04.08.20 Press Conference Live Stream Transcript

The County of Santa Clara
April 8, 2020
Live Stream - Live with the County of Santa Clara
10am PT

James Williams: Good morning, my name is James Williams. I'm the County Council for the County of Santa Clara. Thank you for joining us. We do have an important announcement today regarding the efforts that the county is taking to address personal protective equipment and ventilator inventories and assistance that we are asking for from our entire community in that endeavor.

I'm going to be turning it over in a moment to Dr. Sara Cody our Public Health Officer. We'll also be joined this morning by Dr. Jennifer Tong, Hospital Surge Capacity Branch Chief in our County Emergency Operations Center and Supervisor Mike Wasserman, Vice President of the Board of Supervisors. Dr. Cody will begin.

Sara Cody: Thank you and good morning everyone. It's nice to see everyone. Thank you for being here. I'm Dr. Sara Cody, Health Officer for The County of Santa Clara. So first, just a quick update. As of five o'clock yesterday, our County had recorded 1380 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 46 deaths.

While, I'd like to say that we won't have any further cases or deaths to report, we know that's not the case. We know the virus is widespread in our community and that we will continue to see more cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the days, weeks, and months to come. But before I announce today's new order, I do want to share that some signs that our collective action to shelter in place has been protective, has slowed the spread, and has enabled our health care facilities to prepare and likely has
prevented deaths. However, we must continue to prepare and we must continue to do everything in our power to prevent additional hospitalizations and deaths and to protect our community. So today, I'm announcing a new order. This order asks all businesses and individuals to report, on a one-time basis, inventories of personal protective equipment and ventilators.

We're only asking individuals and businesses to report if they have above a minimum amount and
we'll go into more detail about that. So, the intent of this order is to ensure that we have comprehensive collective information about what PPE resources exist across our community. We know we need PPE to protect healthcare workers, first responders, and other medical staff so they can continue to deliver critical health care services to everyone in our community. Thank you.

Williams: So I'm going to take a quick minute to describe a little bit about what the order does, what it's asking for from our community. First, I want to emphasize that this only applies to PPE and ventilators
above a minimum quantity and that's laid out in the order itself. But we're asking all entities and individuals in our community who have inventories above these amounts to fill out a form on the website. It's available in multiple languages.

We try to make it as simple and easy as possible for people to do so it's not an onerous requirement. But if folks have, for example, more than 5000 individual gloves, or more than 500 medical-grade 95 masks, or more than 500 non-medical grade and 95 masks, or more than 500 surgical masks, or more than 100 safety goggles, or more than a 100 face shields, or more than a 100 long-sleeved protective gowns of any type or more than a hundred protective coveralls, or more than 500 hair covers, or 500 shoe covers, or more than a 100 containers of bleach wipes, or 100 containers of sani wipes, or more than 100 containers of hand sanitizer.

Those are the kinds of quantities that we're asking people to report. If you have less than those quantities, there is no reporting requirement. What we are trying to seek is information on significant inventories of PPE. In addition, we're asking people who may happen to have powered air purifying respirator hoods, controlled air purifying respirators, and related systems in much smaller quantities and those are relatively rare for people to have but people do have those or if people have any supplies of ventilators that they also report those.

We know that there are actually many businesses in our community that do have some significant stocks of this kind of PPE. Many of them are not being used right now and getting this awareness will help us know what supply we can source here locally. So that we're not as reliant on scarce state and federal supplies and so that we can do what we need to as a community. But again, the reporting requirement is only for those amounts in excess of the minimum thresholds.

We believe that well over 90% of individuals will have no nothing that they need to report, nothing they need to do. But there are many businesses, in many sectors who do have significant quantities of PPE and there may be a handful of individuals who have significant stockpiles of PPE. And we are asking those folks by April 15th to go to the website, fill out the simple survey and let us know what quantities they have locally.

I also wanted to emphasize that this is being asked of folks in the county based on a specific provision in the health and safety code that allows the Health Officer to obtain information about scarce and critical supplies and that same provision requires that this information be kept confidential. So it will be only used by the county for public health purposes. This will not be public information. People's proprietary information on what supplies that they have that will remain confidential.

Again, people can provide this by going to our website which is the public health website SCCPHD.org/CV19PPE and the survey is available in multiple languages. It's not just in English but also in Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese. It's available in multiple languages. We've tried to make it as easy to use as possible so it's a minimum burden on folks but it's absolutely critical information for us to have. And to explain a little bit more about why it's so critical, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Jennifer Tong.

Jennifer Tong: Good morning, my name is Dr. Jennifer Tong. I am leading the Healthcare Surge Capacity Team in the county of Santa Clara Emergency Operations Center. I'd like to further explain the rationale
behind this inventory collection. We are preparing for a possible scenario in which we might need more PPE than is currently available for those who are providing care to patients affected by COVID. I'd like to emphasize that currently our hospitals have supplies to continue caring for those patients and we continue to receive supplies to fulfill requests for support from various health care providers.

