Community Update: January 13 2020
Now, live supervisor. Thank you so much, Stuart. Good evening, everyone. Thank you all for joining us once again. Before we get going, I would like to introduce Gilbert Martinez from our communications staff to share a message with our Spanish speaking viewers.
Gilbert. (Spanish speaking) Thank you so much, Gilbert. I'm Linda Hopkins, supervisor for Sonoma County, 5th District and chair of the Board of Supervisors for this year.
Welcome to our covid-19 Community Briefing for Wednesday, January 13th. Our focus today once again will be on vaccine roll out in Sonoma County with an emphasis this time on strategies and communications about distribution by the end of the session. We hope that you will have a better idea about how and when you might be getting your vaccines. And we also hope that you will be getting some of your questions answered live in real time.
As a reminder, during this community briefing, we will be taking questions from the public. You can leave your question in the comments area of Facebook live. I'd also like to remind those of us who are joining as panelists to speak loudly and slowly for the sake of our interpreters. We'll begin our update today with a brief presentation by Dr. Sundari, May's health officer for Sonoma County. Great. Thank you so much.
Supervisor Hopkins, and thank you, everybody, for joining us. I'm particularly grateful for your time today because we truly are at a dire point of this pandemic. We're still under a state imposed stay home order for the entire Bay Area and we continue to see high case rates and the chance of people testing positive is also increasing. Our local ICU capacity is down to thirteen point two percent, while the Bay Area region ICU capacity is at four point seven percent. The state makes weekly projections about what the ICU capacity will be four weeks from now, and the stay home order will be lifted once that four week projection for the Bay Area region is greater than 15 percent at that time will be placed back into the purple tier of the state's blueprint for a safer economy. So we continue to see the climbing cases, more people in our hospitals.
And while our staff is continuing with contact tracing, sheer numbers of daily cases is overwhelming our system. Here's where the good news is we have the ability to slow this surge by following safe practices and abiding by the stay at home order while we get vaccines out as quickly as possible. Overall, the vaccine rollout is going really well in Sonoma County. We encourage everyone to take the time now to learn about the vaccine. So you're ready when it's your turn, and that may come sooner rather than later. To date, we've administered thirteen thousand two hundred and forty five vaccines, and we we expect this number to increase rapidly.
As supply and distribution grow. We are drastically scaling up our efforts to distribute the kind of vaccine which is our most important tool to end the pandemic. You'll hear more about the efforts in collaboration to speak up vaccine speed up vaccine delivery this evening. So I'll wrap up by saying thank you to all of you that continue to stay home and stay safe. And I'll hand this back over to Chairwoman Hopkins'.
Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Mays', I'd like to take a moment to introduce a few of our panelists who are here with us today. We've got quite a lineup today of local experts to speak with us about the vaccination rollout here in Sonoma County, in addition to Dr. Maes and deputy health officer Dr Kismet Baldwin.
We will also be hearing from Dr. Urmila Chandy, who has just been named County's covid-19 vaccine chief. We will also be hearing from Dr. Joshua while from Kaiser and Dr. Chad Krulwich from St.
Joseph, as well as Judy Coffee from LEAP Solutions. And Paul Gulliksen are communications manager here at the county. I'd like to start by introducing formally Dr.
Qandi, our vaccine chief. It's really good to see you and really nice to meet you, Dr. Sandy.
The first time I think we've gotten to have some face time as well. Nice to meet you as well. Thank you for the introduction. My name is Dr. Miller. Chindi and I will be working closely with Ken Taseff on implementing our vaccine strategy in Sonoma County.
And that includes a strategy regarding the distribution of the vaccine, as well as coordination on vaccine administration, interfacing with our health care partners and other stakeholders in the community and trying to coordinate a smooth delivery. Because the big question right now is how can I get my vaccine? Where can I get it? There are a lot of questions associated with this. So we are going to be working hard to try and answer these questions and have a smooth system so that this rollout takes place smoothly over the next few months. Thank you so much, Doctor, today.
And I believe you have some exciting news to share regarding what we saw happening at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds today. I'm wondering if you could share a little bit about what was going on at the fairgrounds, how is it going and how does that kind of set the tone for a vaccination rollout and implementation into the future? Yes. So it was our first big event at the fairgrounds. We were able to start a program where we we vaccinated a number of our county employees and it was in coordination with the with Safeway.
And we will be continuing that process as we roll out further events at the fairgrounds. So at this point, we have identified a few different locations in Sonoma County. So this is the first event that we had and it will continue.
So we're looking forward to it. And the community can expect that we will continue to have these events as time goes on. Thank you so much.
