City of Cupertino, CA County of Santa Clara COVID-19 Videos, 10 Dec 2021

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From YouTube: County Public Health Dept. Press Conference (Report of Omicron Variant) - December 10, 2021

Description

On Thursday, December 9, the County of Santa Clara received its first report of a county resident with the Omicron variant of COVID-19. The individual is in isolation and was fully vaccinated but had not received a booster; they had recently returned from domestic travel out of state.

Health officials have been anticipating that the Omicron variant would be detected locally, so this report does not come as a surprise. This news, in conjunction with rising case counts in the county, Bay Area, and across the state, serves as a reminder for residents to adopt preventive measures, including vaccinations and booster shots, to best protect themselves and the community. With the CDC’s approval on Thursday, the County has begun accepting Pfizer booster appointments for those ages 16 and older.

In addition to vaccinations and boosters, masking, testing, ventilation, and distancing remain the best defenses against COVID-19. Officials noted that as the holiday season is upon us, people should stay mindful of risks.

If people must travel or gather for the holidays:

* Get tested immediately before travel, upon return, and again 3-5 days later.

* Have everyone ages 5+ get their COVID vaccine.

* Have everyone ages 16+ get their COVID booster.

* Wear a mask indoors and in crowded settings. Wearing medical grade masks and adjusting masks so they fit tightly are important.

* Keep group gatherings small in both size and duration. Gather only with close family units.

* Outside gatherings are safer than indoor gatherings.

* Be cautious around elderly or immunocompromised individuals and consider COVID-19 testing before such interactions.

Parents of very young children and those who have not been vaccinated should make sure to take all advised precautions. Avoid large gatherings. Always wear mask in indoor public settings and in crowded outdoor settings (unless under age 2).

County clinics are taking appointments at https://www.sccfreevax.org. Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are all available within the County. Also check with doctor offices and pharmacies, many of which can provide COVID-19 vaccines, including boosters (see https://myturn.ca.gov).

Vaccinations through the County are no-cost to the public, insurance is not required, and there are no immigration requirements.

This press conference was recorded on December 10, 2021.

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 kovid 19 pandemic in cupertino, please visit.

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Cupertino.Org coronavirus.

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Good morning everybody, my name, is ricardo romero morales. I'm a lead public information officer with the county of santa clara.

C

Thank you for being here this morning today we're going to provide an update regarding the new variant here in santa clara county and today we're honored to have dr sarah cody health officer of santa clara county, as well as dr marty, fenserchev, who is our health officer for vaccinations and testing here in santa clara county. We will begin in english and we will take questions and answers in english as well after that we'll move into spanish, chinese and vietnamese without any further ado, I welcome dr sarah cody.

D

Good morning, everyone uh good to be here on a crisp december morning, um so I want to share with you updates regarding omicron here in santa clara county, have uh two related updates, and then I'm going to turn it over to dr fenster scheib, um to talk a little bit more about vaccination and boosting.

D

So uh yesterday we received our first report of a resident of santa clara county with the omicron variant. This person was fully vaccinated, but not yet boosted. They first had some symptoms on november 30th got tested on december 1st, and we received the sequencing results yesterday that confirmed that they have the omicron variant. They had very mild symptoms which resolved quickly and they have been isolating at home.

D

This was the the person with the omicron variant had traveled to florida, most likely where they were exposed, so a community exposure in florida rather than an international exposure, and then, of course, came back here so an important case, but a domestic imported case.

D

So ever since we first learned about omicron, we have been anticipating a detection here, because our population is large and our population is diverse and our population is mobile and we have two different ways that we've been looking for to detect. Omicron. One, of course, is through isolates from people, as in this case that I just described, and the other is a surveillance system that we have in our sewer sheds. So four different sewer sheds in the county.

D

We have samples collected every day uh and tested, and so that's both to detect the sars cov2 virus, as well as the variants that are emerging.

D

So uh yesterday we also receive results of the first omicron detection in a sewer shed in our county. So we have four sewer sheds where we do the surveillance. The sewer shed with the detection was the sewer shed that serves north county.