We have made requests to state and federal levels for replenishing of our supplies but this is a unique situation in which the disaster is so widespread across our state and across our country that we can't rely solely on our state and federal government and we really have to turn locally to see what capacity for inventory exists here in our county. Our primary goal at this time is awareness. Awareness on our side to know what exists locally and awareness within the community who by people and in business
entities who might have items of use and who might not even realize that those items could be of use in healthcare settings.

We would also encourage conservation of these items and the use of alternatives if feasible so that we
can conserve these important personal protective equipment items for those taking care of patients with COVID-19. For those who wish to consider donation of items we would direct you to the VMC foundation website. The VMC foundation is collecting donations for entities across our county including each hospital in our county when the need arises. I would note that if you offer a donation, there might be some time required to receive a response because we are prioritizing first those items that are in greatest need and those where the quantities are the highest. This is really an opportunity for our
community to come together collectively.

Most likely all of us will be impacted by knowing someone affected by COVID19 and so through this collective effort we can all achieve a better state together. Thank you.

Williams: We’ll now hear from a Supervisor Mike Wasserman, Vice President of the Board of Supervisors.

Mike Wasserman: Thank you and good morning. My name is Mike Wasserman, Santa Clara County District 1 Supervisor. The county is anticipating a shortage of PPE and ventilators. PPE, personal protective equipment and ventilators. Once again, Dr. Cody and the entire team is trying to stay ahead of the ball, get ahead of things. Their anticipation is that we likely will find a shortage of personal protective equipment and ventilators going forward at the rate we are without other supplies coming in.

We are planning for the worst, we are hoping for the best. I want to express my strong support for the actions a public health officer is taking today to protect frontline workers and patients. The order is about protecting the people who protect us. We're sheltered at home. These people are out there on the frontlines protecting people who are infected. We need to protect the protectors. We have a shortage of critical PPE that is needed to safeguard our health care professionals to allow them to provide quality care.

Everyone, government, the public, businesses - large and small, all play a role in addressing this challenge. We need to get clarity on the inventory of the PPE that's out there so we can plan ahead. I want to thank the nurses, the EMTs, the respirator therapists, medical assistants, doctors, and so many
other professionals across the county who have been protecting us every day during this crisis.

Again we've been thinking about the victims and we need to. We've been thinking about the people
who will get infected and we need to. Well, while all this is going on, those first responders are out there. They have left their families to be out there to protect those most in need. Santa Clara County was one of the first in the nation to have a confirmed case of COVID-19. Our healthcare workers and first responders have been battling this crisis for more than two months now.

We owe them a debt of gratitude. We owe them the equipment needed to work safely to protect us. This order is another opportunity for the business community, the public, and the county to come
together. We've done a tremendous job of this so far. Please fill out the PPE survey that you heard about and let us know what supplies you have so we can plan ahead. We need to know if we have a
lot of something or a shortage of something. And we need to know where those some things are so that we are prepared when the need comes to address them appropriately. We ask for everyone's continued partnership to keep our community safe. Help us identify the PPE so we can protect those who protect us. Thank you very much.

David Campos: Good morning, thank you very much Vice President Wasserman. My name is David Campos, I'm a deputy County Executive and along with Evelyn Ho, I'm serving as Co-lead Public Information Officer for the Emergency Operations Center. We'll take questions but before we do that I want to note a couple of things. First of all, we have multilingual speakers ready to be interviewed with different languages to make sure that our communities, are monolingual communities in the county have the information needed. And second, just to remind you that we are doing daily briefings Monday through Friday and we'll have our next briefing tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. So we'll take questions.

Reporter: [unintelligible]

And two, Dr. Cody, how, I don't know if you talked about this yesterday, but how bad is next week?

Cody: So with regards to masks, I have not issued any orders mandating masks. However, across the state and in many places across the country we now understand that covering your face is one very important layer of protection in addition to hand washing, keeping areas clean, and maintaining a distance.

But I want to say the masks including the many masks that people are making that's to prevent the wearer from inadvertently spreading particularly if there's someone who doesn't have symptoms or has mild symptoms. So when I look around I see a pretty high degree of compliance with that which is wonderful and it's very protective for the community. For now we do not have a mandate that's right.

So our shelter in place order and collective actions that that everyone living in our community has taken we know that it has slowed the spread. It has flattened our curve locally and so we know that we've lengthened the doubling time the number of days in which our cases double has gone from around three days before the order to probably two weeks or maybe even a little bit longer. So that's the good news. The bad news is that that doesn't mean that we're not still seeing new cases and new hospitalizations and unfortunately new deaths reported every day. But it does appear to be slowing. Thanks.

