2.24.2021 Press Event COVID Vax Gilroy High School

County of Santa Clara
February 24, 2021
Press Conference: COVID-19 Vaccination Site at Gilroy High School

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Ricardo Romero Morales: good morning everybody and thank you for being here 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 here to announce the opening of a new covenanting vaccination center at the Gilroy High School. Today we're also honored to have the following speakers with us president Mike Wasserman Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, Dr. Debbie Flores, Superintendent for glor, Gilroy Unified High School District, and Tracy Stevens, healthcare center manager for the County of Santa Clara health system 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 be moving to Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese statements from the podium. Without any further ado, it is my honor to introduce President Mike Wasserman.

BOS President Supervisor Mike Wasserman: Good morning, everyone, and thank you very much for being here this is a very, very special occasion. This large-scale vaccination site opening today, right here at Gilroy High School, this is bringing the services that's needed to Santa Clara County, to south county, and to Gilroy in particular on behalf of the county I want to express my huge thanks to our partners at the Gilroy Unified School District, especially Gilroy Superintendent, who will be following me, Dr. Deborah Flores, as well as the national guard, and county health system staff, and volunteers, who are making all this possible.

Gilroy and Morgan Hill have been especially hard-hit by this pandemic. To address this, the county has invested heavily in vaccine access for south county. Vaccinating our community, as quickly and equitably as possible, is the key to healing and returning to some sort of normalcy as soon as possible. We have larger sites like this and smaller no-appointment pop-up sites throughout the community. As you probably heard, frontline workers, including agricultural workers across our county can start getting vaccinated this Sunday, in just five days. Until more people are vaccinated, please double down on your efforts to stay safe, wear your masks, don't gather, and get vaccinated when it's your turn. We are all in this together.

Vaccinations are the key, the key to healing and are returning to normalcy. Please get vaccinated, and i will say to you that if each and every one of you hearing this broadcast has a parent or a grandparent that is of age to get vaccinated, call them up ask if they've been vaccinated. If they haven't, offer to register them online and get them there. 81 percent of the people that have passed in Santa Clara County are 65 years of age and older help our seniors get vaccinated, and with that, I turned things over to superintendent Dr. Flores

Superintendent Dr Flores: Thank you, Supervisor Wasserman. On behalf of the Gilroy Unified School District Board of Education and our staff, I want to thank the County of Santa Clara and the Board of Supervisors for making the decision to house a large-scale vaccination center in in Gilroy. We are very excited to be part of this effort to vaccinate our south county community, especially the residents of Gilroy and the re, the staff of Gilroy Unified. The City of Gilroy has the highest rate per hundred thousand of residents who have tested positive for COVID-19 in the county, 12 percent of our residents have tested positive. With such a high rate of community transmission, making vaccines available to our residents is essential in the fight against COVID-19.

Gilroy High School is a well-known site in, in the south county, with two large gyms, a large parking lot, and it's very accessible. Offering vaccines at a large center, such as Gilroy High in the gyms, will allow the county to vaccinate thousands of people weekly, in fact, I heard a little bit ago, they're hoping to do 2,000 a day, within a few days, which I'm very excited about. I've watched this center develop over the past few weeks, and I've been so impressed with the dedication and hard work of everyone involved in making this vaccine vaccination center a reality. Thanks to all the County staff, the GHS staff, and district staff who have made this happen. They've essentially put many other things aside to make this happen, and I greatly appreciate that. The district's proud to be part of this effort and we're going to continue to support it in any way that we can. I'm hopeful that many of our residents and employees will sign up and schedule an appointment, in the very near future, like today. it's very easy to sign up it takes a few minutes. According to the experts, vaccinating as many people as possible is one of the best strategies for reducing the number of people getting seriously ill or dying from this virus, so please sign up and get vaccinated as soon as possible. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to say a few words, and now I'd like to introduce Tracy Stevens, who's the health center manager for the County of Santa Clara County health system.

Tracy Stevens: Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Tracy Stevens. I'm a health center manager with Santa Clara County Valley Medical Center, and on behalf of the county health system, I'm very happy to be here today to mark the opening of this large-scale vaccination site at Gilroy High School. Overcoming barriers and providing equitable access to vaccine is a top priority for the County of Santa Clara, and this site is a huge step in reaching that goal for our south county community. South county residents know the toll of of COVID-19 all too well. Our communities have faced among the highest infection rates, and we know that the communities of color, in particular, our Latino population, have been have been disproportionately affected. The County remains laser focused on ensuring equity in the in the vaccine rollout and this site will be a critical location as part of our multi-layered strategies to reach communities that are experiencing significant barriers to accessing vaccinations.

