1.15.2021 Press Conference Vaccine Update

County of Santa Clara
January 15, 2021
Press Conference: COVID Vaccine Update

[Music]

Good morning. I'm Hilary Armstrong. I'm a public information officer with the County of Santa Clara. Thank you for joining us this morning. We are here today to provide you with updated information about the expansion of vaccine access and eligibility in Santa Clara County. We will begin by getting an update from Dr. Jennifer Tong, the chief assistant medical officer with Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, then we will be joined by James Williams, County Counsel for the County of Santa Clara, and Supervisor Otto Lee, Supervisor for District 3 of the County of Santa Clara Board of Supervisors. We will begin with the English and American Sign Language portion of our press conference, followed by question and answer session, then to let you know our speakers will repeat the questions for our Facebook live audience they will be followed by statements from the podium in Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Tagalog. Thank you very much, with that, I want to hand it over to Dr. Jennifer Tong.

Dr. Jennifer Tong: Good morning. I'm Dr. Jennifer Tong associate chief medical officer for Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. I'm here today to highlight the expansion of vaccination locations and growing capacity for vaccinations throughout the County. Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, our county health system is leading the way to increase access for our community. To date, Santa Clara Valley Medical system has provided 32,352 first doses and 6,594 second doses. Our system alone has established five vaccination sites, including two mass vaccination sites, one here at Berger Drive and one at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds. Next week, we will open an additional location in Mountain View. Our system alone, vaccinated more than three thousand individuals this Monday, more than four thousand this week on Tuesday and Wednesday each, more than 5,000 yesterday, and we have more than 6,000 appointments scheduled today. So we are ramping up very quickly. The site here at Burger Drive opened on Tuesday has daily capacity for more than 1,300 vaccinations. This builds on the capacity at our valley medical center clinics and the fairgrounds, where we can serve more than 1,800 people per day. We expect to open a third mass vaccination site with even greater capacity.

The biggest constraints, we are facing right now, is the availability of vaccine. We really need a stable and predictable supply to be able to predict our capacity and expand our capacity in the future. Due to this limited and unpredictable supply, we continue to need to limit eligibility for vaccination. Currently, our Santa Clara Valley Medical Center sites are vaccinating any health care provider who lives or works in Santa Clara County, as well as individuals over the age of 75, who live here in Santa Clara County. As soon as more vaccine becomes available, we will increase access further. For those who are eligible currently, we encourage you to go to sccFREEvax.org to schedule an appointment. With that, I'd like to introduce our County Counsel, James Williams for an overview of where we stand overall in our county, with regard to vaccine eligibility and distribution.

James Williams: Thank you, Dr. Tong. Good morning, everyone. I'm going to speak for just a few minutes about the overall vaccine situation, and we recognize, we're in an environment of changing federal and state information daily. And it's extraordinary, extraordinarily frustrating for us here, locally, and of course for residents in the community. We learned a few days ago, for example, that the federal government was going to release stockpiles of vaccine that were being held for second doses. We learned this morning no such stockpile exists. This throws into chaos expectations around vaccine delivery. Similarly, at the state level guidance has changed, almost on a daily basis, sometimes even more frequently. And we're operating in an environment where, here locally, as a county, we don't have visibility into what all vaccine providers are doing, what vaccine they have on hand. That's because some vaccine providers are getting vaccine directly from the federal government, such as the CVS, Walgreens partnership, that is supposed to be responsible for vaccinating the most vulnerable residents at our long-term care facilities, these are the folks with the highest fatality rates, one of the most, most concerning populations it needs to get vaccinated right away. That's a federal program a federal partnership and we don't have visibility into what's happening there. The state directly distributes vaccine to what they call multi-county entities, such as Kaiser and PAMF. Kaiser and PAMF are responsible for the majority of Santa Clara County residents. The majority of our residents are their patients. And we don't have full visibility into what they are doing. Nonetheless, our commitment here locally is twofold, first that the county health system is going to continue to do everything it can, more than its share, as it already is, as it already has, as Dr. Tong has already described the over 32,000 first doses that have been administered by the county's own health system, the capacity that's ramping up by the thousands daily this week, and will continue to ramp up moving forward, the two mass vaccination sites directly operated by the county's health system. That work is just phenomenal, and I want to commend Dr. Tong and the entire team that's working on standing up all those sites and operating them, the county disaster service workers, the entire strength of the county's health system, the investments that county residents made over many, many, many years in the acquisition of two additional hospitals, the capacity that we've had to have a public health system that can actually deliver shots in arms in a way that very, very few governmental entities in the United States can do. And so that capacity will continue to ramp up.