And, you know, I want to acknowledge that this is a fantastic first step, although, you know, we have a very large, sprawling county. Are there other locations that we are looking at potentially using to ensure that we've got, you know, geographically equitable sites distributed around the county? Yes. And in fact, I might add into Ken Taseff, I think he's on the call as well. He can talk to some of those issues. Thank you, Dr. Chindia, appreciate it. My name is Qantas.
If I I'm actually the appropriate security officer for the county, the health care, privacy and security officer, the hip, the guy. And but during this pandemic, I've acted as the logistics chief and now the vaccine mission manager for Tilba Operationalize the support systems that we're going to try and put in place for for the response, working very closely with Dr. Mason, Dr. Chindi. So so some of the things that we're doing right now is putting together vaccination centers that are able to support others in their ability to deliver vaccines and administer vaccines right now. And by Friday, we should have the infrastructure in place, for example, at Grace Pavilion to have up to 12 hundred, actually more than that of vaccines a day to be delivered by various health care providers. In addition, we have a second site at the Santa Rosa Junior College at Petaluma in the fitness center there.
We have several leads there to deliver over three hundred doses of vaccines a day. And up at the gym, we're working with the town of Windsor to open up another center there. In addition, we've been working with the other partners to help support the centers that they're working, they're working on right now in other parts of the county, for example, one in West County that I just got off the phone with one of our partners over there. So there are a number of and we do plan on getting funding a spot in Sonoma Valley, as matter of fact, to support this. So what these are places where where providers who don't otherwise have the space or the resources or the logistics to provide or to do vaccination administration. They can go there and they'll have the support that they need to do their job.
Thank you so much, Ken and Dr. Sun, and I don't think that I mentioned Dr. Sun has been a pediatrician in Sonoma County for more than two decades and really appreciate you introducing yourself, Ken, as the hippo guy is how I think of you and Sonoma County government.
The both of you really stepping into these roles and having those deep relationships in the community, I think enables us to hit the ground running in partnership with our health care providers. So I really just want to say thank you so much for your service. Is there anything else that you can or Dr. Chen do that you feel like we should know? What should residents know about the vaccination plan going forward? Of course, with the announcements that were on the table today from both the federal and state government urging local governments to work on vaccinating folks over the age of sixty five, this also becomes a supply and demand issue. Right.
Of at what point will we have sufficient vaccine to really get it out the door? So could you sort of comment on that over sixty five piece? And then also just what you think is the most important thing for Sonoma County residents to know right now? And you're on meet Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Yes, yes, I think you brought up the most important issue, which is that even though the recommendation is that anybody over 65 should be receiving the vaccine soon, the supply is just not there. And I think that over the next few days, two weeks, we will be able to start receiving more vaccine first from the feds and then from the state and then with allocations to us. And as we have more information, we will continue to roll out that information to everybody else. At this point, we have to keep in mind that the vaccine supply is going to be the rate limiting factor.
Yeah, I'm actually surprised at Hopkins. If I can just jump in here. I think it's really important for everybody to know that we have a really good plan in place at the county working with all of our partners to ensure a seamless, efficient rollout of vaccine to everybody as your term, as your term comes up. And we want everybody to know that even though the vaccine doses are coming, come every week and we're notified on that week is how many we get as we get this vaccine. We are working very closely with our large hospital partners, with our federally qualified health centers, with numerous different groups and identified to vaccinate.
And we just learned today, for example, that our EMT is that is emergency medical technicians have been approved to vaccinate. We just learned a few days ago that our dentists have all been approved to vaccinate. So we have more and more groups joining the vaccinating effort. We are going to call upon them to come out and work in the locations that can is setting up and through the the strategy and prioritization that Dr.
Chindi is working on to get everybody in there. When your time comes. So just stay tuned and we'll get through this. Ken, do you have anything to add, Dr. Sun? Can I think your muted. There we go. Yeah, I just just want to add beyond
setting up for infrastructure and so on, there are so many other areas that we're we're helping out health care providers by listening to what their needs are and then reacting as quickly as possible, whether it's to recognizing that they need maybe different types of needles to administer for certain groups or whatever and finding ways to help them get those those resources to keep them doing what they do best and doing it efficiently and fast. I really appreciate that. Well, thank you so much for the information, and I'm sure there will be questions from the audience later for all three of you. But I love to invite Dr.
