1.8.2021 Press Conference COVID Vaccines Update

County of Santa Clara
January 8, 2021
Press Conference: COVID Vaccine Update

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Betty Duong: Hello, everyone. On behalf of the County of Santa Clara thank you for joining us today for this very important update. Today you will hear from our County leadership with an update on our COVID-19 vaccine plan distribution, including updates on new locations where eligible healthcare workers can be vaccinated. You'll hear first from Dr Sarah Cody, our Health Officer and Director of Public Health, here at County of Santa Clara. You will then hear from Dr Marty Fenstersheib our County of Santa Clara COVID-19 Testing Officer. You will then hear from Dr Jennifer Tong, Associate Chief Medical Officer of the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. um After all speakers are done we will head into a Q & A portion followed by statements provided by PIO, our public information officers in Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese.

We'll get started. Up first is Dr Sara Cody.

Dr Sara Cody: Good morning, everyone. Thank you, as always, for being here. Today we're here to share with you some really good news! um It's 2021. We had a very challenging 2020, and, and today we have some encouraging news to share with you all. As you know we are still, just to set the stage here, we are still in an extraordinarily difficult place in this pandemic. We're averaging over uh 1200 new cases reported a day, and we have recorded over 800 county residents who have died of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. However uh in a very short period of time, in partnership with all of the healthcare systems across our county, together, many, many, many county residents have been able to be vaccinated, and that is the good news! That systems are up and running to serve the residents of our county, so uh i want to emphasize a couple things, um before we get into details from Dr Marty Fenstersheib and Dr Tong, and that is, that vaccination is absolutely central to getting, working our way out of this pandemic, but even as we collectively ramp up vaccination, we still have to keep wearing our masks, not gathering, keeping our distance, and all of those things to keep us safe. We're going to be in this transition period over the next several months.

I also want to give you a little bit of a framework about how vaccination works. COVID vaccination is extraordinarily complex for a number of reasons. We are following both the federal framework and the state framework in how we roll this out, so vaccine rolls out in phases. Right now we're still in phase 1a, which includes about 140,000 people in our county, all of whom are health care personnel. So that's our focus now.

We are really thrilled with the partnership of all health care systems in our county, who have helped to stand up vaccination, and, so the word that we want to get out is, "if you fall into phase 1a, anyone who falls in phase 1a, you can go to your health care provider and get a vaccine," so Stanford, Palo Alto Medical Foundation, Kaiser and the county hospital system are all ready to vaccinate their patients who are in phase 1a, and of course our county will also be able to vaccinate people who don't fall within one of those larger health care systems, but all of the health care systems in in Santa Clara County have really been extraordinary in standing up vaccination, because they did this in the middle of the biggest surge we've ever had, and they did this in the middle of the winter holidays, because vaccine arrived right on the eve of the winter holidays, and even with those challenges, all of the systems in the county have been able to stand up uh robust vaccination, which, which I think is truly extraordinary. So uh next I'd like to um uh pass the presentation off to Dr. Fenstersheib, who will provide uh some additional details.

Dr. Marty Fenstersheib: Thank you, Dr. Cody. Good afternoon. We're as, Dr. Cody mentioned, we're really thrilled to be working in such collaboration with our partners, the other health facilities in the community. We are still in phase 1a, as a county, as a state, and that means healthcare workers, along with residents of long-term care facilities are being targeted right now for vaccinations. As was mentioned, we have approximately 140,000 health care personnel in this county that work here and are health care personnel. To date, we have vaccinated over 47,000 of those health care workers. Now that does not account for some of the additional federal allocated vaccine that comes in to the VA and through the retail pharmacy program that is actually out vaccinating residents of the long-term care facilities, so 47,000 plus additional vaccines that are coming in through those other programs. We have, the County has taken it upon itself, as I've mentioned in the past, to begin vaccinating the skilled nursing facility staff, there are an estimated 6,000 of those, and to date, we have vaccinated more than half of the skilled nursery, skilled nursing facility staff, and will continue to offer vaccines for them, and if necessary, we will actually visit those skilled nursing facilities to continue meeting the 100 percent target, to get them all vaccinated. So as was mentioned, also, we've talked about tiers for phase 1a, which broke down clinics, outpatient, inpatient, and various other categories of healthcare personnel, but at this point, the state has given the directive for all persons who are healthcare personnel to now be vaccinated, and so all of those persons can make arrangements through their own healthcare facilities, where they get their healthcare, uh whether it's at PAMF or whether it's at Stanford or Kaiser or the Valley to make an appointment, and get vaccinated. We have again been working very closely and vaccine has been allocated to those facilities, and they are standing by to vaccinate their uh their patients, who are in the phase one category. We have a new web website that is up and has all of the links, so that anybody that doesn't know how to get in touch with their facility, their provider, can go to a link which we've made very easy it's s c c free vax,  vax.org sccfreevax.org. We also want to remind everyone, again, as was also mentioned by Dr. Cody, that until we really have the majority of our residents vaccinated into the in our county, which will take several months to do, we must still keep our masks on, maintain our social distancing, and be very vigilant, because there's still plenty of a virus circulating in our community, and until such time, as we get everyone vaccinated, or a majority of vaccinations into the arms of people in our community, we cannot let our guard down. So again, very exciting news, we're very uh happy to, to announce our efforts with everyone else. The next phases that we will be moving into, which of course everybody wants to know when is it their turn, uh will be a phase b, and we're hoping to be able to move to that, that phase, at the, by the end of the month, some time by the end of the month. um Again dependent on the amount of vaccine that we expect to arrive and so more information on that to come. And now I'd like to turn this over to Dr. Jennifer Tong.