We're going to continue to try to get the data that we need from entities like Kaiser and PAMF. We know people want to know that information, and as soon as we can get that, and we can put that together we'll put that on our website and make that available, but it's been a challenge. You know, this pandemic has been one of such extraordinary challenges across the board, under a federal administration that, frankly, for four years has seemed to mess basically everything up, and that's been true on the testing front, it's been true on the containment front with this virus, and it's turning out to be true here on the vaccination front, and we're hopeful that with a new administration.

(connection interruption) ... comes individuals aged 75 and older. We understand Kaiser is making some limited appointments available for those 65 and older, but the other providers in the county for a person's age 75 and older. Why is that? Well, you heard Dr. Tong describe a few moments ago. Our biggest limitation is the number of vaccines that are coming in the door, and when we schedule appointments out for several days in advance these slots get all filled up, people expect that when they show up there's a vaccine to actually administer under their arm, and so the vaccines that we have, they come you know, we don't get shipments every day, they come in bulk quantities, and then they get expended over the next few days, based on the scheduled appointments.

So we're going to continue to expand our local capacity, we're going to continue to urge the state and federal government to provide more vaccines and a more predictable supply of vaccines, so that we can continue to schedule people out. And we're going to continue to provide the best information that we possibly can, and it'll get more and more robust, as we get better reporting from other providers at our website sccFREEvax.org. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Supervisor Otto Lee from the Board of Supervisors.

Supervisor Otto Lee: Thank you, James how County Counsel. My name is Otto Lee, uh one of the Supervisors in District 3 of the Board of Supervisor. Good morning. Very nice to uh have, uh honored to be speaking with you today, regarding our COVID response and our vaccination situations. As we all have heard in the news, the average death rate of the United States is now 4,000 deaths a day. As much as people are so sick and tired of this pandemic, we're all getting really antsy wanting to go out and do things that we so used to do. This is absolutely the worst time to be going out and getting doing get together. We are now finally feeling the impact of Thanksgiving and Christmas get-togethers, and that's why these numbers are so high around the nation. The State of California now is also in one of the worst state, in terms of southern California, you can see that there really is no COVID or hospital beds, and it's now also affecting us right here in northern California and Santa Clara County as well. Our ICU bed numbers are often below 10 percent on the daily basis, and we could see that this number is not going to plateau, unless we all work so hard together to stay socially distanced, wear a mask, and unless absolutely necessary, please don't go out and gather.

One thing I would say is that it is the end the light of the end of tunnel proverbially is really at hand the vaccines is final here for the past month it certainly took us a while to get the ramping up of the program going, but the good news I have is that we are getting up to this 6,000 vaccinations capacity a day, just from our Santa Clara County, alone. The County of Santa Clara with the Valley Medical Center, O'Connor, St Louise, and all the health providers led by Dr. Tong here has done a really amazing job for the short amount of time, during vacations, during all these holiday periods, to be able to ramp up literally seven days a week, in order to get these uh facilities open. Right here in Burger Drive as of Wednesday, the those who are over 75 years old have become eligible. I was able to sign up on Wednesday morning on the website like everybody else, and my mom actually came by here and actually get vaccinated in the afternoon. The process was very smooth, and I'm glad that she's been protected now. She's almost 80 years old, and I do think that this program is working very well. The problem we have at the end of the day is logistics. We don't have enough vaccines the federal government (connection interruption) ... can make a huge difference.

