05.18.20 Press Conference Live Stream Transcript

The County of Santa Clara
May 18, 2020
Live with the County of Santa Clara - Press Conference
1 pm PT


James Williams: Good afternoon, my name is James Williams. I’m the County Counsel for the County of Santa Clara. Thank you all for attending. We have some important announcements that we want to share regarding our next steps in dealing with COVID-19 here in Santa Clara County.

I want to introduce Dr. Sara Cody, our Public Health Officer. Supervisor Cindy Chavez, President of the Board of Supervisors. I want to also acknowledge the rest of our Board of Supervisors: Supervisor Dave Cortese, , Joe Simitian, Mike Wasserman, Susan Ellenberg, who are practicing social distancing but I know are watching and have been participating.

Dr. Cody will be talking this afternoon about modifications to our local Health Officers’ Shelter-in-Place Order based on our local data and progress on the COVID-19 indicators that the Bay Area Health Officers have developed jointly.

I will then, after she speaks, talk about the changes in the order itself, as well as some very important updates regarding the Social Distancing Protocol that all businesses are required to post and implement in order to be open and operating. And that has become really an important linchpin as we move forward into these new stages of reopening. And I will turn it over to Dr. Sara Cody.

Sara Cody: Thank you. It’s nice to be here with you all again. This afternoon, I want to share where we are locally in the COVID-19 pandemic and the next steps that we can safely take together.

To begin, I want to thank everyone for their collective work over the past two months. This pandemic has left no one untouched. COVID-19 and the measures we’ve taken to prevent the spread have profoundly disrupted the lives of every single member of our community. However, our collective effort has significantly reduced the spread in our county and we now have a little bit of headroom to cautiously take another step forward.

As you’ll recall, our current Shelter-in-Place Order was revised on May 4th, and enabled construction, outdoor businesses, and some outdoor recreation to resume. Over the past two weeks, we’ve carefully followed trends in new cases and hospitalizations, indicators that measure hospital capacity, as well as indicators measuring testing and case and contact infrastructure.

So remember, two weeks represents the longest likely incubation period of COVID-19, and we needed to see what effect the loosening of the order on May 4th would have, So today is the day we hit that two-week mark, and I’m pleased to say that we have been making progress and sustained that progress while this additional activity came online. And again, this progress is the result of a massive collective effort by everyone from communities across our county.

So some important signs of progress on our indicators that I wanted to share with you: The number of new cases in our county is stable and has been decreasing, significantly reducing the doubling time for new cases. Remember that Santa Clara County started with more cases than any county in the state. And as of now, we have just 3% of the cases and 4% of the deaths statewide. The number of patients requiring hospitalization for COVID-19 has been consistently trending down. Hospitals have capacity in acute care beds and ICU beds. Our hospitals are staffed, safe, and able to take care of all patients for any need. And finally, our testing capacity has also increased.

While we’re still less than halfway towards our goal of 4,000 tests per day, I do want to highlight an important data point. And that is that we started with a positivity rate of 9% in early April and that was when we had less than 600 tests per day. And now on recent days, we’ve had around 1600 tests per day, and our positivity rate is trending around 1 to 1 and a half percent. That is a very significant improvement for us and our county.

So with this progress, we can now safely take another step forward in gradually reopening. We continue to work in close collaboration with other Bay Area jurisdictions and with the state. So the state is setting parameters for reopening in all counties and our local progress allows us to move into early phase two in the state’s reopening guidance. The order issued today will enable curbside retail and associated manufacturing and logistics to reopen on Friday. To do this safely and preserve the progress we’ve made, we’ve developed detailed social distancing guidance for these as well as all other open businesses. This is to ensure that the workplace is safe and that the patrons are safe. Not just that they feel safe but that they are safe.

So we each have important roles to play in ensuring that we continue to suppress the spread of COVID-19 to the lowest level possible as we gradually reopen. We’re asking everyone in our community to do these three things: One, wear a face covering when in public and when in any business. Two, continue to practice social distancing, and remember, six feet is a minimum, that’s a minimum, and more is always better. And three, get tested. Get tested if you have symptoms, if you have contact with someone who is known to have COVID-19, or if you work in a setting where you have frequent exposure to the virus, or maybe unknowingly putting others at risk if you may be asymptomatic with the virus.

As a community, we must ensure testing is available and accessible to everyone who needs it. We will keep monitoring the pandemic locally and tamp down any outbreaks that may crop up, and we will continue to massively scale case finding and contact investigation to stay ahead of any increase we may see as a result of this gradual reopening.

So together we will continue to reduce transmission to prevent disease, to prevent death, but by proceeding cautiously and safely, we will increase consumer confidence, improve resilience, and ultimately, we will recover.

