City of Cupertino, CA County of Santa Clara COVID-19 Videos, 13 Nov 2020

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From YouTube: County of Santa Clara Public Health Dept. Press Conference - November 13, 2020

Description

Santa Clara County and other counties throughout the Bay Area are seeing a sudden, rapid spike in COVID-19 cases and a significant increase in hospitalizations. The average number of new cases per day in Santa Clara County has more than doubled since early October. With transmission and hospitalizations on the rise, health officers in counties across the Bay Area are tightening local rules for high-risk indoor activities where the virus spreads more easily.

In Santa Clara County, Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody today announced that the County’s dramatically increasing case counts make clear that the County will be moved to the State’s Red Tier next Tuesday November 17th. Unless the current surge is quickly brought under control, the County expects to be moved to the Purple Tier in the next few weeks.

Dr. Cody and most of her colleagues around the Bay Area will be issuing local orders today requiring the closure of indoor dining and imposing limits on certain other high-risk activities. The new restrictions on activity in Santa Clara County will take effect on Tuesday, November 17th at 12:01 a.m.

For more information about this update, visit https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/press-release-11-13-2020-contain-covid19-spread.aspx

Recorded November 13, 2020.

The City of Cupertino would like to express its thanks to the County of Santa Clara for the use of their video materials during the COVID-19 pandemic.

For more information regarding the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak in Cupertino, please visit https://www.cupertino.org/coronavirus.

A

For the latest information regarding the covid 19 pandemic in cupertino, please visit cupertino.org coronavirus.

B

Good afternoon my name is james williams, I'm the county council for the county of santa clara joining me. This afternoon we have dr sarah cody, our health officer and director of the public health department and supervisor cindy chavez, president of the board of supervisors, we're here with some announcements based on the significant uptick in cases.

B

I know we spoke with you last just earlier this week on monday about what we were seeing and what was happening and that concerning trend has continued and because of that continued trend along with some other local bay area jurisdictions, dr cody's, taking actions to help try to rein in the surge that we're seeing here in santa clara county and what we're also seeing in the bay area across the state and in fact across the united states.

B

So I'm going to first turn it over to dr cody. To talk about that, and I will come back and speak a little bit about in more detail about what some of these actions will.

B

C

Thank you all again for being here for the second time this week today. I am here, unfortunately, to announce some more sobering news uh and the actions that we will be taking as a result, uh first sort of to explain to you all why we're taking the actions we will be taking.

C

I want to show you again: what's happened to our epidemic curve, even since we were here today monday before I go over these details, I want to say that these trends that we are seeing here in our county are also being seen across the san francisco bay area region, as well as in many parts of our state and our nation, and, as we are here today in the middle of november, looking forward to thanksgiving holiday and other holidays, it is absolutely imperative that we take action now, uh each and every one of us in order to get through this.

C

So a little bit about what we're seeing here, I want to draw your attention again to the far left side. This is our local epidemic curve. What it looks like here in our county and if you see that orange line it's the seven day, rolling average of cases reported each day, and what I want you to note is how steep that curve is. It goes straight up so, after a slow drift up in the month of october, around november 3rd or 4th, it started to head straight up it's the steepness of that curve.

C

That concerns all of us, and that requires that we act swiftly.

C

As of today, uh we had an additional 362 new cases reported just today. Our hospitals have a hundred and ten covet patients being cared for.

C

That's an increase from an average of 80 patients that we were seeing, uh just as uh you know, um just in october, so uh hospital uh hospitalizations are rising as well.

C

So today I am announcing, along with colleagues in most of the large bay area, counties that similar to san francisco, we will be closing indoor dining. We anticipate that, as of tuesday, the state will be assigning us to the red tier. We will be making those red tier closures effective on tuesday.

C

Unfortunately, I think our trends are not headed in a favorable direction for us and similar to in march. When we had a rapid increase in cases, we may be needing to take additional restrictions quickly. We are watching our data extraordinarily carefully. We are working closely with our colleagues across the bay area and, to the greatest extent we can we are acting together for the benefit of the public.