Joshua while to the virtual table, an emergency medical physician at Kaiser Permanente. And I know that doctor, while you oversaw personally the evacuation of the Kaiser Hospital three years ago during the tub's fire, this is obviously a very different kind of disaster, being a very sort of slow moving crisis, but one with critical implications for our health care system. From your perspective, how are things going at Kaiser in terms of handling this latest surge and covid cases? Well, thanks, thanks for the introduction, and I almost feel like in some ways that's a loaded question because the context is that across the country, right, we have we're nearing four hundred thousand deaths. Millions of people have been hospitalized and ill people out of work. So I can't just say things are going great. But within that context, I think we have handled things well in Sonoma County, certainly at Kaiser Permanente, at the hospital.
We have been well prepared. We've had time to move through this in different stages. Initially, there was a lot of concern and much that we didn't know.
And we've we've learned as we've gone and we've had to be nimble and flexible. We've embraced different ways of care delivery, relying a lot on telehealth and other other ways of getting care to people safely. We've managed the hospital flow. We've kept our members and our staff safe by making sure that we have the PPE that we need and making sure that we embrace the new policies and practices as they come out. So overall, again, within that context, I feel like we've had a very strong response. I think we're lucky to be in Sonoma County.
We've had great leadership from Dr. Base and I think we are part of Kaiser Santeros as part of a larger organization, Kaiser Permanente, that has a lot of experience over the decades working with infectious disease. We were a major player in the Ebola preparedness response. We have our nation's leading experts in our organization. And so we're very fortunate to have those kinds of resources to rely on.
Thank you so much, Dr. Weil. And I'm wondering if Dr. Dr. Chad Krulwich, the chief medical officer for St. Joseph's Health, would mind turning on a screen. There you are. Good to see you again. And thank you so much for joining us again this week.
I'm wondering if you could provide a little bit of input on how St. Joseph's is handling the search. Yeah, thanks for asking and I really appreciate Dr. Willes comments. I think, you know, part of what is helping us to move through this most recent surge is having partnerships like we have with Dr.
Weil documents and other organizations within Sonoma County. And to that end, what we've been able to work through is a period of time where other parts around the country were surging. We're surging, I should say.
We weren't is doing what he had referenced, and that is learning and becoming prepared. Because now we're in a place, albeit we're not having 50 percent of our patients in the hospital with covid like Southern California, we are seeing a larger volume of patients. This doctor makes reference than we have ever seen before.
And so to that, it is really important that we continue to be here to those things that reduce the likelihood of spread. All that being said, being a part, just as Dr. Weil had referenced Kaiser of a large organization like Providence, St. Joseph Health, you know, one of our hospitals, and it was the first hospital to have a patient with covered in it.
And to that end, knowing that we're parts of large organizations and their shared learnings, I think it has really positioned as well to the point in time where we're at now. We have a covered patient in our facility that we're able to provide exceptional care to them. Thank you so much, Dr. Krulwich, and to check in on the vaccination at St. Joseph's. How is that going with respect to staff vaccinations? And have you started reaching out to members yet? Thanks for asking for our vaccination process.
We're following the same plan that I had shared with this group last time. Our goal is to start being able to vaccinate patients that are part of stages of health medical group by the end of January. And we have reached out to patients this week via email.
They'll also be receiving an additional communication this Friday so that we can start to make sure that we have the right patients coming in for vaccination, making sure that we're not jumping the line and we're getting those folks that are higher risk. This doctor makes reference really, right? Simply tardily targeting those patients that are over the age of sixty five and then being able to get them in the queue to get vaccinated as it relates to our caregivers. We've already started our process in getting those second doses of vaccine into our caregivers.
So we've have over five hundred at this point in time, which is really good progress. So we're looking forward to finishing that part of the vaccination process and then moving to that one big category. Whereas we've heard more recently our patients within of health medical group that are over the age of sixty five. Thank you so much for that information.
And I'm wondering if, Dr. Weil, if you might share how Kaiser Permanente is standing on these fronts in terms of vaccinating staff and then looking ahead to vaccinating members. Yeah, great thing, so I think similarly, we have been very pleased with the roll out for the staff vaccinations so far, we have over 80 percent of our staff vaccinated and actually I think approaching 40 percent who have had their second vaccine now.
And the great thing about that is it's been a test run for the processes that we'll use in rolling out larger numbers of vaccines to our members and folks in Sonoma County. I think it's important to point out this doctor who is talking about is that we're kind of part of this, the entire system. So Dr. Shinde was talking earlier about
the work that's being done at the fairgrounds and other sites that the county will be open up and Kaiser Permanente, like St. Joe's will just be part of that overall plan to get five hundred thousand people in Sonoma County vaccinated. And I'm I pleased with the way things have gone so far. We have developed very efficient processes and effective ways of keeping people socially distanced, which is one of the challenges. Right. We're going to move people through. It's not like influenza where you can just line people up, but you have to maintain space and you have to watch them for 15 minutes to make sure that there's no untoward reaction.
