05.22.20 COVID-19 Briefing Live Stream Transcript

The County of Santa Clara
May 22, 2020
Live Stream - Live with the County of Santa Clara
10am PT

Marianna Moles: Good morning and welcome to Live with the County of Santa Clara. My name is Marianna Moles and I'm a Public Information Officer here at the EOC and I'm here with my colleague, Ricardo Romero-Morales, who is also a PIO and today we are talking about testing and why it is so important that the most vulnerable communities in our county get tested.

They are not only more susceptible to getting COVID-19, as we have found, they are also more likely to have a severe case of COVID-19.

And while Ricardo is a PIO here in the EOC, he also works in Public Health in his daily job, as as do I. He--what he does normally is works in health equity and addressing health equity in our community.

Now health equity is not a term that most people are familiar with, in fact, what we have found through our research is that most people think of real estate when they hear hear the word "equity", so it's not common language, but, Ricardo, could you talk a little bit about what health equity means, especially in our county?

Ricardo Romero-Morales: Of course. Good morning and thank you, Marianna, and thank you everyone who's watching today. It is my pleasure to be here again, and yes, so health equity implies that ideally everyone should have a fair opportunity to obtain their full health potential and no one should be disadvantaged from achieving this potential, regardless of race, ethnicity socioeconomic status, or education.

As we know, there are systemic barriers that have been put in place, historically, that limit the access that our community members have to certain services. For example, if we think about our community in East Side San Jose, we have a large population who is Latin--who identifies as Latinx community. Now, not everybody there may have access to health care. Not everyone has a primary care physician. So there, right there, will be a barrier for people to actually go get tested or accessing a doctor who can refer them to get tested. So that's an example of a barrier or health disparity that we have in our community.

So what we're trying to do here in the county at the Emergency Operations Center is to address those barriers by bringing testing to their community, to where they are. For example, let me put my coffee down  because otherwise I'm gonna spill it, but for example, now we are pilot testing  one of our mobile testing units, deferred mobile testing unit, here in Santa Clara County, that we're gonna be bringing it today to La Tropicana Shopping Center, and we're this is just a soft launch for this and we're going to be testing the workers who are working at the Tropicana Plaza today. However, we'll be expanding that testing and we'll be bringing the mobile unit to the neighborhoods in East side San Jose, hopefully by next week, so please do stay  tuned and visit our website to get the latest updates on where our testing unit will be located.

MM: Yes, and that website is www.sccfreetest.org. We've made it pretty simple there with that URL.

RRM: Yes.

MM: So what I'm hearing from you, Ricardo, is that the very people who need to be getting testing the most are also the ones who are facing the most  barriers to getting testing, and so that that's why the county is working so hard to address this inequity that we're seeing. Can you talk a little bit more about the data that we're seeing on our dashboard that's on our website about the cases?

RRM: Absolutely. Thank you Marianna for bringing that up.

So we--for those who are not familiar with our website, we have dashboards that indicate the number of cases that we are having day by day, as well as now, we have the ability to desegregate the data by race and ethnicity, by age groups, and also now by zip codes.

Now, by looking at that data, we have learned that the majority of cases that we have in our county are among the Latinx community.

So to your point, that's one of the reasons why we identified that there is a lot of health disparities among minorities, and one of them being the Latinx community, and that's what we want to address by bringing and making testing easier and confidential for our population.

MM: And so all of us are hearing about testing non-stop; it's on the news, it's on social media, you hear us talking about it a lot and and one of the reasons we do talk about it a lot is because it is one of the five indicators that our Health Officers are looking at here in our county and also in the Bay Area to help determine when we can open the county back up safely. So the more people who get tested, and this is for everybody, not just certain groups, the more people who get tested, the better sense we will have of how the virus is moving around in our community.

And we also take into account the increase in testing when we look at the data and the epidemiology of the next steps that indicate which next steps we should take to reopen and so and there are other people who should get tested and besides the communities that are the vulnerable people we have mentioned now recently. Just now I'm sorry, and those people include people who over 60 years old, people who have chronic health conditions, if you work in the front lines--and I think you're gonna speak to this a little bit more--if you work in grocery stores, if you're a healthcare worker, first responder, you should be getting tested at least once a month.

And Ricardo, can you talk a little bit about what everybody can do to help get the word out about testing here in our county?

RRM: Yes. So first of all, I think many of us are excited about hearing that testing is now available. Many of us have been waiting patiently about when to get tests or where to get tested and now it's the time. Especially for those who are frontline workers, who are interacting with the public, and where it's difficult to maintain at least 6 feet apart of distance between the public and yourself.

That's when we're recommending for people to get tested at least once a month. Now yes, so to your point of like what are three things that you who is watching us right now can do to help us promote testing or to continue to spread the message.

One is you can definitely send a message, you know put it up on your social media, share our own social media messages, making your own about testing, inform a friend, your family members, encourage them to get tested, and also invite them to visit our website.

You know our website now has a map. It's an interactive map that allows you to identify where the closest--

MM: Pretty cool.

RRM: --testing site to you is.

So you can just enter your location and you will see where the nearest testing site is.

MM: To where you work or live.

RRM: Correct yes mm-hmm.

MM: And we have information about testing in multiple languages on our website and once again that website for the testing is sccfreetest.org.

 And so what are three things, we talked about what the general community can do to get the word out, and word-of-mouth is always really important for things like this. What are three things that people who live in these communities, who face these barriers, what can they do to get help to kind of lessen these barriers for themselves?

RRM: Yes. You know for minorities, especially for the Latinx community, we're very big and sharing what the vecina, what the comadre is saying. So we highly encourage you to do that. This is the time to do that. Share the message about getting tested. We now have a flyer so you might be coming around or you might be seeing this flyer around, in where we are explaining the testing. First of all testing is easy, and it's safe, and it's free, and confidential, and now it does not affect your immigration status, and it does not require a doctor's note, and it does not require insurance.

And if you have more questions about getting tested, or how to get tested, or where to go get tested, please call 2-1-1 or visit our website at sccfreetest.org.

MM: Yeah so, anything else you would like to add?

RRM: Yeah so if you are actually an essential worker or if you do have a primary care physician, my recommendation will be check in with them first. Give them a call, see if you can go get a test through your primary care provider and then if you don't have a doctor, if you don't have a primary care physician, we do have community clinics in our community where you can go get tested and now we're going to start having a mobile unit that's going to be going around the neighborhoods to go get tested so please do stay tuned for more information with the times and locations of our testing unit.

MM: So before we go, just two things we want to mention, the weather is going to be very hot coming up in the next few days and so we just want to remind everybody, you know, drink lots of water, don't go outside at the hottest time of the day to exercise, which is usually 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., but it's still important to get some fresh air and get out of your home. The other thing is we all know it's a holiday weekend, I don't know what holidays are anymore all the days blend together nowadays, and so we want to remind everybody that you have to continue to stay home and only memorialize the people that we have lost with the people who live with you or do it virtually or on the phone.

You all know that I have many traditions and I'm always talking about my family's traditions on this show, but this is another day where I am NOT gonna be able to see my family and we do have a very long-standing tradition of getting together for this day.

So please stay safe and stay home as much as possible. Go out for essential reasons and--

RRM: And go get tested.

MM: And go get tested.

RRM: Yeah.

MM: Exactly. So that's all we have for you today.

RRM: Yeah thank you so much for watching and again please stay safe and tell a friend about getting tested.

Thank you.

MM: Thank you.