07/07/2020 COVID-19 Press Conference Live Stream Transcript

The County of Santa Clara
July 7, 2020
Live Stream - Press Conference Live stream
11:30am PT

David Campos: Good morning everyone my name is David Campos I'm the co-lead public information officer for the county of Santa Clara's emergency operations center. thank you for making yourselves available for this press availability. I know that it was a last-minute notice. So, we are going to be hearing today from first our public health officer Dr. Sara Cody then that will be followed by our county executive Dr. Jeff Smith and then wrapping it up will be the president of the board of supervisors president Cindy Chavez. we are here today to address the most recent development of today where the state of California the California Department of Department of Public Health approved the County of Santa Clara application for a variance. so, with that let me turn it over to our public health officer

Dr. Sara Cody: thank you again I'm Dr. Sara Cody thank you for being here. this is just a brief announcement to make sure that we all have a shared understanding and are on the same page so last night we submitted our revised variants to the California Department of Public Health and it was approved and is now posted on the website we work closely with the California pub department of public health over the weekend to ensure that we met the metrics and met the criteria and ultimately we were approved what this enables us to do here in our county is to have flexibility so that we can apply for our new risk reduction health officer order with some flexibility. so for example we want to continue to enable outdoor dining and with this variance we can continue to allow outdoor dining as well as some other sectors and activities we can enable them to come online they would not have been able to come online without the variants I want to just talk a little bit about this new order talked about it in previous days but I want to state again the purpose behind the order and that is to shift our thinking to risk reduction thinking we know that this pandemic has been with us for a while we know this pandemic is going to be with us for a while longer and at the end of the day mother nature is in charge and we must adapt so the core principles that underlie our risk reduction order are the following one, outdoors far safer than indoors the evidence is still accumulating but it's getting stronger outdoors safer than indoors two, more distance is better than less distance always maintain a distance of at least six feet more is better number three, briefer contacts safer than longer contacts so if it's a contact that's in passing that's going to be a lot less risky than a contact that's prolonged so what this means is that everywhere we are wherever we go if we're with people outside of our household  as we are now we all must wear face coverings, must wear face coverings. what it also means is that any time that it's a less safe environment such as indoors there is no time that you can remove your face covering. so that pretty much means that we are not going to have indoor dining anytime soon you have to remove your face covering to eat. the last thing that i want to say is  that throughout this pandemic the environment has been changing rapidly around us i can't think of a time when it's felt like we finally figured it out and it's stable and this week and today are no different what we're seeing now is that our cases are rising they're rising more dramatically than they have even last week over the weekend for example we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 450 new cases reported in a two-day period so this new order does not mean that we're open let's get back to our lives what this new order means is we need to do our lives differently we need to conduct ourselves differently we can't we know that we can't be 100 in our homes sheltered all the time but when we go out to engage in business or to engage activity we must do it differently if we don't do it differently our cases will continue to accelerate and we will be in big trouble so we are trying to change behavior right here right now and bend our curve down again and this new risk reduction order is going to give very specific guidelines on exactly how to do that and they're all based on those principles that I discussed. thanks and I'm going to turn it over.

Jeff Smith: hello I'm Jeff Smith I'm the County Executive of the county of Santa Clara. I wanted to emphasize a few points that Dr. Cody was making applying for a variance and grant and getting a variance granted does not mean that the virus is doing better or the disease is doing better.  as a matter of fact, it's doing much worse. the reason that we applied for a variance has to do with the fact that we realize the success of dealing with this virus on a long term really depends on individual responsibility not based on sectors of business that are opened. so rather than having a focus on which businesses are open and having a focus on asking the businesses to enforce uh distancing. this order focuses on personal responsibility. over the last few months, it's become pretty obvious that the real problem with the transmission of this disease has to do with gatherings large gatherings that have happened in memorial day and other time periods.  we just had a lot of large gatherings over this last weekend. that's the problem that we're trying to resolve with personal responsibility. Obviously closing a restaurant doesn't stop somebody from having a large gathering at their home. and the virus is passed through those large gatherings. so no one should get the idea that we're moving in a positive direction with the disease we're going in a negative direction. But there's the recognition by Dr. Cody that we need to take a different perspective rather than focusing on business sectors we need to focus on personal responsibility. so stay distant stay outside wash your hands don't contact people that you don't have to make sure if you're sick you stay inside and isolate yourself. now I will turn it over to the president of the board of supervisors Cindy Chavez.