So it is a very complex process. You also have to schedule a second vaccines. And so we're working as part of that entire system to make sure that we can get five hundred thousand people vaccinated. And the one thing that I think is important message is that we have to keep people remembering to be patient. So we we are outreaching. We have a plan to outreach to our members.
We are certainly updating our Web sites with all the information as it becomes current. But the reality is that we're being inundated by calls and emails requesting the vaccine. So I think that's great because it means that people are wanting the vaccine, which is our way out of this pandemic. As Dr. Mace mentioned at the beginning, the only way we're going to get through it is through vaccination.
And so I'm very pleased that people want the vaccine, will be willing to get the vaccine, and we are going to put the systems in place to get vaccines and arms. But we're going to have to be patient because even if we can execute on five to seven thousand vaccines a day, you can do the math that's going to take us, you know, five months to get 500000 people vaccinated. Thank you so much for that information, Dr. Weil, and I know that Dr. Krulwich mentioned that, you know, St. Joseph's is proactively already reaching out to members, sending emails. How is Kaiser going to handle that communication with your members? So similarly, you know, so many of our patients are active on the what we call KPG, which is, you know, we can send them out emails.
We do that every year about influenza and and every time the seasons change, time to get your allergies. And so we're sending out similar messages about getting covid vaccine. And then we will also be specifically reaching out to those patients that fall into the various categories as the state and the county open up those those tier. So we will be reaching out to those patients as well, to those systems and to calls. And then again, there are systems in place for people to be able to call in and schedule their appointments.
Thank you very much for that information and thank you also for reminding folks to be patient, because I think that's a very important reminder. And just speaking personally, as someone who is not at high risk for covid-19 complications, my biggest fear is not actually me getting the disease. It's actually me infecting someone else who is high risk. And I personally will sleep so much better at night knowing that when I go to the grocery store that that clerk is who's checking me out is protected, or that when I go to the doctor for a routine visit that that physician is taken care of. And so I hope that those of us who fall into those lower tiers to me are just here. I get hope just hearing those numbers, like 40 percent of Kaiser already getting their second vaccine.
That's what I want to see. And I'm happy to wait my turn in line until it's my turn so that you all who are on the front lines can get vaccinated. Since we are on the subject of communications, I would now like to introduce Judy Coffey of LEAP Solutions.
LEAP Solutions is partnering with the county to take on the huge responsibility of connecting with various stakeholder groups in the community, including business leaders, nonprofit labor representatives and other sectors, particularly kind of gearing up towards the next phase. Right when B and those stakeholders that are going to be eligible for the vaccine soon. So the goal is to make sure that everyone understands and has an opportunity to engage in the vaccination rollout and that those community leaders can provide feedback in real time so we can troubleshoot because we know that this process is not going to be perfect. We're going to just keep trying and doing the best we can and respond in real time. Now, Judy, your background and skills certainly make you uniquely suited to help with the engagement on the vaccine rollout.
You were the senior vice president and area manager of Kaiser Permanente right here in Sonoma County. And now you work with lead solutions. So I'm hoping that maybe you could tell us a little bit about your plans to engage with community leaders and stakeholders just to ensure that we get outreach everywhere in the county. We know we're a big county with lots of different subpopulations and communities.
So this is a challenge. But I feel better knowing that we're in your capable hands. So tell me what your plans are.
Thank you very much. Ascott Omeri, who's a partner of Lead Solutions, is also on the call. You know as well, you know that the supervisors, the press, Democrat, all the different departments have been receiving numerous requests from across the county about what's the rollout, what am I going to get my shot? When's it coming? All the logistics of the rollout.
And in order to really help try to condense all this information solutions has been retained by Sonoma County to help roll out information. And the information is fluid. Just today, this morning at seven thirty, it changed about the age, which you've talked about over sixty five.
And so there's just a lot of information that's going to be going up. And so we are trying to work with certain segments, not the general public, just Sonoma County leaders in certain industries, and there will be called stakeholders. So if I give you an example, I would say let's say hospitality or tourism or something like that, there are several people out there. And what we want to do is get these individuals the same information at the same time and on a weekly basis, let's say, so that a leader can then we can form an outreach committee which will provide advice and support and help these individuals understand that it's going to take time.
And they heard the word patience and I would say patience. But we have to go through our tears and information is fluid and we need to just continue to remind people that they will get their vaccination. Thank you so much. So some of the examples of the kinds of stakeholders that you would be working with, our sort of membership organizations. Right. Or labor organizations. So, you know, someone's a member of a labor union.