Dr. Jennifer Tong: We are very hopeful that this marks a turning point in the pandemic. The hospitals and clinics operated by the County of Santa Clara are very proud that we have achieved the ability to offer vaccines to those who are currently eligible, healthcare personnel in phase 1a. Over the past three days, we have opened three different clinics for vaccination. Next week, we open another large site, and we will continue further expanding the capacity at each of these sites to reach more people. This has been an extremely complex effort, spanning technology development, space development, staffing, training, outreach. Having personally been involved in many complex healthcare transitions over the years, I can say with confidence this is, this is by far the most complex that we have seen yet. Each healthcare system in our county is trying to address this unprecedented effort in the most efficient and effective way possible. We stand together with the community and the other health systems in our county to really achieve this turning point in the pandemic. Thank you. With that, I'll turn it over to Supervisor Otto Lee.

Supervisor Otto Lee: Good morning, and welcome, and thank you for coming this morning. I'm very pleased to join our dedicated county healthcare professionals as the county announces expanded vaccination sites that we talked about today here at the valley health center in Tully. We are very pleased that this site will be an additional facility to administer our vaccines, and we're very pleased that the state has also expanded the eligibility for vaccinations, to practically, all health care workers, and we urge those individuals to get vaccinated as soon as possible. I also want to thank specifically Dr. Sara Cody, Dr. Fenstersheib, and also Dr. Jennifer Tong for their leadership and hard work in this difficult times. Your efforts have absolutely saved so many lives and prevented so many more thousand residents from getting sick of this deadly virus, and I, of course, want to thank all our dedicated nurses and healthcare professionals for the incredible efforts of making sure the vaccines are received administered as safely but as quickly as possible, as well. Today's announcement underscores the county's commitment to more than 40,000 health care workers who have received the first doses of the COVID-19 vaccines. These additional vaccination sites are absolutely necessary as we come together to fight this pandemic. As we have seen, this issue is now revolving besides being a medical issue, it becomes a logistical issue, we're talking about getting enough people out there to get the vaccines out in a timely manner, and making sure that they are qualified and they're safe, and we're doing as best as we can for County, and I'm so proud to say that these are all coming together. At this point, we're looking at potentially rising up to 6,000 vaccinations a day is what we're looking at by next week, and these are some great numbers, that we're hoping to achieve very quickly, ramping up, and I want to thank our health care and county professionals from making this happen.

As much as this is a good news for the light of the end of the tunnel, that we could see, the numbers are still horrible. As of yesterday, we just had our first day United States, over 4,000 people died, four thousand! That's more than how many perish in one day and 9 11. Let's put them in perspective.

And the message is telling people is please don't go out. As much as you want to get together with friends, it's extremely dangerous. Wearing masks is absolutely important, and I want to make sure with the lunar new year coming by, many of us would love to see our loved ones, but this is absolutely the wrong thing to do. We have to use technology what is through Zoom or Webex on Microsoft Team meetings and whatnot. This is the only way we really could get to see each other because we absolutely want to make sure that we could live through this. And yes, we will, because, of the fact that these vaccines are going to have skilled nursing facilities and partners like drugstores like CVS and Walgreens are also getting vaccines directly to give to many, many of our skilled nursing facilities members and patients. We could beat this thing! But we need everybody to hunker down for the last time these next few weeks the next few months will be so crucial to get that out. And I just want to say, thank you, everybody, for, for putting up these hard difficult decisions and times that we're going through, and, but we will make this. uh One other good news I want to say, I've heard in the news this morning, is that this new variant that we heard that's going on UK looks like the good news is the vaccine they've been vaccinating is effective against it, which is really, really amazing, so I just want to make sure people understand the safety and how important it is to get the vaccinations. Don't doubt this! When you are able to get this vaccine, please come, please come, please get in line and get it done as soon as possible to protect yourself and protect your loved ones! Thank you very much.

