1.22.2021 Press Conference Vax Update

County of Santa Clara
January 22, 2021
Press Conference: Santa Clara County Vaccine Update with City of Mountain View

[Music]


Hilary Armstrong: Welcome I understand that some members of the media are now joining our live virtual press event today. Thank you very much for joining us. We will get started in just one moment, as soon as, we have filled our gallery.

Good afternoon. I'm Hilary Armstrong. I'm a public information officer with the County of Santa Clara emergency operations center. Thank you for being with us here today for this virtual media availability to highlight the expansion of vaccination capacity throughout Santa Clara County. Today we are pleased to announce the partnership between the County of Santa Clara and the City of Mountain View to open a new vaccination site at the Mountain View Community Center. Today we're honored to have the following speakers with us we have Mountain View Mayor Ellen Kamei, Supervisor Joe Simitian with the County of Santa Clara District 5, and Dr. Jennifer Tong, Associate Chief Medical Officer with Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. Also, present with us today, we have Mountain View City Manager Kimber McCarthy and Mountain View Community Services Director John Marchand. We will begin today's event with the English and American Sign Language portion of the media availability, followed by a question and answer period with our media.

During the question and answer session media will have the opportunity to ask questions of our speakers. Please select the raise hand function, and the moderator will call on you and send you a request to unmute. Please hit the unmute button to ask your question following the conclusion of the English and ASL portion of our event, we will move to statements from our pio language access team in Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Tagalog. With that, I am now very pleased to introduce Mayor Ellen Kamei with the City of Mountain View. Mayor Kamei, thank you very much.

Mayor Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you so much. Good afternoon. I'm Ellen Kamei, Mayor for the City of Mountain View. I'm pleased to be here today with the County of Santa Clara in opening a vaccination site right here in Mountain View. We are committed to bringing COVID-19 vaccinations to the public as quickly and safely as possible. As of today, January 22nd our Mountain View Community Center will serve as a vaccination site, by appointment only Monday through Friday, for the public. This is wonderful news, as this location will help serve north county in its vaccination efforts, and this is no easy feat. Just imagine having to convert a community center in record time into a vaccination hub that will provide up to 1,000 vaccinations per weekday, per week day for our community.

I must call attention to the incredible work done by our city staff to make this happen, under the leadership of our City Manager Kimber McCarthy and Community Services Director John Marchant.This effort involved having the appropriate configuration and equipment to meet public health protocols for giving vaccinations, along with the needed security, information technology, traffic control and facility setups. Mountain View was ready and willing to answer the call to action and provide the necessary leadership in standing up a vaccination site right away in partnership with the County of Santa Clara. It's another way we are enhancing access to vaccinations, especially for our most impacted communities. In less than a week's time, even over a holiday, we were willing to do what was necessary to bring this vaccination clinic to our city, because we are at a critical junction in this pandemic throughout Santa Clara County. Here at the city of Mountain View, we have a can-do spirit that our employees have demonstrated throughout the last 10 months of this public health crisis, in fact Mountain View continues to collaborate with the county in bringing free and convenient COVID-19 testing to the public, in our city on a regular basis, in providing safe parking lots at several locations for our unsafely housed individuals. We look forward to continuing our partnership with the county, along with County Supervisor Joe Simitian and his office, as we continue to fight this pandemic together. In closing, through this collaborative effort, we are making it more convenient for Mountain View residents and others who live and work nearby in north county to get vaccinated against this highly contagious virus, and it is my pleasure to introduce our Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian. Mr. Simitian, take it away.

County Supervisor Joe Simitian: Thank you uh very much, uh Mayor Kamei. uh Thank you again. I i really do want to uh say thank you a third and final time, both uh to the mayor and her council colleagues and to the city staff. I have often described Mountain View as a caring community with a can-do city government, and this is yet another example of both that caring and can-do attitude, so thank you, thank you, and thank you!

