09.24.20 COVID-19 Press Conference Live Stream Transcript

The County of Santa Clara
September 23, 2020
Live Stream - Live with the County of Santa Clara
11:00am PT

Betty Duong: Hi everyone hello that we have an echo underneath this structure so we're going to ask that during the press conference everybody keep your voice to the whisper and then we'll get the show on the road what it is here thank you everyone for coming out for your patience so two minutes hey

Betty Duong: Hello and thank you for joining us today three weeks ago the County of Santa Clara in partnership with a coalition of community-based organizations launched the Community Health and Business Engagement Team initiative spearheaded by President Chavez and led by our Public Health Department and the Office of Labor standards enforcement today we're going to tell you more about our work and what that means to the community I just want to let you right now first that not all of our speakers will be keeping their face coverings on we are outside but it's under an awning and there's a lot of people here that's all who's all probably socially distant so we're keeping our face covering on today the Community Health and Business Engagement Team also known as CHBET is an urgent and vital endeavor in our fight against COVID 19. since the launch we have ramped up refined and expanded our operations to meet need where it is in the community in places of work and business and at your front door with proper social distancing the program partners with our community based organizations to reach the most vulnerable communities who have experienced disproportionate race of this virus you'll hear from our county leadership and partners today about what this means to us as a community to our efforts to slow the spread of COVID 19 and what everyone can expect when our teams are in your area there will be time for Q & A at the end followed by media availability with each of our speakers we do have Information Officers here today with language capacity in English Spanish Vietnamese, Mandarin and Tagalog and at this time it is my honor to introduce our next speaker President of the Board of Supervisors Cindy Chavez

Cindy Chavez: Good morning everyone and my mask is a little bit sick in Honor of Ruth Bader Ginsburg for Justice so that's what you're seeing on my face today so first of all let me just say that here in Santa Clara County and across the Country thousands of people are able to ride through COVID and being able to telework and we want to thank them for continuing to act in a safe manner but for many many people in our community they are essential workers they don't have regular jobs and they need to be able to go out into the community what that left us with was an increase in people getting COVID-19 who live in very in areas that need a lot of support from the community examples of that the east side of San Jose and Gilroy even though our teams and I want to say this very sincerely in Santa Clara County we're doing everything we could relative to Social Media getting information out multilingual fashion focusing on the press really engaging all of you to get the word out we still had challenges in these very high need communities because of that myself and my colleagues on the Board of supervisors in collaboration with our Non-profit Partners really started to understand that when you're doing everything and you still don't see the cases dropping you have to do more and you have to do something more innovative and we didn't have to think long and hard about how to do that because we'd already had experience here using a promotoras model to have leaders in the community educate others in the community about what to do with everything from mammographies to when you have a new a newborn and how to be able to support that child so the Board of Supervisors invested a million of actually a million point five in being able to advance this with our non-profit partners to look at new ways to do outreach and recognizing that for many people in our community the very best way to do that is in a socially distanced manner but face-to-face or through a trusted non-profit partner that already knows the family what this has allowed us to do is have our of these leaders distribute face coverings, hand sanitizers, disinfected wipes, door hangers, postcards, magnets, stickers to get the word out so that we can educate people about where to get tested and how to keep themselves and their families safe their job is to dispel myths that become true if they stay out in the world long enough so this is really our opportunity to take our most trusted partners and have them help us help build awareness and help build safety in our communities they're conducting outreach to small businesses in each community and educating them about how to comply with the health orders and connecting them to resource

I want to say a very special thank you to a few of our non-profit partners and while there are many let me start by thanking Working Partnerships USA and The Fair Workplace Collaborative, The Day worker Center of Mountain View, Step Forward Foundation, Filipino Association of Workers and Immigrants, Vietnamese American Roundtable, The Enterprise Foundation and The Latino Business Council of Silicon Valley, The Si Se Puede Collective Somos Mayfair, Amigo State Guadalupe, Braille Family Services, The School of Arts and Culture and Veggielution, The Community Health Partnership, The Roots Clinic Collaborative, The African-American Community Services Agency, Ujima, Unity Care and The Roots Clinic and let me just wrap up by making this observation I had a reporter ask me well where did the idea come from and the truth of the matter is these ideas came from lots of people non-profit leaders community leaders but I want to just say that in the when COVID-19 hit a leader in our community by the name of Ysabel Duron who ran a program that was really focused on making sure we had services for cancer victims who were Spanish speaking reminded me that sometimes as we're moving forward the best thing we can do is look backwards to see what worked and I want to thank these non-profit leaders for bringing their credibility and their skill set in partnership with the very skilled team we have working in our Public Health Department and in our Communications Department and with that it is my great pleasure to introduce Dr. Sara Cody