Betty Duong: Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Lee. Thank you. um So we're going to head into our Q & A portion now. Because this event is being live-streamed on our Facebook channel, um our speakers will repeat the question before they answer. First question, Devin?

Media question: ...of framed the vaccination numbers thus far as a success story it is my understanding that the county has received roughly 105,000 doses of the vaccine, fewer than half of that has ended up in someone's arm. what kind of accounts for the delay in getting those other available doses administered? and what could speed that up?


Dr. Fenstersheib: Great, so the question is we've given about over 47,000. um We have received, the County has been allocated, I should say um 110,000. The, it's, it's very important for initially all of that vaccine to get into the hands of the providers and so all of the hospitals have received all of the vaccine that is required for them to meet the needs of all of their staff, plus begin doing the rest of the vaccination. As was mentioned, it's a it's a complicated process um, the hospitals have outreach to their staff, and they're in the process of getting all of them vaccinated. They have not all been vaccinated yet. That's why all of the vaccine is not in the arms of everyone, but they're all working very hard. There's issues, which is a good point, it brings up the issues of people's fears about the safety, the hesitancy that some people have, but this vaccine is a safe vaccine and should be utilized, and so I think, once we get over that hump, and people accept the vaccine more readily, you'll see that number rise considerably.

Media question: If I could just a quick follow-up? I did a little quick math after you gave us the 47,000 number. At the current rate, if nothing is accelerated, according to my calculations it would take roughly two and a half years to administer the vaccine to the two million people currently in the county. What do we do to get this faster? Because obviously, that's too slow.

Dr. Fenstersheib: right, and I would just go back to the fact that I was involved and Dr. Tong was involved in the testing of the testing of this community for for for the virus. It took a considerable effort, we started slow, um we were just doing a couple hundred uh people testing a day at the fairgrounds now we're doing um five-six thousand a day, twenty thousand, so I think um it's expected to start slowly, and we will absolutely ramp up. We've heard that the federal government, under the new administration is gonna push out a lot more vaccine. The plan is is to open many more mass vax sites, so we know that it's going to take time, but we're going to get, i think we're going to speed up our effort, and and work toward getting everyone vaccinated in just much shorter time in two and a half years that's for sure.

Media question: One last question for you. You said 140,000 people in tier 1a, 110 000 doses, with what degree of confidence do you think you need three times as much as you currently have for everyone to get a first and second dose, how confident are you that resupplies will be here in time to do that?

Dr. Fenstersheib: right, we don't have control over the federal government, but we have been promised those, and I think we will be getting those. There's no reason, that the vaccine manufacturers have said, um not to provide us, we've already gotten additional doses that, that are going to be used as second doses, so we expect that um we will have all the doses that we need.

Media question: Dr. Cody, have there been any instances of anybody having any kind of reaction to the vaccine in any way minor or major? And can you talk a little bit about what's in the vaccine for people who are worried about coming in to get it?

Dr. Cody: So the question is about adverse reactions, and what's in the vaccine. um To be perfectly honest I don't have the data on adverse reactions. Adverse reactions to any vaccine, there's a reporting system for them, VARES, the vaccine adverse events reporting system, um and so maybe we can look into getting some kind of information back to you, not something that we hold right now. um and uh is uh I'm not not an expert on vaccines. This is a different kind of vaccine uh than most vaccines, we're familiar with, both in the way it was manufactured, and and what kind of a vaccine it is. But the trials were rather large, and we feel confident based on what's been shared with us, at the local state and federal level, about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine.

Media question: Dr. Cody, how and when do we know do we find out whether the vaccine is actually having an effect on the numbers bringing them down?

Dr. Cody: Thank you. The question is, how do we know uh when and whether the vaccine is having an effect on bringing the numbers down. So I will answer that question with a couple of comments. um the What we're aiming for, our big, hairy, audacious goal is to get to 85 percent herd immunity. That's a number that Dr. Fauci uh described. It is a guess, but I think it's a very robust guess, as to what our goal needs to be. um We know that part of our population is already protected because they've had the infection. However, we also know that the recommendation is for everyone to get vaccinated regardless of their history of having had COVID or not, and so by our calculation, we need to have over you know one and a half million people in our county vaccinated, which means that, as Dr. Fenstersheib said, all systems, all healthcare delivery systems in the county, are going to need to grow the capacity to vaccinate at a fairly rapid clip. As we mentioned earlier, I think that what we've seen so far is promising, because our health care systems were able to bring up vaccinations, in the middle of responding to the biggest surge we've ever had, and over a holiday. Remember that the vaccines didn't first the first doses of vaccine didn't arrive into the county until the week before Christmas, um so I just wanted to, I wanted to provide that context because that reassures me, you know, even the most complicated effort we've ever undertaken in the middle of some extraordinarily complex times, we've gotten as far as we have in a relatively short period of time.