I i should perhaps reintroduce myself. I'm County Supervisor Joe Simitian. I represent the fifth supervisorial district, which is the northwest portion of Santa Clara County, and there are roughly 400,000 people in my district, as there are for each of the five county supervisors, uh and as we uh face down this challenge of distributing vaccine uh throughout the county and throughout my district, I, of course, have been concerned about the importance of making sure that we had adequate distribution facilities here in uh the northwest portion of the County.

i i think it's important to revisit just briefly how challenging this effort has been and acknowledging it, you know, the rollout was not uh what we had all hoped for, uh and it is a complicated system, for better or worse uh, and i'm not interested in laying blame or uh finger wagging, i just think we got to figure out, all right, how do we fix it? and go forward as quickly and safely as we possibly can, but for those of you who haven't been following uh this challenge, you know we're talking about the state providing vaccine directly to two of our major providers in this area who are what are known as multi-county entities, that would be Kaiser and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation/Sutter, so literally half the county is probably covered by these two organizations. They get their vaccine directly from the state, and of course, we're looking to them to be full partners and standing up their vaccine programs as quickly as they possibly can. Then we've got vaccine that's going to the V.A., the veterans administration and Indian Health Service directly from the Federal government to those two federal organizations. uh They're uh off uh doing their good work, uh but again, it complicates the system, and then finally, we have vaccine coming straight to our county, where we have to partner with uh others as well as distribute the vaccine through our own organization. We have three county hospitals. We have nine primary care clinics, unfortunately, none of them are located in the fifth district, the northwest portion of Santa Clara County where my constituents, 400,000 of them need access. So, mindful of the fact that i have something like close to 40,000 low-income medical patients in my district, uh the largest population of seniors who we know are most vulnerable of any of the five supervisorial districts, i have been working with our county staff and with the folks at Mountain View to make sure we had a distribution center that would serve this part of the county and those populations in particular. Again, complicated system, we have to distribute the vaccine not only through our own county clinics, but then we have to partner with folks like El Camino, uh we have to partner with folks like Stanford Healthcare, we have to partner with our community clinics, i'm thinking of Mayview as part of the Ravenswood Health uh System. So, uh all of that being said, cut to the chase finally, uh look we needed a place here in the north county to serve the folks that are in our region, as we put our heads together and thought "who can we work with to roll this out as quickly and expeditiously as possible?" The answer was, let's work with the city of Mountain View. They've been good partners in the past. They are once again stepping up to be a partner in this effort. Community Center is a wonderful location. The location is well known to many, and we're really excited and delighted that we can uh start today. I've said before and i'll say it again, time is of the essence, we don't have a month to lose, we don't have a week to lose, we don't have a single day to lose, we just can't afford to let time go by, so it's uh very gratifying to know that we are up and running and that in short order we'll be at a thousand vaccinations a day, at just this site, even as we are exhorting our partners in healthcare around the county to do their part to make sure that everybody is covered by the appropriate provider. Last thing i'll say is, you know, to take a very complicated process and and make it simple, you need three things for a vaccine distribution program like this one, you need a location, and the City of Mountain View has provided that location, you need a team of qualified medical professionals and volunteers to distribute the vaccine, and the County of Santa Clara is stepping up to do that important work, and you'll hear more from our staff in just a moment, but the third thing you need obviously is the vaccine, and on that front, we of course have to wait uh to hear from the State, uh we are dependent on them, but we have the location. Thank you, City of Mountain View! We have the trained staff. Thank you, Santa Clara County Health System. And now, as long as we have the vaccine, we are in a position to get to a thousand people a day in short order. That is very gratifying uh to me, and i know to uh anxious constituents from whom i've been hearing. uh Person we're going to hear from next, and that i want to turn this over to, again with my thanks, is Dr. Jennifer Tong from our Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. uh She is um able to respond to the medical questions that i suspect some of you may have, so let me turn it over to her. Dr. Tong, thank you for being with us, and thank you for all the good work to get us to this place today.

Dr. Jennifer Tong: Thank you, Supervisor Simitian. On behalf of the County of Santa Clara Health System, I am very excited that we are partnering with the City of Mountain View to launch this vaccination site. We have an impressive team on the ground here comprised of staff from the City of Mountain View, community volunteers, staff from multiple county departments including Valley Medical Center, and with their dedication and their expertise, we were able to quickly open this site, which provides appointments to up to 1,000 people per weekday, 5,000 people per week. This is the third community-based mass vaccination site operated by the county and this increases our capacity to reach community members who are most in need of access.