Their representative might have a seat at the table or someone's a member of SAE, Sonoma County Farm Trails or Farm Bureau or community alliance with family farmers. And so then it's basically one more way for those individuals to get information through that membership organization or through that leadership group that can then disseminate that information out to everybody. Is that kind of what you're getting at? Yes, that's correct. And remember the numerous nonprofits we have in Sonoma County, same way to get them the information.
I think that's imperative that everyone kind of gets the same information. And like I said, it's going to be fluid and it's going to be changing. Therefore, we're going to be having weekly meetings. We have another one.
We have one scheduled tomorrow and one scheduled next Wednesday. And just trying to get out the most current information and letting people know that it's it's going to be happening, but it's going to take time. You heard Dr. Wiles say if we did X amount so many times
a week, it would take a good five, six months. So I think just letting people know how much vaccine, you know, you hear what comes out on the news that there is going to be X amount of vaccines hitting the California. Well, how much goes to L.A.? How much goes to San Francisco, how much ends up in Sonoma County and then how much goes to different areas? Just getting people perspective.
I think that's a really fair point. Yes. Is that we are a humongous state and we have a lot of other more dense urban areas. So even if you have millions of doses, coming into California does not mean millions coming to Sonoma County. Can I ask what's the best way for leaders of stakeholder groups to get in touch with you so that they can take part in these meetings and anything else you think folks should know? Sure. There is an out of an email I'm going to have to ask Scott because he set it up. I think it's outreach at Leape dot com.
That right, Scott, its outreach at Leape Solutions dot com, right, and there's a phone number and then there's the email which will go out and that's where people can go ahead. And it's out because we're getting a lot of stuff today already. So it's out there. So outreach at least, solutions dot com was at the right one.
Yes, that is correct. Perfect, and I'm sure that we can share that information via social media and the comments to if anyone missed it. And thank you so much, Judy.
I'm really excited to work with you going forward and appreciate bringing that capacity and the deep knowledge you've got into the counting process. And now I would like to introduce who I think is a familiar face to everyone and which is Paul Gulliksen, our county communications manager. Paul, I would just love it if you could give a quick rundown on what's the best source of local information for how people can get real time information about vaccines. And then your thoughts on how the rollout is progressing here in Sonoma County? I think it is important, as everyone has said, Judy just said, the information changes on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. So by the time you get the next paper in the morning that yesterday's paper has very, very dated news that sometimes these days.
So tell me a little bit about real time information. Thank you, Linda. Thank you for giving the two minutes here. Just to give a plug on what we have on on the county website in particular, because we are getting a lot of questions, but we do want the public to know what information is available out there so they might be able to get some of the their questions answered before they call their primary care physician or the county or or even the two on one line.
But we do want to encourage people to go to socco emergency Duggie vaccine. That's socco emergency dot org slash vaccine. It's a vanity URL that we we've set up that will take them directly to our vaccine information pages. And if you will let me I'm going to share my screen so I can share with our viewers as to what they'll find when they go to that page. They will find a lot of good information here. And if I can scroll down, here we go.
That one of the main messages we want to to let people know is you'll see it here in bold type at the top of our vaccine update that individuals who are eligible be vaccinated should first contact their health care provider or primary care physician for information on how they can receive a vaccine or make an appointment. But in general, we have information here that can help them understand more about the vaccine and how it's going in terms here in the county. And the first thing they'll encounter is, is this this chart that shows how many vaccines we've administered is, as Dr. Mays reported earlier, we've had thirteen thousand two hundred forty five administered, eight thousand six hundred ninety five or four thousand five hundred fifty five Moderna. But more than that, they can show how many we've distributed by date.
They can also go down. It shows we have little graphs that show how many have been administered by date. And that's that's a helpful tool. You also see what we call a rainbow sherbet graph here that shows really where we stand in our rollout. And as you can see right here, it is kind of bracketed here that we're somewhere.
But some are right at the end of the tier one, phase one group. Some are starting to already are right in the middle of tier two. But it basically gives you an idea of where we are as a county in terms of going through the various phases of the distribution plan. It also shows, you know, who's in what phase each group and particularly there's a lot of interest in those in phase one. And you click on here, it takes you to a page that shows you a little more detail about those populations that we have to update this information based on the directives we got from the governor today, that everybody 65 and older will be considered as the high priority group. But we'll be getting that information updated as well.
That's in there. And then when you go down the page, you'll see links to various pages of different information about the benefits of getting the vaccine, all about vaccine safety. Some of the information out there that there have been people who have about allergic reactions, those who have had traditionally allergic reactions to vaccinations in general.