Thank you so much for all of your help.

Williams: As Dr. Cody noted, the updated order will allow for curbside outdoor retail pickup, manufacturing and logistics that support that retail, and this is consistent with the early stage two reopening from the state’s resilience roadmap.

In Santa Clara County, this new order places a density limit on employees working in these facilities at any given time. Capping it at 1 per 300 gross square feet for the entire facility. The new order will also allow for certain activities to resume, including car parades, outdoor museums, outdoor historical sites, and publicly accessible gardens.

But I also want to emphasize a significant change for all businesses, which are the updated requirements around the Social Distancing Protocol. Our local orders have since March 31st, required open businesses to have a Social Distancing Protocol. And we have updated that protocol with a new COVID-19 Prepared sign and a Visitor Information Sheet to be posted so that people coming into the facility can easily see that the business is compliant to protect the community. We want people to know—here’s the new COVID Prepared sign, and we’ve got the Visitor Information sheet, in addition to an updated and revised protocol.

We really want people to know what the business has done to be compliant with these protocols so that folks feel safe and are safe in entering those facilities, conducting business, and that employees are safe working there. It includes requirements around training, sanitation, safety, social distancing, and our collective adherence to these protocols, which also incorporates some of the requirements from the state’s site-specific safety plan, is really essential as we begin these stages of greater and greater opening as a community so that we can continue to effectively contain COVID-19.

This new protocol is really absolutely critical to our success and we want people to collectively be attentive to it, for businesses to take it very, very seriously, for people the take the time to implement it effectively. And for that reason, these new categories of opening will take effect and the new protocol requirement will take effect this Friday, May 22nd. So that people can really actually effectively implement the protocol, make sure employees are trained on the protocol, and ensure that all these provisions are actually being fully implemented. With that, I’m going to turn it over to Cindy Chavez, President of the Board of Supervisors.

Cindy Chavez: Well good afternoon everyone, and I want to first start by saying thank you to each and every one of the people who live, work, and play in Santa Clara County who’ve been sheltering in place and doing your best to protect your own health, your family’s health, and our neighbors’ health. And I think what you heard what Dr. Cody and James talk a little bit about is what that’s allowed us to do as a community. What is very important is that we follow these new rules with as much rigor as we can and follow these new guidelines so that we may make sure more and more of our community can open up in a deliberate and thoughtful way.

There is a challenge going on throughout this country and it really is this kind of question between our health and our economy. And here in Santa Clara County, we’re balancing both. We want to make sure that people can safely get back to work, but we want that to happen in the safest way possible. Let me just close with this thought. We have a lot of people in our community who are very, very high risk for being not just hospitalized, but killed by this virus. The more we each do to protect those people, the more we are protecting a neighbor, a grandparent, an aunt, a family member, a dear friend.

I say this because many of you are trying to work from home while you’re raising children. You’re learning how challenging it is to be a teacher. We have a lot of teachers who are learning a whole new way to get kids excited about learning. Many, many of you are trying to do things new and better than what you did before. All for two goals, one, we to get our folks out in the community again and we want to get our economy on track, but we want to do that collectively, caringly, lovingly, and respectfully. So again, I want to thank all of you for your leadership.

I also just want to say to the people who are watching this that are part of the emergency operations or any other part of city, county, or nonprofit government, so many of you have stepped up to help people in real and meaningful ways. Haven’t missed a day of work literally since this started. And I just want you to know that while we can’t always say it, we see you, we appreciate you, and we want to thank you.

David Campos: Good afternoon, my name is David Campos. I’m a Deputy County Executive and today I’m serving as co-lead Public Information Officer for the County of Santa Clara’s Emergency Operations Center.

Before we take questions, we want to note a couple of things. First of all, this is being broadcast live on Facebook Live. We also have documents available to the media and members of the press including the Executive Summary of the revised order and you will also see the protocols that were discussed by the Mr. Williams, including the signa and information sheet that will be used by members of the public to make sure that a business that they frequent has in fact complied to the safety regulations that have been outlined by the order. We also want to note that we are making ourselves available in different languages following this press conferences in Vietnamese, Chinese, and Spanish. And happy to answer questions specifically in those languages to make sure members of those communities have all the information they need. So with that in mind, we’ll open it up to questions. Yes, sir?

Audience member 1: [unintelligible]

Campos: You can ask a question; I need to repeat the question so that people watching on Facebook Live can hear it.

Audience member 1: [unintelligible]

Campos: So we have a question to Dr. Cody in terms of what has changed in the weeks since the last statement was made about the consequences of easing up. So with that, I will turn it over to Dr. Cody.