The county strategies that also include small, no appointment, or pop-up locations that can move around our neighborhoods, apartment complexes, agricultural businesses, and other locations in need of vaccine access. Every day we have outreach workers in the community to inform our residents about the vaccines when they will become eligible and helping them schedule appointments or learn about our pop-in locations.

On Sunday the 27th vaccine appointments will be opened up to include front-line workers from the state's phase 1b, which includes workers in education and child care, emergency services, food, and agriculture. Many of these workers have been on the front line for the past year, risking exposure to COVID, to put food on our tables protect our health and safety, and to care for our children. We are thrilled that this vaccine site will be providing them, and our residents over 65 with an accessible location that will have the capacity to quickly vaccinate our community members. At this point, I want to take time and take this opportunity to thank the staff and the volunteers who are working day and night to support our vaccine operations and make this vaccination site possible, including our county health system, the national guard, and our partners at Gilroy Unified. Please remember, as we wait for the vaccine, vaccinate, vaccination to roll out to our community, please continue to wear your mask, maintain social distance, get tested regularly, and get your vaccination when it's your turn. To learn more or to sign up for an appointment, when it's your turn visit sccFREEvax.org, that's s-c-c-f-r-e-e-v-a-x.org. Thank you very much. Dr tong? No?

Roger Ross: well now open up for questions. we also have the ability to have questions asked to Dr. Tong, through so, Dr. Jennifer Tong. We'll start with the Gilroy Dispatch.

Media question on the duration of vaccine site.

Dr. Jennifer Tong: So we don't yet have a definitive endpoint for the duration of the site to be operational, but what I can show you is that it will not uh interfere with students returning to campus, and we will find additional locations if needed to ensure that we're not interfering with any school operations.

Media question for Dr. Tong. The county's goal has always been as Dr. Smith about 15,000 vaccinations a day that's to get basically everybody vaccinated more or less by the middle or end of summer. Where are we now and what more ... ?

Dr. Tong: So at this point, the sites operated by our county health system are up to scheduling almost 10,000 patients per day. We continue to expand further, and I anticipate we will, relatively soon, be able to be up to that number of 15,000 per day simply counting those from our county health systems there are numerous other providers of vaccines in the county, and so the the total number really includes all of us the biggest rate-limiting step is the availability of the the product, the vaccine. We continue to wait on a week-to-week basis for the amount that we are allocated from the state of California, and that is is currently our biggest rate-limiting step.

Media quick follow-up question: it's my understanding that Levi's just doing roughly about 2,000 shots a day? Maybe the same at Berger. Initially, it was promised that Levi's could do 5,000 a day and quickly expand as many as perhaps 15,000. Is it a little frustrating that you've got this big space, this large facility added capacity and vaccines ... ?

Dr. Tong: Well next week, we are prepared to add a second shift of workers at Levi's Stadium, and we're prepared to be open seven days a week there. It is going to be very frustrating for all of us involved, if we end up not being able to leverage um that space and that staff, due to the to the lack of vaccines. It's not a problem unique to us, it's a problem throughout the country as the supply chain continues to catch up with our capacity.

Media question: What is the process gonna be like is it gonna be like a drive-through or are you gonna use one of the buildings is there gonna be uh comfortable coming in?

Dr. Tong: um So if your question is here about Gilroy High School, the site is a park and walk-in site. We have mobility services for people who need assistance getting from their car to getting inside. um It's set up to ensure people are maintaining social distance while they're waiting, and ensure everyone is masked throughout the entire process. We continue to assess if there are safe drive-through options to provide vaccines in that format as well, but at this time this is a park and can come inside site.

Media question: yeah just a question about equity: I know that part of the overall strategy is not to just have a central location to put these vaccination sites in communities that have been disproportionately affected. We've likewise heard about other communities in the outside of the county, where they've had issues with access codes and maybe people sort of improperly jumping the line. How do you make sure that you not only put this vaccination site here but the it ... serves the community?

Dr. Tong: So to summarize the question, um the question is, how do we ensure that this site, in a high-risk community, serves the community that it's intended to serve? We continue to work on multiple strategies multi-faceted strategies at that very complex endeavor, one of those includes an outreach team that has the ability to help people schedule into appointments, particularly those who might be older or lack access to technology, recognizing that it's also difficult to have large numbers of people trying to schedule over the phone, so our outreach teams continue to help people make appointments, and we continue to make sure that there are appointment slots for those outreach teams to utilize.

Ricardo Romero Morales: Great! Thank you. We're going to now move into the Spanish portion of our press conference. [Press statements from the podium in Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Tagalog].