C

I I want to close by saying that we do not take these actions lightly, not at all. These are extraordinarily difficult decisions to make. However, our first priority is always to protect the public's health and the way that we do that is by preventing spread of this virus.

C

We've done a extraordinarily good job so far, we need everyone to stay patient to hang in there with us and to do everything they can. Every single action that people takes is gonna, help get uh keep people out of the hospital.

C

It's gonna keep us from needing to order up morgue space, uh and it's gonna enable our businesses uh to get back uh more quickly. So it's really important that we all take action now. Thank you.

B

I'm going to take a minute or two to elaborate on what specifically will be occurring. Effective tuesday, as dr cody mentioned in santa clara county indoor dining, will be closed, effective tuesday. In addition, we'll be moving into the red tier restrictions.

B

The state allows 72 hours for those to take effect, but we're moving up the implementation of those so that the red tier implementation will also occur on tuesday. What does that mean?

B

Some of the changes between where we're at right now in the orange tier and the red tier under the state framework mean that, for example, fitness centers will be at a capacity limit of 10 percent.

B

That wineries can be outdoors. Only outdoor bars will be closed. Bowling alleys and indoor family entertainment, centers, closed card rooms can be outdoors only capacity limitations for general retail and for critical infrastructure sectors at 50 percent.

B

That's again, all the state's criteria for the red tier and those will be going into effect here in santa clara county on tuesday there's some other more nuanced items. But again it's all the red tier items that you can find on the state's covid19 website.

B

We will be updating the various directives and guidance documents today and through the weekend to provide that information and those will all be available on the counties covet 19 website.

B

One of the reasons that we are acting swiftly is because one of the lessons that we have learned- and it was demonstrated to be true here locally in in march, as well as in july and has demonstrated to be true across the country- is that actually acting quickly helps bring things under control faster and that's generally true of something where you have an exponential growth curve.

B

Like we see with this virus, and so we are moving a little bit faster to implement restrictions that would otherwise on the state's timeline, take a little longer to come into effect. But that would be coming to effect anyway and by moving those extra days faster, we will be able to prevent some significant, a number of serious illnesses, some deaths, but also try to help rein in the rate of spread in a way that helps us contain things sooner so that we can be at a more stable level.

B

We'll continue to watch what's happening as dr cody mentioned, and we'll, of course provide continued updates. As we see things progress, but that rate of growth is something that's concerning all of us tremendously here locally and across the region. I'm going to now turn it over to supervisor cindy chavez, president of our board of supervisors,.

D

Thank you, um and I want to thank everyone very much for being here and apologize for all of the noise. um Let me just make a couple of observations.

D

One is that I think, as a community, we tried really hard to fight this back and I know the leaders in our eoc and the doctors across this county, and so many many of you have really been following every rule you can and this. So this is really bad news and it's very hard to hear, but here's what we need we're going to need everybody's help. These numbers are going in the wrong direction and when I say numbers I'm talking about people, we have more people in our community getting sick.

D

We have more people in our community getting in the hospital and we have more people more members of our community dying.

D

What that means is that we've all got to dig in, and you know really double down, and let me just say what I'm I'm most concerned about, and I I'm saying this to all of you, because we really need your help.

D

If we keep going in this direction, we have a lot of schools that are planning to open in january or in the spring, and we know every one of our children every newborn, that's not being able to see faces because they're seeing masks and we have lots of littles who aren't learning how to work with other littles.

D

We have an obligation, I think, as the leaders of this community, and by that I mean the adults in really fighting back this virus so that we can get our kids back to school. We can get our businesses back open. We can get our lives back as normal as we can get them. So today, really is it's bad news, but it is a call to action.

D

It's our time to act, and I know a lot of people feel like they've done everything they can we're asking those of you who've done everything you can do a little more.

A

For the latest information regarding the covid 19 pandemic in cupertino, please visit cupertino.org coronavirus.