: There is you can also see on the dashboard hospital capacity, there is currently hospital capacity. I want to highlight a couple of concerns that make now different than July and different than March; different than March and July, the whole state is experiencing this crush of cases, and indeed the entire country is experiencing this crush of cases. In the past, while we knew that we could rely on asking for help from other jurisdictions, if we needed it, that's not the case now, because everyone is quite busy attending to their own residence, and their own communities.

Mercury News Question: um I know that the county has made particular exceptions or has worked with uh pro-college uh athletics to allow them practice, meanwhile high schools are still on pause for the time being. Are there any changes under the purple tier? or under county guidance, they will come to pro or college students for practicing planning or traveling out of state and returning?

Dr. Cody: The question is about sports high school, collegiate, and professional sports. We are in the thick of discussions to understand how sports play within this new information that we have, as as I mentioned, we did not expect that we would be landing in the purple tier right now. It came, we knew it was likely to come. It came a little faster than we thought, so we've not made any decisions yet. What i can tell you is that of course we're concerned, of course we're concerned.

RR: KPIX question.

KPIX Question: um Is there anything you've seen in the news about the vaccine that gives you some optimism? some reason to give the people hope?

Dr. Cody: The question is about the vaccine. Of course, since the beginning of this pandemic as we've moved through phases from trying to expand testing to contact tracing to every single you know other prevention measures we have always looked forward to the availability of a vaccine. Our role, locally with the vaccine, is mostly about planning and logistics, so that after we get word about who are in the priority groups, which vaccine has been approved, and is available, then it will be our job to distribute it. So my hope is that 2021 will look different than 2020, it will be yet another tool to prevent the spread and get this pandemic under control. RR: San Jose Spotlight.

San Jose Spotlight Question: Hello Dr Cody. How are you? Dr. Cody: Just fine thank you very much. Yes. Spotlight: um i'm wondering what's the because i know that the vaccine, we're closer to the vaccine than we are closer to not being a vaccine. I was wondering what the county's rollout plan is going to be and how you're going to make sure that people of color and the most vulnerable?

Dr. Cody: So the question is again around the vaccine and the County's role. The County's role the, it is a Federal role to decide on the priority groups. There's two different committees that issue a report that decide on the priority groups for the country. There is another group at the state level that will refine those priority groups, make them a little bit more granular and appropriate to California. it is not a county role. We will not have that sort of latitude, to say, "well actually in our County we would rather prioritize this group over that group", our role will be to ensure that when a vaccine is authorized and licensed by the FDA that we get the vaccine out to the priority groups in the priority order. Given the fact that there are a number of vaccines, and each of them have different storage and handling, each of them may be best suited to different groups. Our job will be plenty complicated, and and we are already uh well have planning well underway for whatever scenario may come to pass.

RR: one final question, NBC.

NBC Question: This is the question for James. Can you just elaborate as far as hair salons and nail salons, what this means in the purple tier?

JW: sure so the question was, what does this mean for hair salons and nail salons in the purple tier? Under the state framework, those kinds of personal services are allowed, as long as they follow the state and local guidance on how to be operating, so those are not closed that was a change that the state made when it went into this new four-tier color framework, so that was the change from early August to the end of August, was to allow those in what the state calls the purple tier.

NBC Additional Question: Are they restricted to 25 percent?

JW: they are not restricted to 25 percent, but there are different restrictions that are functionally equivalent, so they have to maintain appropriate spacing, and there, the visitations can be by appointment, um people can't be waiting and congregating inside, so effectively functionally the same kind of de-densification of the space occurs under the guidance that's required to be followed by those businesses.

RR: We'd like to thank you, everyone everyone for coming. We will move on to statements in other languages, beginning with Spanish. If you have additional one-offs, please let us know afterwards, and thank you, everyone.

(Spanish statement, then Vietnamese and followed by Chinese)