And it goes into detail about what those are. It also goes into some of the myths and misconceptions about vaccines to encourage people who have questions about it to go there, key facts about the vaccine, and then the information about what to do after receiving a vaccine talks about some of the side effects. Some some people may experience small amounts of pain and swelling and what to do, how to respond to that, when to call your doctor information about scheduling a second shot. So it goes into there's a lot of information here that we want to make sure that the public knows about. And there's also frequently as. And that doesn't even count all the other information about testing and covid and whatnot, and and this will and this will will continue to expand this website as we go along.
So I'm going to stop sharing their. When you're full, and I think that's probably a good Segway, I think it's time to turn over to audience questions. And I do want to acknowledge that we do have some other panelists who didn't present today.
I know that Director Robinson is also on the line and there may be others if I scroll through my squares as well. So we've got lots of folks who would be ready to answer those questions. So take it away, Paul. Well, first off, as we expect, a lot of people have questions about the new directive from the governor about vaccines, those 65 and older, they're now being part of that priority one, a one, a tier one group, and many of them are really raising. The question is, how are how are the those 65 and older? It's going to get the vaccine. Should they go?
Should they contact their doctor with their doctor, notify them, or should they just go to one of these clinics they're hearing about and and wait in line? Can they expect to be served there? Dr. Macer? Dr. Chen, did you want to address that, those questions? Thanks very much, Paul. It's a great question because we know that extending the vaccine vaccination to those over 65, that is sixty five seventy four opens up another huge number of people. So I think the state is thinking about good ways in which we can operationalize this as we are in the county. We're not quite there at phase one, the tier one yet.
So just hold tight. We will get into mechanism's way for people to get their vaccination, whether it be through your primary care provider, whether it be through one of our multiple specialty hospitals, whether it be through the public health route that we've already spoken about. So I think it's a matter of just getting an implementation process in place.
So just hold tight. And like I said, we should be there hopefully in the next two to three weeks. But most of these clinics are designated for certain people, as I understand, and they and many of them, they are making appointments. So we are asking people to just follow that for for right now. And we will get you information. We'll get to you as soon as we can.
But it does depend on how many doses of the vaccine that we receive. The next question is, Michael, if I can jump in. That's a really good point. As I've always said throughout this process really depends on two things that we don't have the full details of how much vaccine we're going to get for distribution, as well as how many people in each group want to be vaccinated. Well, that's a really good point, and it leads to the next question, one of our viewers, Christopher, has done some math for us. He said, in the first twenty six days, the county vaccinated eleven thousand six hundred thirty one people.
At this rate, given our population, we won't be completing vaccinating everybody till somewhere till the end of twenty, twenty three. How can we move this a little faster? And what's the holdup? Yeah, it's a great question, thank you for that, we are ramping up our efforts, this is the first three weeks of implementation of vaccination for Sonoma County. We're actually already doing more vaccinations than we were initially. And I will stress that you can see that we will continue to perform more vaccinations over time, hopefully exponentially.
Actually, as you heard earlier, if you were on the briefing the entire time, we are setting up 18 to 20 Layne's similar to optimum serve for vaccination in different sites throughout the county where we can start serving people a quicker and faster, more seamlessly and do have, as I as I already said on this press briefing, new groups that are being licensed for vaccination, for example, our employees and our dentists. And it's going to be sort of, you know, boots on the ground, everybody contributing in the community to get the vaccinations done. I don't know. Do I want to add, Dr. Doctor, if I may add, we are an ongoing communications with the state regarding this very issue and working with the state to identify additional resources and supports that can be brought into the county and through statewide to help support our efforts so that we can expedite our process for administering vaccinations. So more to come on those reports as we move forward. And as always, we want to emphasize that the county is not directly administering any of these vaccinations, that we're facilitating the distribution of these vaccines and setting up these clinics, but we are that's basically our role is is is is is not in the administration of the vaccines themselves.
We have a couple of of our media partners with us today. I want to go to start with Phil Barber of the press, Democrat Phil. Thank you, Paul, can you hear me? You're on.
We hear you. Great. Thank you. Dr. Mays', do you have an estimate for how many people in Sonoma County are now included in Tier one B with the addition of people 65 and over? Yeah, that's a great question, Phil. . You know, let me turn this over to Dr. Sun or to Cannes, because I think we have some preliminary estimates over over. Sixty five might be somewhere around 40000 or so. Dr.
Chen, did you do you have that number right off? Unfortunately, I don't have that number. I know it's it's it's significant, of course, I don't know if can. Do you have those numbers? I apologize. I don't have that number right off the top. My head. Yeah. Yeah.