Media question: About hospitalizations, what are they now? and are they where you expect them to be currently? and then what do you anticipate their direction?

Dr. Cody: The question is about the number of hospitalizations where are we? and where do we expect to be? um As of uh this morning, well I would say over the last several days, the ICU capacity, which is what we watch very closely, um we are, we are down to it's ranging between 20 to 25 ICU beds across the entire County, so that's very low. That's very worrisome. Our capacity in every hospital is stretched, and we are also of course wanting to help other other counties and other regions, right. We're trying to take, do our part to take care of everybody. um So we are, we are by no means out of the woods, um we are really in the thick of it, um the projections vary by the day. I think the key unknown, which is why I can't like project what's going to happen, is what bump will we see in our cases as a result of holiday travel and gathering. So we saw a significant bump after Thanksgiving, that's now been translated into hospitalizations and an overwhelm of the system. We don't yet know what the effect of Christmas and New Year's travel will be. So that's the big unknown. um What I will say is that our hospitals have been enormously collaborative as far as balancing the load, so we're really looking at the hospitals across the county as a system, and they're and they are doing a good job of helping each other out and balancing things, so that as much as possible, anybody who needs a healthcare resource has access.

Media question: So some people have suggested that we need kind of an effort on the scale of just a mass vaccination center or centers and perhaps run 24/7 is there a plan for something of that scale? Is there money? is there staff in order to sort of make that reality?

Dr. Cody: The question is around mass vaccination. Is there uh like a 24/7 mass vaccination? and is there is there money? is there a plan? um and the answer to that is on behalf of the county there is not a plan currently for something like a 24/7 mass vaccination. I want to emphasize, I'm not a logistics person, as our Supervisor Lee is, but even I can appreciate the complexity of this, and let me just lay out a couple of the very variables that make this so complex. uh Number one, the storage and handling for the vaccines currently available, the Pfizer vaccine that requires a freezer of you know minus 70 degrees, and then some very particular storage and handling. The the Moderna vaccine, minus 20-degree freezer, so that means the design kind of has to be around the proximity to the freezer, so that's that makes this vac seem pretty different. Number two, we have two vaccines now, but in the future, we may anticipate there are different vaccines. Each is under emergency use, use authorization, which means there's very particular procedures in order to give the vaccine. It's not like just giving the flu vaccine, and they're different for each vaccine. And then if you add on to that, that it's not like the flu vaccine, where we say "everyone six months of age and up needs to get vaccinated. come now," rather, it's going out in phases, based on priority group, adds a significant layer of complexity.

Media question: ... heard some police officers who are questioning why they're not getting the vaccine when firefighters are? um maybe can you explain why, or is there uh when maybe police officers can expect to start receiving?

Dr. Cody: So the question is around uh police officers, law enforcement. When will law enforcement be vaccinated? and a comment that firefighters are already in process of getting vaccinated? As Dr. Fenstersheib and and i have described phase 1a is for healthcare personnel, fire, paramedics are included as healthcare personnel, and so they belong in phase 1a, and have been offered vaccine. Law enforcement is not in phase 1a, as soon as I believe they're in phase 1b, although I have to go check. As soon as they're in the priority group, they will of course be offered vaccine. And again, remember all of the health care systems, operating in our county are receiving vaccine and ready to vaccinate their patients, once they come into a eligible group.

Media question: is there a specific type, is there a date, in which you would like to complete phase one? one a? begin phase one b? complete one? I just want to kind of get you on the record if there is a timeline?

Dr. Cody: Right, the question is, is there a timeline for the phases? And the answer is, um we are trying to get through phase 1a as fast as we can, all hands on deck effort, right? all hands on deck effort. As soon as we are confident that the the people eligible for phase 1a have access to their appointment and may have have made their appointment, then we will be able to transition into phase 1b. The, the, it was really just in the last 48 hours that we got confirmation from the California Department of Public Health that we could offer vaccination to everyone in phase 1a. Prior to that, we were moving tier by tier which makes it more complex, so I think that now, we will be able to go faster, and and that's great for everybody. Thank you.

Betty Duong: okay this now concludes our English language and American Sign Language portion of the press event. The, we will now provide a Spanish language statement, followed by a Vietnamese language statement, and Chinese language statement. Thank you.

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