Dr. Sara Cody: Well thank you all for being here in the heart of the east side on a beautiful day where the sky is actually blue I was driving over and thinking I never thought I would draw so much pleasure and joy from clean air so very grateful for the cleanup we have today and let's enjoy it while it's while it's here um so I just I was just thinking about this Business and Community Engagement Team that has risen out of our need to protect people during COVID but this team and this work is only possible because of the partnerships and trust that we've built over the year over the years working in partnership with community right here we are in front of where a little tiny piece of our Public Health Department now lives part of our Healthy Communities Branch and Public Health Nursing Services and that's because we finally came to the realization that in order to be most helpful to community we needed to live in community and work with communities and so because of those partnerships that we that we built we're able to continue really the public health way of working which is to be in service to community and work alongside community we know that here in East San Jose this community has suffered disproportionately from coven people have lost family members people have lost cherished members of the community and and the rates of infection here have been higher than they have been in other places in our County and we know that members of this community have had to make extraordinarily difficult trade-offs between their health and their work and how they will support and nourish their family and we know that there are many reasons why COVID may be spreading a bit more easily here than in other communities but the question is why? and what can we do to help what can we do to help protect people so the work that all of our partners and most many of whom are here today are doing is really critical to helping all of us better understand the why and what we can do and it ranges from everything to getting information from trusted leaders to having access to testing where and when you need it as well as to having access to resources that you need to protect yourself and your family like Child care or Groceries or help paying the Rent so we're supporting the County is providing financial support and partnering with community organizations to enable community leaders to do what they know is best for their own communities so we are really pleased to say that the rates of infection here in this community on the east side are decreasing over the last month quite dramatically but the positivity rates here are also declining which is fantastic and that's really a testament to all of you and all of the community leaders and the work and commitment and just sheer grit that everyone has had over the last several months so I just wanted to close by saying that we are committed to continuing to work with community and we thank you deeply for your trust in us and allowing us to work alongside you to best protect thank you so much and I think I'm now going to send it back over to David Campos

David Campos: Thank you very much Dr. Cody thank you President Cindy Chavez I'm going to say a few words in Spanish but before I do that let me just say a couple of things first of all my name is David Campos I am a Deputy County Executive and proud to serve as a co-lead Public Information Officer for the Emergency Operations Center our County Executive Jeff Smith Dr. Jeff Smith could not be here but he wanted to send a very clear message that we're very proud of the actions taken by our board to invest more than a million dollars to make sure that the hardest hit communities the hardest hit by COVID-19 that they have all the tools they need to protect themselves as a County we are proud of that investment uh and we know that it's not just about telling people uh what we think they should do but actually having people from these communities being a part of that conversation that that means a great deal to these communities when you have community-based organizations and community leaders speaking to them so to them on behalf of Jeff Smith thank you very much for partnering with the County uh and we are proud to see the numbers drop as Dr. Cody noted um is is

Betty Duong: Hi everyone at this time we're going to start inviting our community partners to the mic to tell more about their work and what our community members can expect to see when our teams come into the community so first up we're going to have our Business Engagement Team Community Partners um and the business engagement team you know and the plan for outreach there was created on a community engagement framework that was already in place with the office of labor standard enforcement and the fair workplace collaborative a coalition of seven community-based organizations specializing in Small Business Education Outreach so at this time I like to invite Maria Noel Fernandez of Working Partnerships USA to come to the to come to the podium