You know what we can find out for you and get back to you. We did look at the last census. I want to say it's about forty thousand people over 65. It could even be fifty thousand.
So it's a large group for sure. Thank you, you've, Paul, mentioned the vaccine website, and I know there's a lot of interest among our readers in that data. One question that we get a lot, you're updating daily on doses administered, but the data doesn't include doses received by the county. People are interested in what sort of proportion are being doled out. Do you have numbers on how many total doses the county has received, how many it currently holds, and, you know, how many might be in the next shipment? Yeah, it's a really great question. Thank you, Phil.
We know exactly the numbers of doses we receive in public health. But vaccine is not just coming to public health. It's also coming directly to our hospital partners and directly to CVS and Walgreens for vaccinating the long term care facility staff and residents. We don't have updates on exactly how many doses are coming to non public health partners. I do have our lead epidemiologist pack who's on the line.
I don't know, Kate, if you want to add to my answer about tracking of the numbers of doses coming to the county. I guess so that is an area we're looking to start posting some information on the website, and starting tomorrow, we're going to be gathering information from health care partners about the doses that they're receiving each week and the doses that they've received to date. And we have our numbers from public health. So we'll be able to post information about that.
One area that is a little bit harder to track are the doses coming to CBS and Walgreens, because that's managed at the federal level and we don't have easy access to that data. But we do plan to share information on every everything that we can get locally about doses coming to the county. I appreciate that. And if I could just clarify one more thing and then I'll let other people get involved that that vaccine dashboard that we're talking about, the total from yesterday of thirteen thousand two hundred and forty five cases or excuse me, doses administered. I just want to be clear, does that include doses administered through our local hospitals? Is that number is that number being tracked in that data or is that excluded? And if it's against me for that. So those numbers are all from the California Immunization Registry.
And so that includes doses administrated administered by the hospital. Eventually the data from from the administration of CBS and Walgreens will speak to the state and then to that registry. Right now, that data reflects just three of that have been administered through those that were given to public health and to the hospitals.
Great. Thank you very much. OK, we had a couple of questions about the drive through clinics that are operational now at the fairgrounds. One related to are those being vaccinated, being told which vaccine they're receiving? And also how are you observing the adverse, if there are any adverse reactions post vaccination at the fairground drive thru centre? So I'm going to turn that over to either Dr. Zendaya or can testify as they've been more involved with the fairgrounds process. I'll go ahead and I can I believe I can not answer that appropriately, the when a person is given their vaccine, they're also given a card that describes the both the type of or the whether it's Maduna or Fizer.
And they are also that card tells them the lot number so they know which dose to get for the second time. The second thing is they have a staging area where they park for 15 minutes and there is an observer that is going up and down that line talking with people and making sure that they are fine. That's great. Thank you. Thank you. Can I want to back up just a second to
respond to a question Phil had about the website? I just want to know that they to know that we are adding material to the website and we're building in more information that we hope will actually show not just the number of doses that have been administered, but how many we're receiving. And we're we're working on creating other features, including adding a feature which will allow a search engine tool where people will be able to plug in their personal information and they'll get their answer would tell them when they can expect to do that, when they can expect to get a vaccine and who they should notify in order to to get the vaccine. So I just wanted to add that to that. We continue to work on those features and added added data on that site.
Let's go to Martin Espinosa Martin. Hi, everybody. Dr. Mays. And so Dr.
Mays, I have been talking to owners of residential care facilities who are extremely concerned and and sort of going out of their minds because they can't get any answers from Walgreens and CVS or the CAL or the State Department of Social Services, Community Care Licensing or the ombudsman. I understand that you had a meeting with some of these facilities and the ombudsman, the community care licensing as well yesterday to talk about these issues. And they're very frustrated. We are now moving to a low, a lower priority population, and these people still have not gotten the vaccine. This is the population that you and I have talked about for four months that is extremely vulnerable. They are they comprise most of the people that have died.
And they're stuck waiting for a vaccine because of what appears to be a federal contract that took this thing out of our hands. What would you say what do you say to these people? Yeah, yeah, Martin, you have a really great point. I think it is a very, very important group that we reach and get vaccinated. We have had actually a call with our ombudsperson and with other providers of care that are stakeholders in this process, CVS and Walgreens.
We have a spreadsheet showing exactly all the facilities that are signed up for vaccination through that process, the state process that is also have dates of when those vaccinations would happen. If there are any facilities that are not on that list, then we will pick up the vaccination through some of our partners for that group. But at this time, it looks like most of those facilities are on the list with dates for vaccination for the first, second and potentially third visit to that facility.