In addition to these three community-based mass vaccine sites that we operate, we also have significant capacity in our valley health center clinics, including in our valley health center in Gilroy increased capacity for up to 600 vaccines per day. To date, our county health system has provided more than 60,000 doses of vaccines, administered to eligible community members by our system, that includes more than 50,000 first doses, and now almost 10,000 second doses. Our county continues to have a strong commitment to equity and multiple efforts to reach the hardest hardest hit communities by COVID-19. We are focused on helping people overcome barriers to accessing the vaccine in fact throughout the week we've had a team on the ground in some of the hardest hit communities providing logistical support for scheduling vaccination appointments. Our county sites continue to vaccinate any health care provider in phase 1a as defined by the State of California, as well as individuals over the age of 75. As the supply of vaccination increases, we expect to expand that eligibility.

Our county continues to devote significant resources to fight this pandemic. Setting up these mass vaccination sites has been an extraordinary effort, while we also maintain significant mass testing sites, as well as, other significant services across the community to support individuals throughout this pandemic. This vaccine is a critical tool and hopefully our way out of the pandemic, but we continue to await additional supply of vaccine to best serve all in our community. We encourage the public to remain vigilant, while we work tirelessly to achieve this level of protection across our community. We have recently seen a decrease in cases and decrease in hospitalizations, which are the impact of everyone being particularly cautious. Please don't let your guard down now. Please continue to wear a mask or face covering. Stay home, except for essential activities. Maintain your distance, and be ready for when your turn comes to be vaccinated. For more information about eligibility and information about how to schedule a vaccine, please visit our website sccFREEvax.org. And with that, I will turn it over to Hillary Armstrong for questions and answers. Thank you.

HA: Thank you very much to all of our speakers today. We will now move into the question and answer portion of today's media availability. If you would like to ask a question, please select the raised hand function, i will then call on you, and send you a request to unmute, please click on the unmute button to unmute yourself, and your audio will then be disabled once the speaker responds. And if you have any challenges using the raise hand function, please feel free to put a message in the question and answer, and i will attempt to call on you. Thank you very much for your patience. With that, i will first go to Tamara Amino from um. And when you um when i call on you, please also state your um state your name and affiliation. And i am having a slight, if my team could help me, i'm having a slight difficulty calling on folks through the attendee panel, so please hold and we will do our best. Thank you.

Tamara Amino: Hi. Yes, can you hear me? Hi yes.

HA: yes

TA: This is Tamra Amino with Univision Spanish stations, so yes, we know they're gonna be a thousand doses daily ...

HA: Tamara, it sounds like we've lost you for a moment. We had the first part of your question. uh We will attempt. It looks like we oh it looks like we lost you all together, so we will come back to you hopefully. Hopefully she can log back on um. With that, i will next go to um to Ron Lin. If someone on my team could please unmute him?

Ron Lin: Hi. Can you hear me?

HA: Yes, we can thank you.

RL: okay great. This is Ron Lin with the LA Times. Thank you, to all of you for taking our questions. We really appreciate it, and your service. Dr Tong, can you share with us why you think cases and hospitalizations have begun to decline? Do you think it's a partly result of the regional stay-at-home order? and Do you think fewer people gathered over Christmas than they did over Thanksgiving? Also, is there any new information about the Danish variant identified as playing a major role in some large outbreaks in Santa Clara County? Is there any new information about that you can share? thanks so much.

Dr. Tong: Sure. To answer your question about the variant, um i don't have additional new information to share about that. um In terms of the decrease in hospitalizations and cases, yes, the the time course of that decrease does correspond, to what we would expect, from the first the local, and then the regional stay-at-home order, and i think is a reflection of our community continuing to heed the advice of our public health officials and listen, and um uh take those necessary precautions, when um uh when we communicate the need to do so.

HA: Thank you, Dr. Tong. We'll go to Jesse Gary for the next question, and i will ...

Jesse Gary: Hello. It's Jesse Gary from KTVU FOX 2, here in the Bay Area. And my question is, um we understand that people who are 75 and older are getting vaccinated, but the governor has as mandated that now people 65 and older can get vaccinated. How long do you think it will be before people 65 and older can be vaccinated? and How much of a stumbling bl, block has it been to to not have the vaccine coming in, enough of it anyway?

