05.29.20 COVID-19 Briefing Live Stream Transcript

The County of Santa Clara
May 29, 2020
Live with the County of Santa Clara - COVID-19 Briefing
10am PT


Evelyn Ho: Good morning from the Emergency Operations Center. I'm Evelyn Ho, the Contact Tracing Expansion lead in the Emergency Operations Center and today I have with me Dr. Sarah Rudman, Assistant Health Officer. We'll be having a conversation today about case investigation and contact tracing.

I'm going to remove my face covering to make it easier for everybody to hear and to support our ASL interpreters, but please know that while we are in our Emergency Operations Center, that we are wearing them even when we have conversations and we continue to maintain our social distancing and ensuring that we have at least six feet of space between us, but for the purposes of  this filming we will remove them.

A quick review of where we are on our cases of COVID-19 in Santa Clara County, from yesterday's report we have 2,701 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 140 deaths. There were no new additional deaths that were announced yesterday.

So today we're going to talk about case investigation and contact tracing, which is one of the five key indicators identified by the Bay Area Health Officers as they continue to monitor progress associated with the Shelter-in-Place orders.

So what is case investigation, contact tracing? What does it mean for our community? And what does it look like? And how can you be a part of the solution?

So I'm pleased to be joined by Dr. Sarah Rudman this morning. Thanks for being here.

Sarah Rudman: Yes.

EH: So can you tell us a little bit about case investigation, contact tracing, how does it work and why is it so important?

SR: Sure so, we've been offering everyone a lot of ways that they can play a role in helping to reduce the spread of COVID and keep themselves and their families safe.

One of the most important things we're going to do is make sure that everyone who is sick stays home and everyone who could become sick stays home to help stop the spread from person to person.

The way case investigation and contact tracing works is for every reported case, for every person who tests positive, we have a team who will reach out to you, call you, and make sure you know your  diagnosis, have the help you need to be able to stay home and have a chance to ask all of your questions about how to keep yourself healthy and how to keep your family and loved ones healthy.

In addition, we'll ask all of those people who have become sick, every person they've come in contact with, from the beginning of when they could be contagious to when they start to stay home and isolate. And for every one of those people they  could have come in contact with, our contact tracers will reach out to those folks and make sure they're notified of their exposure  and make sure they also have the resources they need to get tested, to get additional health care, and to be able to stay home for the period that they could become sick and become contagious to get ahead of that chain of transmission and stop the disease from spreading.

EH: Is contact tracing and case investigation a new practice that we're using for COVID-19?

SR: So it's actually not a new practice. This is something Public Health does for a wide range of diseases and something we've done for a very long time. What's different here is it's on a much bigger scale.

What we normally do is we'll have a single case or a handful of cases of public health concern and we'll pull in our big team within the Public Health Department to call those few cases and their few contacts they may have had during the period they were sick.

So now that we're talking about the order of 10, 20, 30 cases a day and the contacts they may have right now at home, but soon out in the community as we open up Shelter-in-Place, we need to be able to reach people on a much larger scale than we ever have before.

EH: So what should I expect if I test positive or if I am told that I've been in contact with someone who's tested positive?

SR: That's right so our first ask of you is pick up the phone if we call and you might know it's us calling; it may read California COVID team or come from a 408 or 916 area code.

What we're calling to do is first make sure you know that you tested positive. For most people that call should come from your doctor before it comes from us, but we want to make sure no one gets diagnosed and doesn't get that message.

We'll be calling to ask you first, how are you doing? How are you feeling? Do you have access to the healthcare you need and how can we help get you that health care?

But next, we'll have a series of questions to help us understand, both where you might have acquired the disease, are there further protections we can put in place to help people in your same situation safe, and then what can we do to help keep anyone safe and healthy who you might have had contact with.

We'll ask what your occupation is, and specific places you might have gone, or people you might have come face-to-face with, during the period usually a couple of days before you felt sick or tested positive, when we know people can already start shedding the virus and being contagious at that time.

So that's what would happen if you're a case, if you're sick. In addition, we know that it's hard to stay home. A lot of people are afraid of losing their jobs, not being able to pay rent, not being able to take care of a loved one, not being able to pick up food, and we have resources to help with all of these needs.

So the other purpose of the call is to ask you what you need to be able to stay safely stay home and connect you with resources like grocery deliveries, medication deliveries, transportation, or even rent assistance.

If you're one of those people who's been exposed, you'll get a similar phone call notifying you that we know you were exposed and when we make that call, we do everything we can to protect both your privacy and the person who might have exposed you.

So you may get minimum information you need to help keep yourself safe, like what day you were exposed. On top of that, we'll see are you feeling sick right now? Do you need healthcare right now?

We do want everyone who's been exposed to get tested, so we'll help direct you to the right place where you can get a test and then we'll have the same conversation we have with people who are sick.

What do you need to be able to stay home during the period where you could get sick and could become contagious? So that we can make sure you don't spread the disease to anyone. and that might be similar supports like groceries or rent assurance.

EH: So it sounds like the following up, taking that call is really critical to my own responsibility of stopping me from transmitting to others, to protect my family and my community as well.

SR: That's exactly right and not only is it important for you to take that call to protect others, but the call may be coming to notify you of an exposure and we want to make sure you're able to get that information.

EH: Great great and so we're gonna transition now to talk about the workforce that we need to do this. And so in terms of scaling up the workforce to provide the level of contact tracing that we need at the scale that we need, we are estimating that we need a workforce of about a thousand people within Santa Clara County at the peak.