So we are waiting to see how that process goes and how close. I asked the state of California whether they think that we should speed up the process. They agree they are going to discuss with their partners how to get that sped up. Do you know? So we have you have a list of all those scheduled visits. You have a list of all those scheduled visits, do you? How far back are those visits scheduled being scheduled? Well, for the skilled nursing facilities, of which I believe there's about 20 to 40, we have a list of those that signed up, which is almost all of them, and dates for the first, second, third, and in some cases for different visits to ensure that everybody gets a first and second dose.
And it looks like many of those signed up in January for getting the first dose. So we're waiting to see how the implementation phase goes. And, as I said, have already put forth a call to the state to be on sort of on board with us in case we need help in that room. And, Martin, this can tell us if one of the things that I found in helping stand up the Optum survey sites is these providers, as they as they learn the process and get that down, they they ramp up very fast. I remember putting in the very first claim with Optum server back in May, and now they move very quickly and we're up to seven lanes now in the county.
We have the third most a number of lanes in the entire state. Only San Bernardino County and L.A. County have more than ours. And that's attributed to their ability to learn quickly and start moving much more quickly. So I believe while I can't speak for CBS and Walgreens, I believe my experience has been that these providers start gaining momentum and things move very quickly once they get to find that that momentum. I have a I have a follow up question for Dr. Mays about an outbreak over at Sonoma Specialty Hospital, where I'm told that almost a dozen patients come down with lots of staff.
Are you can you can you speak to what's happening over there? And I do believe you're working with them to deal with that. And, Martin, as you know, we can't speak about any specific facility generally, if there's any outbreak in a concrete setting, we are involved. We are giving guidance and recommendations for testing, for contact tracing, investigation, isolation, quarantine, all of the things that we've been talking about. Thank you. I have more questions about the the vaccination of stillness of residential care facilities, but I can ask those tomorrow. OK, thank you.
Thank you, Martin. We are getting some follow up questions about just this specifics. If we have a number of how many vaccines that we have now that have not been administered as yet. Do we have a number on that? Let me turn this over to Kate to see if we have an idea of that. I think that's information that we're going to be sharing as we get the information back from health care partners about what they have left in their supply, and we'll be able to share more in that, hopefully by Friday.
Yeah, and just to let people know, you know, there's a there's always a delay in the tracking of the efforts that are going on. So the vaccinations given, for example, in the last 24 hours or even 48 hours may not quite be in the system yet. We get a lot of our data from the database and it lags. So just to let you know, the numbers that we put up on the dashboard are often underestimates as to what is actually been supplied or given.
In other words, how many vaccines have gotten into the arms of people is probably less than what we put on our data on our dashboard. OK, just a couple more questions, I should say, more than what we put on our dashboard. That is an underestimate, right? Yeah. Just a couple more questions. I know we're getting near the top of the hour, but Jen, one of our viewers asks our volunteers needed to help administer the vaccine. And if so, how do I how to how do they step up? Absolutely.
Thank you for asking that question. I think there's a great forum in which to invite anybody who is licensed to provide vaccination to step up and volunteer. And, Paul, maybe you can give the specifics of how people can connect with us. Well, the easiest way is to reach out to us directly at public affairs, at Sonoma County Morgue, that's public affairs at Sonoma County Morgue. Send us your information.
We'll put you in touch with the people that could most use your help. So. We'd be happy to be a conduit for that and then the final question I have here is concerns. How will teachers be notified when they're eligible? They are in that one B tier. How will they get notification? Yeah, thanks for that question. We're working really closely with Go at the Sonoma County Office of Education and Dr.
Harrington to ensure that we have a seamless process for getting teachers vaccinated and all staff in our health in our in our school system. So just stay tuned. That's probably going to be happening while it's phase one. Be tier one is where education comes in.
Right now, we're planning, Wisco, to start that vaccination process in the in early February. So just stay tuned. They'll be places that are set up, vaccinators and a schedule. That's great, and that's actually a great Segway to our next meeting a week from tonight at five o'clock, when our theme will be focused on reopening schools. And our superintendent of instruction, Steve Harrington, will be joining us at that time. And we can we can go into a little more detail as to what what that looks like and what the governor's plans are for reopening schools.
So with that, I'm going to hand it back to Supervisor Linda Hopkins. And and thank you all for answering the questions. Thank you so much, Paul, and thank you to all of our panelists for joining us tonight. I also want to say a special thank you to our Spanish interpreter and Elizabeth, our ASL interpreter. As a reminder, you can always find this on Facebook. We'll be back here, as Paul mentioned, same time, same place, and focusing on schools reopening next week.
Take care and be well and have a good night at one.
2021-01-21 15:05