Cindy Chavez: thank you and I want to thank all of you very much for coming on such short notice when we received the news that were that we were able to get the variance today. one of the things that I realized is that this was another opportunity for us to have a  conversation about this new direction. and one of the points I want to make is that as a reminder all of the businesses in our community that are allowed to be opened need to submit their social distancing protocols to covid19prepared.org before Monday the July 13th. that is really important because as Dr. Smith said while we're very interested in people taking personal responsibility for themselves and the health of their families. we're also interested in making sure that businesses and other places that people are going to be going understand what the rules of the road are in terms of creating a much safer community. I also want to just say thank you to the governor at a statewide level this has been an incredibly challenging issue to be able to manage uh COVID-19 and at a local level, I'm very sorry for the confusion this has all caused I just want to say that this is our first pandemic I hope we don't have another one but we are learning while we're going. you all are very helpful to us because you're creating opportunities for us to have communication with the public and we just want to say thank you for that. um and let me just close with this last thought. what risk reduction means is that all of us are responsible for our health the health of our families and even the health of our community. when we wear masks they don't protect us they protect others and the kind of county I want to live in is one where everybody in our community knows that they have an obligation to protect themselves their families but we also recognize that we're part of a community. so please wear your masks wash your hands often try not to touch your face and to I just want to emphasize the last thing that Dr. Cody said is we need to limit the amount of interactions we have with other people. limit it not eliminate it but limit it. we are in this for the long haul the only way we're going to bend the curve back as a community is if we're protecting each other and our families in a much more disciplined way than we have been.  so thank you for that and I know we'll be available for questions.

DC: thank you president Chavez before we take questions I do want to note that we will have folks that are available to speak in Spanish Vietnamese and Chinese for media from those communities that is present so we'll take a couple of questions. yes sir Public: um is this all going to be voluntary in terms of the mass wearing of the mask or at some point foresee the county and local law enforcement agencies citing people uh who are not in compliance. there's been you know widespread videos of Santana row at dinner time where it's just super crowded very few people wearing masks. do any of you foresee uh some enforcement there? so the question is about whether or not this is going to be voluntary and the question of what they'll be uh citations of folks that are not wearing masks so I'll turn it to Dr. Cody.

SC: So to your question regarding masks two Things one is there is a statewide order for face coverings so that applies across the state including in our county. number two is our orders do require face coverings um within the protocol. so for example, if you're inside in a business part of the social distancing protocol requires that business to ensure that everyone inside the business is wearing a face covering. uh, so that's already it's already there it's already in the law as to how it is enforced how frequently and how easily um that's, of course, more challenging and which brings me to the really important point but this is about every single person in this community taking every single opportunity to prevent the spread of COVID every single time you limit the number of interactions you have with other people you keep a distance you wear a face-covering super important every single one of us needs to think about this every single day with every single interaction and that is the only way we are going to keep each other safe that is the only way we are going to keep headroom to do really important things like get kids back to school that is the only way we are going to get through this long haul and it is going to be a long haul thank you.

Public: I have one quick question that I don't mean to alarm anyone but are we at more risk now than let's say two months ago given the fact that there are more people out there?

SC: we have more cases reported every day right now in early July than we had at any time in April when our cases were accelerating the difference however is that we're much better prepared we have vastly vastly more testing so much greater ability to find people who who are infected we have a vastly improved infrastructure to do case investigation and contact tracing and help people know that they're infectious and safely isolate in their homes our hospital and health care system is also much better prepared but i that's a very important point we do not want to have to use the capacity that we've built in our health care system we want to prevent infections that's that's the the ultimate goal so we're better prepared in our health care system but we really don't want to have to use it we want to keep them open so that anybody else with any other kind of a health concern that requires hospital level care can feel completely comfortable going into the hospital receiving care we want to that's the way it is now and that's how how we would like to keep it

DC: a couple more questions great again we will make ourselves available to do interviews in Spanish Vietnamese and Chinese

Public: Friday or Saturday did the state shut it down and what do you think ultimately

DC: let me just simply say that I think that that there were communications over the weekend and you know we're not going to speculate uh we have had ongoing conversations with the state and we're grateful as president Chavez noted to the governor in the state for working with us to get us to this point thank you very much and again we'll be available for uh monolingual interviews thank you