D

It's about a little over two hundred thousand uh population under surveillance and serves palo alto mountain view, los altos, los altos hills, stanford and a little sliver of san mateo county so that sewer shed samples taken on december 7th.

D

We received the results yesterday that there's an omicron detection there, the resident of our county with the omicron lives in the catchment area of that sewer shed. So this is interesting and important because it tells us that these surveillance systems are both giving us the same information.

D

So the question is: what does this change? Do? We do anything differently now that we have this information.

D

I would point to some other information that we have on our dashboard, where you can see quite clearly that the rates among unvaccinated are going straight up. They are now above 80 cases per hundred thousand population per day.

D

They are also increasing among the vaccinated, although much less dramatically, much more gradually and much more slowly, but they are rising a bit nevertheless, which underscores the importance of boosting.

D

So in addition to vaccination and boosting which dr fenstersheim will talk about in just a moment, I also want to underscore the four other incredibly important prevention layers that we've been talking about for almost two years that are still important, and I think that we need to rededicate ourselves to these practices.

D

They are testing masking, particularly when indoors or in a crowded outdoor setting ventilation.

D

Outdoors as we are now much better ventilation than indoors and distancing, and by distancing I mean both the distance that we keep between people as well as the size of gatherings um and um and just the general number of people that each of us are in contact with every day so vaccinate and boost mask test, ventilate and distance.

D

With that, I will turn it over to dr fenster scheib and then we'll both be available for questions.

E

Thank you, dr cody good afternoon, everyone! So, yes, we we now have omicron in our county, and that was to be expected. How have we done with our vaccinations? Well, if you notice on our dashboards, we are approaching 80 percent of all of our population being fully vaccinated and that's quite amazing. We have some of the highest vaccination rates in the united states.

E

However, what we're finding now is that, having just that primary series, the two doses- it's not enough- it's just not enough, and we need to now move to make sure that everyone that is eligible gets boosted. So how are we doing on our boosters?

E

Well, basically, we have about 39 percent of our eligible population that has come in to be to get their booster 39 percent again pretty low, and that's um that's it's even lower in the 18 to 49 year olds, which is only 20, so if you're over 50 or over 65, you've done better. You've come in to get your booster at a higher rate, but the young members of our community, who are now eligible for a booster, have not yet come in only 20 percent.

E

So we're concerned about that we're doing very well with the five to 11 age grade age group and um nearly 40 percent of the five to 11's have had at least one dose of vaccine. So that's wonderful and again we urge parents to get their young children vaccinated either through one of the existing school based clinics or when they go on break. We really want you to take the opportunity to get your child vaccinated during the break.

E

So it's I think at this point. We really want to make sure that we enforce all of that information and that people again pay attention.

E

I also want to make mention in the 5 to 11 group that we still have some disparities and we look at the numbers that the vaccination rates of children who live on east side and in the south county are, in some cases half of what they are in other areas of the community again, which represents the latino population and the african-american population again that have not received the vaccinations at the rate that other members of their community.

E

So again, as dr cody said, our message of moving forward for the holiday especially is get vaccinated if you're eligible get boosted and if you have a child between 5 and 11 that hasn't been vaccinated yet get them vaccinated and then one more plug because we're it's now december and we're coming into flu season. We know, there's there will be a flu season this year last year. At this time we were pretty flat but we're we. There have been some cases, not many yet, but again, this is the time to get a flu shot.

E

So six months and older you're eligible for a flu vaccine. Please get that and you can get it at the same time as you get your booster and I'll end. There.

F

We'll now start taking questions we'll call on everyone individually. If you can identify your outlet and which doctor your question is for, and we will start over here with.

G

As vaccinated other communities, why do you think that is because you guys have really made an effort like to have the vaccines available without the school grounds and drop in sites, and things like that? So what's.

E

The issue: well, the issue is it hasn't. It hasn't been that long since we had those children eligible, but again we just are not getting them vaccinated at the same rate as as many of the other children in the community. We want to urge parents again that this that the vaccine is safe and to overcome some of that hesitancy or concern that they may have in in getting their children vaccinated.