Maria Noel Fernandez: Good morning again I'm Maria Noel Fernandez with Working Partnerships USA and I'd like to first say thank you to the County of Santa Clara for their leadership and partnership I'm proud to be joined by members of our community Health Business Engagement Team who have been on the ground in our communities working day in and day out at Small Businesses across the County of Santa Clara to keep workers and customers as safe and healthy as possible now whether you're a restaurant owner a grocery store, nail salon owner worker or a customer we all share a same interest we all want to know what we can do to keep ourselves and others safe in this moment and that's exactly what our team has been doing every single day we have a team who some of them are here with us today we have a team of 24 community outreach workers in various languages knocking on small business doors to ensure businesses understand the public health order educate and explain what roles and responsibilities they have and ensure workers know what resources are available to them we are here to serve our communities we're here to provide tools and ensure businesses can continue to reopen safely protect its workers and protect its customers we believe in a full and fair recovery from this pandemic really is only possible if it includes all of us and ensuring our small businesses have the education necessary on their role as employers and responsibilities to its workers and customers is critical to all of our well-being we are proud to partner on this and we have one message for businesses and workers that see us at their doors we are here to help we are here for you and I want to turn it over to one of our outreach team members to share what to expect you can already see her beautiful shirt her bag she's got tons of materials in her bag and she's going to show you so you know when she's at your door what to expect

Madison Beckett: Hello everyone my name Madison Beckett I'm part is that team uh so we are here to help businesses um and their workers um I currently resided in San Jose for the past five years what got me to this position uh was the opportunity to work closely with our community and helping people stay safe so in order for us to get a and you know uh into the new normal um it's very important for us to be able to help businesses in our community understand what the Public Health Order is and so um what we help them with is how to submit uh and follow the social business and protocol uh what to do when an employee does test positive for COVID-19 provide information about resources that are available to them including pre-COVID-19 testing so we do carry around these bags we do have IDs that show our pictures on them as well so that's something to expect when we are out there in the field when we do approach these businesses um our goal is just to educate provide resources and see if they have questions or any safety concerns uh regarding anything that we go over um it's very rewarding when we're out there to to see employees taking advantage of these resources that we give them how convenient uh testing is that it's free that there's pop-up sites they don't need Health Insurance for some of them they can walk in they don't have to make an appointment and so those are things that people really like to see uh we like to um see how they're impacted um and how they can they feel really relieved being able to talk to somebody about what they don't have they need more resources um we provide people with um floor marketing that's those are things that we carry around in our beds with us we carry mass for those who may not have it we provide funding alternatives because a lot of businesses are impacted by what's going on and we'd like to follow up with a lot of these differences to see if they reach the resources uh we are there for you and we look forward to seeing you all

BD: Thank you so much so that was our Partners and Community to really outreach to businesses and workers we do have a parallel operation that works in conjunction under the CHBET Banner that specializes in Community Outreach Residential Outreach these are the folks in your neighborhoods on your blog these are led by this is this effort led by Community-based Organizations that are going to be very familiar to everyone watching today they have been around for a very long time doing this work for a very long time as a part of their course of values and serving community and this is really built on a promotoras model that's been a long-standing tradition of the Public Health Department and which continues to flourish under the leadership of Dr. Sara Cody so we are very proud of these efforts and are very honored to have our Community Partners with us today our first speaker um representing our Community Engagement Outreach Initiative is Cynthia Colmenares she is from Veggielution and represents the Si Se Puede Collective today she'll tell you more about the operation

Cynthia Colmenares: Hi good morning my name is Cynthia Colmenares and I'm an integral fellow with Veggielution and I'm also a Community Health Warrior with the Si Se Puede Collective the collective is made up for up to five place-based organizations all of their non-profits Amigos De Guadalupe great family services the school of arts and culture as a Mexican Heritage Plaza and by Veggielution my personal story is it's something that I want to share with you during our promoter training one of the community leaders shared a story of how friend of hair tested positive for hobbies but without symptoms she thought that she could go back to work she was giving information but she wasn't sure until she heard from these community leaders that she knew and trusted her so she needed to start home she realized that all the responsibilities she had in her hands so now she took action she stayed at home stayed and tried to save save older people we were solutions that cause the community and our life experience to help each other to help our community with kindness and compassion this work is essential for the health and safety for our community according to the Santa Clara County COVID 19 Testing Officer East San Jose and portions of South San Jose had the highest possibility positivity testing positivity testing positive rates have been dropping slowly but said inside residents may disproportionately infected with coronavirus the system collective has put our team of training promoters or we like to call ourselves together our five organizations work in concept and active networks to ensure our strategies approach an extensive effort and rooted in a community where resilient families have confidence and trust we are honored to work with Santa Clara County and the Public Health Department the work that we have doing has collected together is about saving lives this work is about bringing our five organizations together with the support of the Country and the Counties to make sure our community gets the resources they need because they are essential and the vibrancy of this Country so I'm really blessed to be part of this program get rid of COVID in Santa Clara County thank you