Dr. Tong: I can take that. um So in terms of timeline for those age 65 and older, unfortunately it's very difficult to project a timeline, and i wouldn't want to get people's hopes up by projecting a timeline that is purely dependent on variables outside of our direct control, that variable really is the availability of the vaccine. As as the availability increases, we are preparing to increase our capacity further, in terms of additional space and additional staff um to match the availability of more vaccine.

Sup. Simitian: this is supervised go ahead I'm sorry Dr. Tong

Dr. Tong: To answer your question about how big of a stumbling block that has been it's a significant stumbling block um it is one of the reasons why we don't release appointments further into the future, because we're really trying to meet that uh supply and demand, um and uh in trying to avoid canceling appointments due to lack of vaccine, although that is a potential reality that we might face, um if vaccine allotment and delivery doesn't um keep up with our rate of appointments.

Sup. Simitian: Jesse this is Joe Simitian ... speculative perhaps then Dr. Tong feels comfortable uh being, I i've been pushing on this same issue, because i've been getting the question from constituents. If you were to ask me, i would tell you i think we're looking at sometime between mid-February and late February before significant numbers of folks in that 65 to 75 category are likely to be getting vaccines in our area. Keeping in mind that it of course is a function of vaccine availability not only to our county, as a county entity, but also you know for a million of the two million people in our county, uh Kaiser and uh Palo Alto Medical Foundation/Sutter. So, uh but as as I look at the number of folks uh still in that 75 and up category and uh frontline healthcare workers uh who uh still need to receive the vaccine, plus the vaccine delivery, i i what i've told people is uh with the caveat that Dr. Tong offered, uh look, i i think no one knows until unless we receive the vaccine, but my best estimate is uh sometime between mid-February and late February before we'll see uh 65 and ups in any significant number in the system.

HA: Thank you very much. Next, we will ... please mute yourself. Thank you.

Media question: hey can you hear me?

Sup. Simitian: We can, Kevin and we want to know what your favorite city in Santa Clara County is?

Media question: oh geez it might be Mountain View. um I just want to make things crystal clear about eligibility at this vaccination site, my understanding uh is that it it may and in fact might be uh just county people who are served by the county health and hospital system, as opposed to someone who has Kaiser or Sutter for insurance, um so i just want to clarification on that? and If someone could maybe address that, on the fact that that, is only a small minority of the people who, who live in this area? Thanks.

Dr. Tong: I can take that. So our our website the sccFREEvax.org is the the best source of information in terms of eligibility. The population who are eligible to schedule an appointment here at this site in Mountain View include those who are health care workers, further defined on that website, and those who are 75 or older. People who fall into those categories, who live in our county are eligible to be vaccinated here. We do encourage individuals to first check with their health care provider and those details are also available on our website, but we do encourage individuals to first check with their provider to see if vaccination appointments are available via that route, since some vaccine distribution and allocation is given to those providers, such as Sutter and Kaiser for those who receive primary care through those systems. But at this point in time, due to the limited availability of vaccine to those providers, we do allow such individuals to be vaccinated at this site.

Sup. Simitian: Dr. Tong, this is a Supervisor Submitian, and if i can help clarify the question a little for Kevin Forsteri. um However, while we may have something like 300,000 patients in our system as patients of uh the Valley Health and Hospital System, we also have a lot of folks in the county who simply don't have a health care provider, they also would be eligible to come, if they were gig workers without a plan, if they were young invincibles in that 20-30 category, who just didn't have health insurance or a regular provider they could come, as well, yes?

Dr. Tong: Most definitely, and in fact that's why we ask people to first check with their own health care provider because um to the extent possible, we would like to preserve access for those who who don't have a provider to go to or maybe uh go to a smaller provider who's not set up to be able to give vaccinations at this point in time.

Sup. Simitian: And uh i one more uh follow-up with you, and then i'll stop playing reporter and go back to being a county supervisor. uh In terms of your comments about the vaccine, what i heard you to say is, we've got 2 million people in the county, if half the vaccine is going directly to the folks at Kaiser and Palo Alto Medical Foundation/Sutter, we obviously can't have the county providing vaccine to 100 of the population, if we're only getting uh 50 percent of the doses is that a fair summary?