E

Is it an access issue, we're working very hard with the school, with the county office of education, to get our clinics at the schools and have we have a number of um large sites in the community also? So I don't think it's much as much an access issue as it is to getting the message out and and really urging the community to come on down. There's plenty of vaccine to get their kids back.

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H

There any other.

G

Close contacts at this point or anything else to report as far as the first.

F

Person that has omicron.

D

Our first omicron case began isolating uh after symptom development, the the closed contacts that that the case knew about have been reached and contacted.

D

I I want to say that what we know about the omicron variant is that it spreads quickly, perhaps more quickly than the delta variant, so the time is going to come very soon, where we're not going to be able to do detailed contact investigations for every every case.

D

So this is a question around case rates and how we've used case rates and and and and and future policy I uh and and particularly with regards to announcements by marin county recently. The context in marin county is a little bit different because they already met the metrics uh to um stand down with their indoor mask mandate. So this isn't a conversation of talking about what metrics would they need to think about as far as indicating a need to return to indoor masking so different than what we're talking about here in general.

D

What I would say about case rates uh is that they are one surveillance system to give us a sense for the cadence and the pace of the pandemic.

D

But as we tradition as we transition to more tests which are not reportable to us, it becomes even more important to have other systems to look at, and so we have a couple ways to do that. One of them is the wastewater surveillance that I mentioned earlier and that also detected the omicron there's also some kind of general symptom surveillance that can give us a sense and then, of course, to measure how severe is this? We look at hospitalizations.

D

One caveat to the hospitalization data. Is that it's a lagging indicator?

D

It so you'd see a bump in cases and then, a few weeks later, you see a bump in hospitalization, so really good for helping us understand the impact on the health care system, but not an early warning system.

G

This thanks symptoms and what impact did the fact that these fully bad men have or would not have and how we have a boost.

G

E

If dr cody wants to talk about the the case, but I I think the case for the the importance of getting a booster is very clear and it's getting even clearer- um and I was looking at some israeli data this morning to show that um clearly, um the two dose series is just not enough um at this point, but yet when they looked at and they have, they have data already on cases and those that were boosted and it's much lower. So we really want to urge uh people that they need the booster it's now.

E

We want to consider it part of that primary series and we we really need to add that on as a re as a as a necessity, it's not yet required, there's no definition, change and completely vaccinated, but let's just think of it as if you're six months out from your front primary series, you just go ahead and get your booster.

D

So our case with omicron uh was fully vaccinated, but not yet boosted uh a booster and, as dr fenstersheim mentioned, we know that immunity wanes uh with that with the primary series, and that is why the booster is uh every day. We learn how important it is more and more important, and so um I would, I would say, uh with full conviction that every single person who is eligible for a booster, that means you're, age, 16 or older, should get a booster, should get a booster.

D

It lessens the chance that you will become infected and infectious doesn't eliminate it, but it reduces it and it drastically reduces the risk of hospitalization or death.

D

This, the the our case of omicron, had been vaccinated, but not boosted. They had a very mild illness, very mild illness.

D

They were just becoming due for a booster and, I believe, had had plans to be boosted this month.

D

What's important to know about this case is that they are an adult: they are a resident of santa clara county, they were fully vaccinated, but not boosted and their illness was mild and I they are the first report.

D

I am confident they are not the first case or the only case, and I anticipate that we will hear of many more omicron detections in the very near future.

D

Not very I mean, I think the issue is that the booster does a number of things one is: it reduces the chance of becoming infected and infectious, and so that clearly has a benefit to the community that limits the chances of someone who's immunocompromised or not eligible to be vaccinated from becoming infection infected and having a bad outcome. So that's very, very important.

D

There is also the issue that being boosted significantly reduces your chance of landing in the hospital or dying, and so there is significant benefit to the individual as well, and dr fenstersheim well-being.

H

Of people you're only looking for your special interests, that's what this is about. It always is good luck to you, santa clara county.

F

Thank you all for your time.

H

I think that wraps up everybody's questions.

F

Right now so appreciate it, and thank you for being here we'll now begin in the spanish portion. Great.

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For the latest information regarding the covet 19 pandemic in cupertino, please.

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Visit cupertino.org coronavirus.