BD: another distinctive aspect of our Community Health and Business Engagement Team initiative is our presence in our community clinics so our outreach workers are also in the community clinic leveraging the trusted relationship and the long-term traditions of service to our community so today we have Julia Barba Deputy Director of Community Program for the Community Health Partnership to share more about that

Julia Barba: Good morning members are friends thank you for being here today to learn more about this important work happening in our county my name is Julia Barba I'm presenting the Community Health Partnership an association of 10 Community Health Centers throughout the County most of which are located in the zip codes with the highest rate of COVID 19 with support from the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors we have created a program get out of test that places staff and community health workers in our clinics and in strategic disposal throughout the County for free purposes was to educate community members and patients regarding social distancing the importance of wearing face masks and frequent hand washing to reduce the transmission of COVID19. two to answer questions regarding the importance of questions what it means to be quarantine and isolated and referrals to community resources and ultimately to encourage everyone to get out of tests as a result since the inception of this program nearly seven weeks ago our community Health Centers have tested over 3 000 individuals have educated over 25 400 community members and have reached over 390 000 over radio television and social media our Community Health Centers continue to play a major role in reducing the rate of COVID19 through this program it is only through the linguistically and culturally sensitive community-based approaches such as the west highlighted here today that you will be able to reduce the rate of COVID19 in our County's heart of citizens I would like to invite you to continue to join us in the get out and test campaign by calling 408-579-6020 today also I have with me Lupe, our COVID 19 Health Educator and she's available also to answer questions and provide additional information thank you

BD: our last speaker is not least Milan Balinton Executive Director of the African-American Community Services Agency to speak on their efforts to address the disproportionate impact of COVID19 and African-American and African-American Communities

Milan Balinton: Hello everybody my name is Milan Balinton, I am the Director of the African-American Community Service Agency and I'm speaking today on behalf of Alma Burrell who is the Associate Director of Roots Community Health Clinic as well as Yvonne Maxwell of Ujima Adult and Family Services and André Chapman of Unity Care our collective is working together to empower and educate and provide EPE to the African American African Ancestry and Black Communities in Santa Clara County the question that we have to ask ourselves is are we going to allow a virus which we cannot see with our natural eyes when or are we going to beat the virus together as a people we side with the people and we are in the community passing out mask, glove, hand sanitizer and love as well we are making sure that we check on our senior citizens in our communities that are currently isolated we have several community workers on college campuses at San Jose state University and Santa Clara University we are also partnering with the Historically Black Fraternity Sororities which I am a member of we are utilizing our resources many will say well the African-American Community is less than three percent of the population that's still a lot of people and we know that the African-American Community and the Black Community is showing high statistical rates on getting this vibrant design from us so we need to pay attention we need to invest and therefore we thank the talented staff player for being a leader in making sure that fulfilling your behavior making sure that all of us have community non-profits work together so we are doing the work you can come down to the AASCS any day between our working hours and sometimes are not working out to get what you need so you can survive this virus and we can move on together

BD: Thank you everyone that concludes the presentation portion of our press conference today my name is Betty Duong, I'm a Lead Public Information Officer with the County of Santa Clara who would now move into Q and A oh yes and then like one more with um David Campos please

David Campos: we wanted to take this opportunity as you can see I'm wearing my Census 2020 face covering and you can see here Monica Tong who actually has been along with Nick Kuwada and Miguel Santiago spearheading the Census Outreach so you can see our Census workers will be wearing this t-shirt uh and we have about seven days left in the Census and the response rate in some parts of the County like East San Jose, South County is not as high as it could be so we have about a week to make sure that everyone who hasn't responded to the Census response and we are again you know proud and thankful to President Chavez we spearheaded the effort to add more resources to that effort so if you haven't filled out the Census make sure you do and make sure that you talk to every family member every one of your neighbors to make sure that they do fill out the Census thank you very much

BD: Thank you David thank you Monica um so yes COVID19. Community Health Engagement senses Flu shots and don't forget to Register to Vote now we're going to open up for questions and answers oh here we go

Questioner: yeah with so many small businesses having a hard time even staying in business what role does health have in keeping a business afloat is it a choice that some business owners have to make between staying in business and maybe starting some of the health laws and wouldn't tell people about that