Campos: Thank You Dr. Cody. Yes

Reporter: [unintelligible]
What is the uh, what is the reason behind this? Give me the short version or the long version.

Cody: So the short version is that we know with these communicable diseases that can grow exponentially particularly in a population where everyone is susceptible and that's the situation that we have with COVID-19. We know that the timing of the action is incredibly important and so when you act early just as the curve is taking off, you can prevent you can slow things down and and that's what we did.

We also know so that if you take action early you can prevent cases. Early action is also extraordinarily disruptive as we've experienced both socially and economically but if you wait and take action later, you get the same social and economic disruption get all those harms but you don't get as much benefit.

So I'm delighted that in California, we've taken early action and I think that we've prevented a number of hospitalizations and deaths.

Campos: We're trying to get our doctors back to all the things that they have to attend to. So we'll take one more question if there's, yes.

Reporter: [unintelligible]

Campos: We'll ask Dr. Tong.

Tong: So the question was, if we can quantify the need, including how many items of PPE we are going through per day or a burn rate?

I wish I had an easy answer for that. It's complicated because it not only depends on evolving approaches to how PPE is used. For example, when patients with COVID-19 are cared for together in a in a specific unit of a hospital for example, some of the items of PPE can be reused as healthcare workers go about their day during their shift.

So even as we think we might have adequate numbers to predict need the evolution such as cohorting patients together in units within a hospital can change that. The need the prediction of need also changes with the volume of patients and it's particularly the volume of hospitalized patients.

So what I can say is that for each patient who is hospitalized, we know that there are multiple items of PPE consumed per day, multiple pairs of gloves, multiple n95 masks, multiple gowns. Care teams are also changing. So in traditional medicine a patient is cared for by maybe 20 different individuals entering the room.

And so some of our models of usage have been based on that but as our patient volume and patient's characteristics change some of those care teams are also changing limiting the number of people who are essential for going into the room performing work for patient care in team-based care where you might have ICU nurses and non ICU nurses working together to care for a range of patients.

And so taking all those things into consideration we are estimating our need and those projections evolve as the situation evolves. So the current population at the convention center comprised of individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19 and who need a safe place for a respite level of care.

The initial intention was for those who have been hospitalized but we have expanded that to those who have tested positive in the community and need a safe place where they're not exposing others and where they can receive some medical care from the physicians, nurses, and EMTs, paramedics who are on-site.

We have been fortunate that we were able to open the facility before we had a high level of surge so it's given us an opportunity to outline the process workflows there to best keep the staff and the patients well cared for. And so we are nowhere near capacity right now we certainly still have capacity and we don't expect to be at full capacity by next week, which is actually very fortunate for us
to continue preparing for a time of increased patient need.

Reporter: Do you have a number?

Tong: I don't have a number at this moment, sorry.

Campos: We're happy to follow up. And we made a commitment to get our medical personnel out as quickly as possible so we're gonna give the last word to our County Council who wanted to just provide some concluding remarks.

Williams: Thank you, David. I just wanted to emphasize again because we need people to actually go and take stock and look at this go to the website SCCPHD.org/CV19PPE that website lists the minimum quantities.

Again, most people will not have amounts above the minimum quantities and we've got some of those amounts listed here but this is only some of the categories. If you have significant inventories of PPE or if you have any ventilators, you need to fill out that form. It's a simple form. It's available in multiple languages. We tried to make it like I said simple but you do need to fill out that form.

We'd like you to fill it out as soon as possible but no later than April 15th. So again everyone should think about how much PPE they have, think about whether they have any ventilators, if they have any ventilators or if they have any significant stocks of PPE go to the website fill out the form and that will make a huge difference. We also have information there as mentioned earlier about how to donate so if you have significant supplies and want to donate you can do so in fact at the end of the survey it'll take you right to that page if you're so interested and that'll make a huge difference for our doctors, our nurses, other health care providers, first responders. Thank you.

Reporter: [unintelligible]

Williams: That is exactly right. This is an inventory. It's a one-time inventory. We need to know how much we have locally. It's vital information for us to have so that we can plan, so that we can be prepared, and we're asking everyone to do their part to share that basic information with us.

Campos: Thank you very much.

Reporter: Dr. Cody, can you just say a few words about some light at the end of the tunnel? In terms of the shelter order. What needs to happen? What kind of indicators are you looking for?

Cody: So that's a very hard question. I you know on the one hand I am so heartened by what we've been able to do to slow the spread and at the same time we cannot let up we have to continue to do what we're doing and the reason why is because most of the people living in our community are still susceptible.

So we're working really hard right now trying to think about what would the signals be? What what do we need to have in place in order to relax a little bit? That planning is not just underway here in our county. This is what's happening really across the world. And I don't have anything definitive to tell you other than we're working really hard to figure it out. But I think that in general this incident is a marathon, maybe even an ultramarathon. It's gonna be a while.

Campos: Thank you very much everyone.