Nobody wants to talk about death. Nobody wants to talk about this pandemic anymore, and nobody really wants to stuck at home and not able to go to school. I myself have three daughters studying at home every day, and it's been a circus, honestly, but this is what we've been going through. We've gone through so much. This is not time to let down our guard, because we've heard so many stories. Because all it takes is one time, meeting with your family, eating a nice dinner together, let your mouth down, and things get spread. So please the, the most important message i can provide to you today is please hunker down for a little bit more. We'll talk about a few months more, and hopefully once this vaccine is here, and we will do our best to work with, not just in the Santa Clara County hospitals but also our partners over at at PAMF, at Kaiser, and also talked to the the the Kaiser representative yesterday, regarding what they're doing over at the Santa Clara uh Center uh over by Lawrence Expressway, and they are really ramping up of their vaccinations as well. I'm truly excited about that and along with PAMF, we will be able to beat this. We will get the vaccinations out.

And please I'm going to ask also to be a little bit patient, we've got a lot of mixed messages as of Tuesday, we heard that the, the age was 75 years old from the County, and the next thing we know is the state came out and say 65, so there's a lot of these mixed messages going on. Just to clarify for the Santa Clara County system, we are only doing 75 and above right now, but for Kaiser, they are doing some limited 65 and above, but at the end of the day it's about how much vaccines we are being given that we could give out, and we're doing absolutely the fastest we can to make this happen so again, thank you very much for being here. Thank you for hunkering down. Thank you for helping us on this fight, and we will be able to beat this soon looking forward to the new administration coming in, and we are really expecting some good news down the road, as new President-elect Biden has talked about 100 million vaccines in the first 100 days in office, and we'll hold them accountable to make sure that happens. Thank you very much.

Roger Ross: We'll now go to questions and answers. We will start with ABC7.

Media question: Who did you get that information from?

JW: oh the same kind of national reporting that everyone else has been seeing. You know, we often learn about what's happening at the federal level, the same way all of you do, that's kind of the way the system is these days, with this federal administration unfortunately.

Media question: ... directly in regards to that news?

JW: no we have not.

 RR: thank you. NBC

JW: ... that we get is spoken for, because it's based on first doses administered, and we are already administering second doses. We're actually very pleased that those folks who were able to get first doses at the beginning, mainly people working in our acute care hospitals, are now getting their second doses under that timeline, but it's important, once we administer our first dose to somebody, we've got to make sure we've got that second dose there a month later, so that they can get it at the right time in order to have the efficacy. Now we're a little hopeful, we're you know, we're seeing the same news i think all of you are, that there might be some other vaccines that might come on the market in the coming months, that may only require one dose, and that would help a lot.

Media question: so to clarify, the last time  I kind of checked the website, it was about 170,000 doses, split between first and second that had arrived have been allocated to the county, is that the total universe of vaccine that has come in because you've always talked about health care systems getting there straight from the state, CVS and Walgreens get them straight from the feds, so i'm just trying to kind of clarify from them?

JW: yeah so it's a great question. The question is the numbers that we have available, what do they reflect? And the answer is, it's incomplete data, so um we, we only know some of the allocations that are coming in to providers in the county, uh and we're able to have some, have them report some of that information to us. uh But let me explain a little bit further, uh so we are going to get some data from them uh related to doses administered here in the county, but that information is still, we're not confident is is complete, um and so that's partial information. We don't know how much vaccine has come into the county and is being administered by other federal providers like the V.A. Hospital, for example, which we understand is providing vaccine to Santa Clara County residents who are V.A. patients, so there's a lot that we just don't know yet, um and we certainly hope that that we'll get more complete picture, because at the end of the day  we need to have assurance that that, you know, our all of our residents are have access to, and are able to get vaccinated. But the crux of the challenge with that is, the majority of our residents are patients of Kaiser and PAMF alone, and those are entities that are receiving direct state allocation.

Media question: ... is a change in the system in which the county is sort of the spoke of the field and everything kind of is either comes in or is coordinated through you because it seems like there's just a lot of parts of this of this machinery that you don't have control over?

JW: Yeah, you know, so the question is about you know coordination or control through the County? You know, I think the key is which is a great thing, people want to get vaccinated, uh and so when open to 65 and up population that's such a large population in our county, that's well over 300,000 individuals, and so i think that's why you saw that their systems go down. But the reality is, we have nowhere near that amount of vaccine here to deliver and so we're seeing demand outstrip supply, we're seeing demand outstrip basic capacity, like some people's websites for scheduling.

Media question: do you consider of releasing the uh reserve for second dose to be part of the first dose? yeah, i know Or, Orange County supervisor talking about that, because you know, there's enough lag time, so that you will have more vaccine coming down for Moderna and Pfizer, so is that a possible strategy?