BD: okay so let me try some the question was what so many businesses struggling to stay open or stay afloat during this time um how do we address businesses that have to make the decision point between staying in business and also possibly starting some of the rules or laws because it's just this is really overwhelming for them right now um I can help answer that and see Maria know well she's still in the audience if she wants to ask anything but you know that's exactly the scenario that you just presented is exactly the reason why we have a Business Engagement Team we want to be able to facilitate compliance in a way that is proactive that is easy you know our directives are carefully designed in place to balance these priorities but the part but with the main goal of making sure that all workers business owners and customers are safe going into the business because life must go on this is going to be how we keep it going making sure that everyone is in compliance following the same protocol to protect their health the workers that they interact with and the families and communities that they come home to so we come out on site to provide education we do not find we do not penalize this team does not do any of that if they observe a potential violation they will not report it they will address it with the business owner take an education first approach and figure out what resources can i bring back here next time to help you comply and continue operating safely this is a mission to keep businesses open to keep our communities safe um you're welcome to do that

Maria Noel Fernandez: just to say that what we're hearing from our outreach workers every single day that time and time again businesses want this information businesses want to work with our outreach workers are opening their doors and are welcoming this information so that they can continue to get back to work and do it in a safe way and so the Business Team is working very closely with all these small business owners and we want to continue to see this incredible partnership with folks on the ground

BD: thank you the next question we were that good oh yes right here um of course

Questioner: okay uh the question is um why hasn't Santa Clara County allowed indoor dining yet and when do we expect for that to change

BD: the question is why is this because not everyone in the uh the question is um why has Santa Clara County not allow indoor dining yet and what has to change yeah yes okay

Dr. Cody: thank you so the question is around indoor dining so as you know the County is now in the red tier the state framework would allow indoor dining the state framework is a floor for Counties and then Counties may make their own judgment about their own communities and determine what's safe i just will note that in the Bay area uh San Francisco Santa Clara and Alameda Counties uh have all decided to just pause on indoor dining and I'll explain why um when you're dining indoors you have to take off your face covering and what we're what we're learning more and more is that COVID is spread you know a little bit by touching things but that's not the main way we're mostly concerned about spread through the air by by either droplets that you could see or finer droplets that might walk in the air so the importance of face coverings that they're all wearing now is critical and you just can't dine with the face covering on so any activity that's indoors that requires you to remove your face covering we're just not comfortable with that yet I want to say that we we are starting to make progress again we've had a little bit of a scary summer but our rates are coming down we just need to be patient we just need to be patient we've got to get sort of the level of virus in the community particularly in places like here on the East side and the South County as low as we can before we start beginning again those activities that are riskier so that's fine

Dr. Cody: another reason that we are it's really loud another reason that we're really focusing on business is we need to help ensure that businesses are safe we want them both to be safe and for the community to be and feel safe when they come and access services and so to a large extent I think that these these two things go together the safer the business is for the community and for the workers the better and more successful the business will be there's a lot about COVID uh this this new virus that we can't control but there is a lot that is within our control and so i think we need to remain humble we need to continue to learn we need to change course when we learn something new and we need to share that information and that's what this whole initiative is all about to share the information that we have and to answer the questions of people that we have to assist all of us in being safer and healthier as we could be

Questioner: one more question obviously in the middle of the pandemics i wanted to ask you a little bit about the wildfires and the air quality and the smoke there's a new study out by Stanford saying that because of the air quality it has contributed to the deaths of between a thousand to three thousand people who had underlying health conditions like respiratory issues uh because of inhaling that soap can you comment at all about that study about those numbers whether that sounds accurate to you maybe about the poor air quality effects

Dr. Cody: um I can't comment on that study because I haven't read it really but I will as it sounds and sounds very interesting but what i can tell you is that ironically i think that with the heat and the very poor air quality more people were likely staying indoors and away from others so we've been seeing these declines in our case rates we're to be honest not exactly sure why we're delighted but we don't quite know why i think it's many many many reasons and one of those reasons may be that the extraordinarily poor air quality just kept people inside and by it and that that may have helped just settle down transmission

BD: thank you Dr. Cody thank you everyone for joining us today at this time we're going to end the press conference all of our speakers are available for media one-on-one interviews and we also have our PIO Representatives who are language accessible in Spanish, Vietnamese Mandarin and Tagalog today for Multilingual Ethic Media thank you so much be safe and be well don't forget to Register to Vote and fill out your Census you