We don't currently need a thousand individuals working on this right now, because our case numbers continue to remain fairly steady and the number of contacts associated with each case, because most people are staying home as much as possible, is relatively small. But we are preparing and we're being very proactive in preparing and identifying and training up that workforce.

So currently we are looking, primarily first, to identify county employees who may have additional capacity in their current roles who could be reassigned to this work. This is our County's commitment to this effort. We currently have 50 Public Health and other County staff who are already engaged in this work, and then we have additional 30 that have been trained this week, and we expect an additional 75 to be trained and deployed the following week.

This is a combination of County workers and volunteers. So to supplement the County workers, we also have asked our partner agencies, community-based organizations, and the community at large to see if there are volunteers that can be assigned to this work.

SR: Evelyn can I ask you, if I were interested in volunteering, how would I do that? Is there website I can go to?

EH: Yeah, so if you're interested in volunteering, our requirements for volunteers and our hope to ensure that we have the highest quality workforce, because the volunteers become agents of the county, they are supporting the county in this effort, and so we want to ensure that volunteers are able to participate for a minimum of three months and can commit to at least than that.

That allows us to ensure that when you are getting a call as a potential case or contacted, the person who is calling you is very well-trained, very well-equipped, can protect your privacy, and is really acting as a part of the county's response to COVID-19.

So if you are interested in volunteering, we're asking if you have great customer service skills, you're great on the phone a lot of this is phone interaction--most of it--and it requires the ability to build trust with the person on the other end.

As Dr. Rudman described, you are having conversations about sensitive information at times, and so we want to make sure that you are able to have those conversations.

We want to ensure that you have space to make those confidential phone calls as well, and access to the Internet.

And so if you are able to meet those qualifications, you can go to SCCgov.org/icanhelp and complete a survey there.

We are have been really overwhelmed and inspired by the community's response in our call for volunteers for this effort and we are quickly making our way through those lists. So if you have already submitted an application, we thank you so much. We are constantly prioritizing all those inbound inquiries and desires to participate and we'll follow up shortly and have been teeing people up to participate in this effort.

So we really appreciate our community's response to that.

SR: Well I can talk a little bit about what that's like if you join the volunteer group.

So first, what we do is train people because again, you're becoming part of our team and we want to make sure you have the tools you need to offer this really important information to the community being impacted by COVID.

So there's training on elements of the disease, what you need to know about how it's spread, and when someone, because it's contagious, when it's safe to leave the house again, and where to seek the resources you need, whether that's health care or other supportive services.

We also train people on use of the data platform that we use to capture all of this important information and the security elements you need to do so appropriately while protecting privacy.

But all of this work is done remotely from your home, so all you need is a computer, there's actually a phone built into the program. You need good Wi-Fi and a quiet place where you can make confidential phone calls.

But your day would start with logging in, checking in with your team and getting assigned new contacts and new contacts to reach out to and have these important conversations.

EH: Great, and so I know if I were to--going back to earlier--if I were a case or a contact, and I'm concerned about what happens when I give over my information and on a call, what happens to my information? How will it be used if I'm concerned about my family structure or my documentation status? What happens with this information?

SR: That's a really good question. I think one of the most important things is we will not ask about documentation status. Everything about your health care is irrespective of your documentation status.

We just want to make sure everyone in the community stays safe and stays healthy and because we're all one community, everyone's health impacts each other's.

With respect to your private information, just a small amount of information is shared with the volunteers and the County employees--the minimum information they need in order to reach out to people and give them the information they need to stay healthy and safe.

That information is protected in a couple of layers of ways. So first, there's electronic protections in the databases we use, in the way that information is transmitted, multiple layers of electronic data protection.

In addition, all volunteers and County workers will receive specific privacy training on how to follow privacy laws and ensure information is protected, both electronically and over the phone and as it's shared.

And then finally, we always share the absolute minimum amount of information we need to keep someone healthy and safe. This may mean that you get a call saying you've been exposed and we can't tell you who that exposure came from. Sometimes we are able to disclose that information, especially if we have specific permission to do so, but again the point of that is to protect peoples' privacy wherever we can and use the minimum information to help keep people healthy.

EH: Great. So it sounds like together, with the county, our partners, our businesses in the community, and every individual who takes and answers one of these calls, and as volunteers as well, we are all
part of our solution for moving forward.

So I appreciate, Dr. Rudman, your time for joining us today, and I want to extend to you all, if you were to receive a call from us, please answer the phone.

Again as Dr. Rudman said, it may be labeled as the California COVID team. It also may be a caller ID from 408 or a 916 area code. We will leave a message and if we do, please do return our call.

Again, we will ensure your privacy in that information and even as we call for a volunteer workforce, we will ensure that that workforce is also protecting everyone's privacy as is so that we can achieve these goals.

So your part in taking the call, staying home, if you are asked to stay home, and to quarantine and isolate.

We are all part of the solution for how we move forward and how we're able to ease shelter-in-place restrictions and orders.

So we know that this is an unprecedented time that we are going through and we appreciate all of our communities a tremendous response in participating in our public health response to COVID-19.

For more information about our coronavirus response, please visit our website at  SCCgov.org/coronavirus where you can find updates on our data and our county's response and how you can help as well.

And again, the site for volunteering is www.SCCgov.org/icanhelp

Thank you so much have a great day.

SR: Thank you.