JW: So the question is about reserve for second dose? You know, and this is where we really need a lot more clarity from the federal government primarily but also from the state. You know we were under the understanding until today that the federal government had second dose supply that they were holding to push down, they said earlier this week they were going to then distribute that, now we've learned that working to stand up a whole number of other sites, Dr Tong mentioned. We're going to be standing up a site in Mountain View area. We're going to continue to expand capacity. We've got two mass vaccination sites that are already open, so the capacity is going to continue to increase, but the real issue isn't that, it's the vaccine supply.

RR: good. nbc

Media question: so i understand what problems this is all causing, but why is it happening what's the advantage in entities not sharing information? Why isn't the county being told so directly by their, why is there this disconnect what's the advantage in them operating this way, versus everybody being on the same team?

JW: so so the question is, what's the advantage in uh you know the in the i'll just call it the chaos of the information flow? I don't think anyone thinks there's any advantage. But I think you should probably ask your question of some of these other systems, of the state and the federal government. You know, we (connection interrupted) ...

I think maybe the fairest thing to say is I think the Trump administration's been a little distracted uh you know the they've been more focused on the election results, and and you know stirring up crowds, you know we saw the horrific events at the capitol, um you know this is a moment when we should be all singularly focused on dealing with the raging pandemic. Supervisor Lee pointed out, we're in the middle of the worst surge, we need to be focused on that, and we need to be focused on the vaccinations. Unfortunately the Trump administration has chosen to, instead spend months focusing on discredited false, um you know frankly, absolutely horrific uh objections to you know a free fair election, and that's i think really distracted the energy of the federal government from its first and foremost job, which is to protect and take care of everyone here in the United States.

RR: good. kpix

Media question: so you guys have been working to accelerate the efforts to get people their shots with this supply issue, how real is the risk that you may either run out or have to sort of throttle back those efforts?

JW: (Connection interruption) ...  because of, like i said, all the information challenges uh that we're having, but you know we schedule out in advance, we've scheduled out next week, we've scheduled out appointments even beyond then um and, so everything we've got is more than spoken for.

Media question: how many you know what's the date that's circled, if nothing?

JW: Well so the question is the date that circle? what's a moving target? Because we continue to ramp up capacity we're not static at six thousand a day. We're going to keep growing and growing and growing that capacity at the county health system, and we know every other provider is going to be growing their capacity too, so that date is going to keep moving up unless we get more supply coming in.

RR: we'll go find a question from ABC

Media question: um so how soon do you think you'll be able to get more of that data?

JW:  (Connection interruption) ... is the 170,000 number just the Santa Clara health system or other providers? It includes other providers, but it's incomplete. um So it includes, for example, vaccine Stanford has, I know that for sure, um so it's definitely includes other providers and not just the county health system, but it's still incomplete data. The first part of the question was you know, with the health order that was issued last week, to try to obtain this kind of data and also to require the large systems to submit comprehensive plans when do we think we'll have a better picture? or what might that look like? We do have surveys out already, under that health order to the systems to report the data, and you know we're starting to get that data in, but it has to be validated. You have to make sure people are answering the queries the right way, with the right definitions, and so forth, so i think we'll have a lot more very, very soon, because we have some preliminary information, it's just dirty. But not everything is still going to come from that, for example, the federal government isn't subject to a local health order, and so certain federal supplies like the V.A. Hospital. We hope that they will provide us that information but we cannot legally compel them to, and so some of these pieces are still potentially going to be missing for us, and that's a huge challenge. Like I said, at the end of the day, our goal here is 85 of the eligible population vaccinated by August 1. That's our big picture goal, and for the vaccines that mean that need two doses, that means two doses. um But we can only know where we're going there, right, if we know what's happening for all of our residents and when the majority of our residents or the patients of these other systems, that's just a big challenge, but you know, we'll get through it, we'll figure it out. You know, I think the the the the takeaway I have when i go home at night, is you know this vaccination piece of this pandemic is a hopeful piece. It's challenging right now. It's frustrating right now. Believe me, it is extraordinarily frustrating for us, but it's also a hopeful piece.

[Press statements from the podium in Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Tagalog]