Cody: Thank you for asking the question because I very much wanted to address it. So, the truth is that the conditions on the ground have not changed. We have a population that is susceptible to COVID-19 and we don’t have a vaccine. And that’s one of the reasons we’ve been proceeding very slowly and very cautiously. So, on May 4th, when we revised the Shelter-in-Place order, we set out these indicators, and the plan was that we make one change, we watch our indicators, we see whether there’s an increase in activity and then when we see that we haven’t seen that uptick and we think that we’re able to reopen safely, then we take the next step. Then we watch again. And that’s because the conditions on the ground, as I said, haven’t changed.

This new order is important because it has much more detailed social distancing guidance and protocols and that’s to make sure that when we do reopen, we can do so safely. And so we’re sort of picking off the menu that the state has offered. As well as adding some additional local guardrails to keep our community safe, because of what I said before, which is that the conditions on the ground are the same now as they were in March.

Audience member 2: [unintelligible]

In the two weeks after this reopen, if you see an increase in cases and an increase in deaths, do we then have to go back in the other direction?

Cody: So our goal here locally is to go slowly to measure a lot and to ensure that we’re safe and to stand up the infrastructure such that if we do see – so that one, so we can detect if there’s an increase in transmission, and two, that we can do something about it. And that is hopefully to prevent us from having to go backwards. So we’re going in gradual, measured steps. We’re going as quickly as we can. We understand the urgency, but we don’t want to have to go back. We don’t want to have to go backwards. So that’s why we’re proceeding as we are.

Audience member 3: Dr. Cody. The updated protocol that you mentioned, can you clarify there are three dimensions? The first one about face coverings? Is there something different than what was there before?

Cody: So here, in the county, in the Bay Area, and elsewhere, this is now a pretty standard urgent recommendation. And in some places an order to cover your face. It is one layer of prevention of spreading COVID-19. What’s a bit new is that we now have in our protocols, they were there before, now they’re in there more broadly about when to wear a face covering.

The bottom line is this: Everyone who is out in the public should be covering their face unless they have a medical reason why they can’t, or young children can’t cover their face. And certainly, it is now required that if you are in a business, you’re indoors, you’re indoors, you’re in the business, you’re in the grocery store, you’re in the pharmacy, etcetera, you need to wear a face covering to protect those around you.

Audience member: [unintelligible] in the business it’s required, in the public, it’s still a recommendation?

Cody: In public, it is still an urgent recommendation. It is an expectation. It is a—we hope it to become a new social norm. We hope that everyone, you know in our community, people have been pretty understanding about what we need to do. And I think the overall big point is this community has been absolutely, completely on board. We have flattened the curve here in Santa Clara County like nowhere else in the country and its because of what everyone has done. So I think that the next step is that we reopen but we do so with those guardrails in place. People wear face coverings, they keep a distance from each other, they wash their hands, they don’t go out when they’re sick, etcetera, etcetera. That we want to be able to practice that and do that well. And if we can do that well, then we can continue to take additional steps.

Campos: Yes ma’am?

Audience member: I have a question probably for the counsel, about how critical is critical we’re taking it seriously, what about [unintelligible]?

Campos: So question to the Legal Counsel about the protocols and specifically what about enforcement?

Williams: So the new protocol, one of the things we’ve changed with the sign and with the Visitor summary sheet is to help aid actually, enforcement, understanding, awareness, social norms.

As Dr. Cody mentioned with respect to face coverings, which are mandatory for businesses, it needs to be a social norm and expectation that we collectively help enforce. We do have a great partnership; the District Attorney’s Office has stepped up to help coordinate the more formal enforcement mechanisms and information regarding that is included in the protocol.

With respect to workers, the County Office of Labor Standards Enforcement has as hotline that workers can use to help deal with issues related to their own workplace and so that’s also included in the protocols. And the protocols require that employers provide that information to all of their employees.

But really, to get this to work the way we need it to work as a community, it is about creating a new social norm and expectation. And that’s; one of the reasons why we also wanted to revamp those protocols to not just require additional training and additional information sharing, but some more clear visibility around being COVID-19 prepared and providing summary information that people can see as they enter a facility as well in addition to the lengthier, more detailed facility-specific protocol.

Audience member: [unintelligible]

Williams: Well that’s a question really for each individual law enforcement. The question was how long before the fine? What I can tell you about that is what I know from the DA’s office and from local law enforcement is that their first effort is education and reminders, but if folks are continuing to disregard these requirements, they are mandatory, they are not optional, they are mandatory, this is a condition of being able to be open is that as a business, you’re doing your part to keep your employees safe and to keep your customers safe and that is not just an expectation, it is required.