Dr. Tong: that is a fair summary, yes.

Sup. Simitian: all right Kevin, Forest, Jerry, i i hope i didn't steal all your follow-ups.

Mayor Kamei: i apologize and and Supervisor Simitian in Dr. Tong, if if i might you know i think one of the the things that we've been working with in partnership with the county is providing access, you know whether that be access to um COVID-19 tests, and now people have been asking for access to a vaccination site in north county. I think that, you know, we're willing ready and willing to be a partner, and uh i think that everyone um is trying to play their their role in their part to to help bring vaccinations to their communities as quickly and safely as possible, um to the points that were made earlier. So i just wanted to kind of include that, as well, um because the the demand is very high and we need to make sure that there's equal and equitable access throughout our entire county, and the City of Mountain View is committed to that. Thank you.

Sup. Simitian: And these other providers are are the partners that Mayor Kamei is uh reminding us are so critical. Nobody can do it all by themselves, but if everybody will take apart and do what they can, we can get this done. The folks at El Camino will be providing a vaccine uh the folks at Mayview Community clinic in Mountain View a long time provider will be providing vaccine. The folks at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation have a Mountain View Center as well, so this is one major part of the effort, but it is by no means as the mayor's pointing out, the only one.

HA: thank you all, and it looks like we have one final question from Amy Jackson, so we will unmute you please accept the unused and ask your questions. Thank you.

Amy Jackson:  Thank you, so much. Can you hear me okay? you can okay great. yeah, i just wanted to ask um how much vaccine did you request from the state for next week? and how much are you getting? and are you able to keep increasing the pace of vaccinations with the amounts you're receiving? and the fact that you need to be able to go back and provide second doses to those, i think you said it was 50,000 people who are already vaccinated?

Dr. Tong: Sure, so the the process for receiving vaccine um uh it's not like placing an order and then part of our order gets fulfilled. The process is that we are told by the state what we are eligible to receive, and then we are allowed to say how much of that we want. Now of course, we are currently saying we want a hundred percent of everything that the state is able to give us. um So as an example, our allocation countywide for next week is on the order of about 20,000 doses, that's much smaller much smaller than what any of us had hoped, um fortunately it does add to some existing vaccine inventory that we have in order to hopefully get through the week of those who've already been scheduled. In addition to that volume, we received 13,000 second doses, um which should meet the demand for the appointments we have upcoming for second doses. So it really is currently a week by week um uh assessment, and as i said, everything that the State is uh offering to give us we are absolutely um uh accepting, um and to the extent that there's an opportunity to uh to push for more, we are taking every opportunity to do so, um but we're currently limited by that that state allocation.

HA: Thank you very much, and it looks like we've been rejoining.

Yes, raise your hand we will unmute you for your question and this will be our last question for the English and ASL portion. Thank you.

Univision question: Hi yes thanks so much. I'm sorry, I got disconnected. uh Basically the same question that was recently asked regarding the 1,000 doses that will be available daily, because as we know, uh those are first doses right? so What, since people have to come back in three weeks for the second dose, are there gonna be more than 8,000 doses available daily after that? or Are the are you know the second doses for these people are gonna be including that in that1,000 doses daily?

Dr. Tong: It's a good question. It's a, it's a complex um uh arrangement that we are trying to we're still trying to balance um during this first week of operation and likely the second week as well. We'll be ramping up to that 1,000 level, and so during these first several days it will probably be on the order of the five to 600 first doses that we'll be giving, and at the time of that appointment, we'll be scheduling that second dose for the type of vaccine that we're giving here. That second dose will be four weeks out, that does allow us some ongoing capacity for first dose administration, but you're exactly right, that uh due to being limited by physical space, parking spaces um there will it will ebb and flow, the number of first doses appointments that we're able to offer as opposed to second doses that have already been scheduled.

HA: Thank you very much. This concludes the English and American Sign Language portion of today's media availability. Thank you very much to all of our speakers. We appreciate your time and thank you to the media for joining us today. We will now proceed to our language access team from the emergency operations center.

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