And so there are penalties that attach to that if a business is unwilling to do so. But the vast, vast majority of businesses understand that this is what we need to do collectively to keep folks safe, to keep employees safe, to keep customers safe, and that’s something that we all share in wanting to do. So it’s not been a huge issue but there have been pockets where it has been.

Audience member: [unintelligible]

Williams: I don’t think that’s really a fair—so the question was how much is this due to Santa Clara County being quote, left on an island. I don’t think that’s a fair characterization at all. We have said since the beginning and Dr. Cody might want to speak to this some more, that we will be following our indicators, that we would do so in a timely fashion based on the incubation period and follow that data. That’s exactly what we have done. That’s exactly what we are doing. The fact that the state has been announcing things on a different timeline or other people doesn’t change that what we have said what we are doing here locally, and we have stuck with that roadmap that we have laid out.

Audience member: [unintelligible]

Williams: Well I think Dr. Cody should speak to the science piece. But what I can reemphasize is that we said we’d look at the indicators, we said we’d look at what happened with construction and outdoor businesses opening. Dr. Cody I think just talked about that, and now we’re now an incubation period out from that.

Campos: Let me, once again, repeat the question about the reasoning behind this decision and what went into this decision, so we’ll turn it into Dr. Cody.

Cody: Our plan was to, together with the other Bay Area Health Officers, develop joint indicators and those were based on data that we all had and that we all could share. And so could be seen in a county as well as across the region. And my decisions are based on what do we see in our local data, and what do we think that we can do? And so in addition to the data on the indicators that I mentioned, our cases have been declining, our hospitalizations have been declining, our hospital capacity is pretty robust at this point.

There are two things, one, are we going to see any kind of uptick with the reopening that we took in May 4th? And we’ve not seen that. That is very reassuring. And two, there were a lot of infrastructure pieces that we needed to make sure that we’re on the right course. One was testing and the other was case and contact investigation. And so, we needed to wait until we were confident that we had enough infrastructure in place that we could stay ahead in the event that a reopening of another sector, even with the guardrails in place, would create additional cases. So you know, the big picture is, of course we want to move as quickly as we can. As there are significant harms, you know, health harms, with the social and economic disruption, but we have to be able to look at our data to understand if we have the headroom to take that next step. And I think that here in Santa Clara County, we have the headroom. And not a lot, but we probably have more headroom here than many, many, many other places.

Campos: Happy to take more questions. Yes?

Audience member: [unintelligible]

Campos: So the question is, is there a specific list of businesses that can have curbside retail? And is there a specific set of protocols that govern those businesses. So I’ll turn it over to our County Counsel to respond to that, James Williams.

Williams: So the order will allow all retail businesses to open for curbside pickup. All that are allowed under the state order and that basically is broadly any retail business that has the ability to actually do outdoor curbside, storefront pickup without customers entering the facility. There are some criteria and requirements around d that that are contained in the order> One of the most significant in our county being the density requirement of no more than one employee per 300 square feet in the facility. And the reason for that is the ensure that the employees working inside the facility are able to maintain social distancing and have a reduced density environment.

The transactions also do need to occur outside. Customers cannot be entering in those retail facilities and there are a few other things that are listed in the order, but generally speaking, its all curbside retail.

Audience member: [unintelligible]

Williams: They can provide the merchandise to the customer, but the transaction has to occur outside, not inside.

Campos: We’ll take one more question.

Yes sir?

Audience member: Hey there. So just to confirm that we’re interpreting this correctly. So a store or restaurant inside, say, valley fair in San Jose Santa Clara would not be able to reopen because their business is within a bigger business and its an indoor facility. So confirm that if you can.

And secondly, in a place like Stanford Shopping Center that is an outdoor mall. So does that mean that stores that are lined up on the exterior of that campus with access to a curb, they can open, but the stores inside with outdoor walkways cannot reopen?

Campos: So two questions were asked. One, in respect to Valley Fair, what happens to businesses that are inside that location. Would they be allowed under the order? And second, in respect to shopping centers like Stanford Shopping Center, which one of those business would be allowed—businesses that are near the curb and what about businesses that are inside the structure but have, you know, pathways, what are the rules in respect to that? So I will turn it over to our County Counsel, James Williams.

Williams: So businesses that have access to a curb or a pedestrian walkway or outdoor alley, even if it’s closed to vehicular traffic, even pedestrian outdoor access, those can all open for outdoor curbside transactions. Businesses inside another facility where you would have to go inside, those cannot open. So in the case of some of these outdoor shopping centers where you can access the business but you have to go through a pedestrian alleyway, those would be allowed to conduct transactions at their storefront outdoors.

Campos: Thank you very much, as noted, we are available to answer questions in different languages. Thank you for attending the press conference. In the near future, we’ll be providing additional information and providing more detail on what some of these new changes mean. Thank you very much.