California Governor Gavin Newsom July 20 Press Conference Transcript

Governor Newsom: (01:50)
Well, good afternoon, everybody. It’s an old say just goes that repetition is the mother of skill. So forgive me for repeating myself on number of admonitions, as it relates to the issue of personal responsibility, as it relates to addressing foundationally the transmission and spread of COVID-19 and the importance and potency of our own individual choices, our own personal responsibility, as it relates to mitigating the spread of this disease.

It is incumbent upon all of us to recognize what is self-evident and that is that it is our decisions, not our conditions, our decisions that will determine our fate and future, as it relates to the spread of this virus. It’s our decisions that will determine how quickly our children go back to school. It is our decisions that will determine what kind of activities we get to once again, enjoy with our friends and family. And of course it’s our decisions, personal and sum total of all of our decisions, that will determine how quickly our business sector can reopen with some semblance of the way things used to be.

It’s important to remind all of us that this transmission can be substantially mitigated by wearing face coverings; by wearing face masks. This slide we present is pretty self evident and I think the evidence is overwhelming. Seen in other countries, as it relates to the importance and potency of wearing face coverings to mitigate the spread of this disease. Recommendations now from the CDC clarifying that point of view and clearly now, an increasing number of people that are taking the personal responsibility, not only protect themselves but to protect others and I just want to thank all of you that are doing that for practicing the kind of behavior that will allow us to move past this pandemic sooner than we otherwise would.

The issue of going outdoors and taking activities, activities specifically that traditionally have been indoors and now moving them outdoors, obviously also to the extent airflow is a big part of that, can mitigate the spread of the virus as well and that’s why we talk often, not just about masks, but the importance of moving indoor activities outdoors.

Accordingly, we talk about physical distancing, social distancing, some referred to it. Physical distancing, just being six feet apart from people you otherwise do not mix with. People that are outside of your household. People that you come close contact with when you’re out doing the essential day to day work that we all need to do. Fewer people you mix with, the significant reduction in the likelihood of seeing others contract the disease and of course, you as well being impacted by this disease.

This next slide bears, I think, some consideration and reflection. I’ve put this slide up a few months ago. It worth putting back up today. The power of exponentials, this notion that just an individual that is positive, that comes into contact over a five day period with just two people, two and a half people, within 30 days, those two and a half people start mixing with others and now you have over 400 people that have come down positive with COVID-19.

You see just a significant, or rather modest by some people’s estimates but significant in terms of its impact, reduction in the number of people you’ve been exposed to, you just cut that in half and two and a half people to one and a half people, now you’re only impacting over 30 day period, through the power of those contacts, 15 people and less still if you reduce your exposure to less than a one individual.

So the point is we have to minimize our mixing. We have to minimize the transmission of this disease. We have to minimize that by practicing physical distance, wearing the face coverings and doing the kinds of things that I think are well described and obviously now need to be more vigilantly followed if we’re going to move past this more expeditiously.

Last week on Monday, I put out this new dimmer actions that we’re taking in the state of California and what we’ve done statewide. We talked about those counties that are on the monitoring list, 33 counties and I’ll give you an update on those county lists here in a moment.

Again, focusing on indoor operations; gyms and fitness centers, places of worship. Still allowing activity to occur outdoors. Accordingly, issues of barbershops, personal care services, I want to just make personal clarification on the issue of personal services. This was a slide we put up a week ago relating to indoor activity. It was our intention to provide for barbershops and likes to be able to do their work outdoors. Turned out that was more challenging than it may have appeared. The good news is we now have new guidelines out on the COVID19.ca.gov website, COVID19.ca.gov website, clarifying what we can and can’t do as it relates to haircuts and activities that we want to move indoors, outdoors, for personal care service industry.

It turns out without getting into too many details but issues of chemicals and shampoos and perms, it was more complicated than some had considered, particularly as it relates to local ordinances and rules and regulations that were in place. So we worked through that over the last number of days and those new guidelines are up and hopefully that provides more clarity. If we need to provide even more, we’ll get the good feedback which I anticipate from the new guidelines we put up. But rest assured, the intention was to provide those activities with conditions outdoors, no longer indoors.

Here’s why. Again, we’re seeing an increase in our seven day average. Total number of COVID-19 positive cases yesterday, July 19th, 6,846 positive cases. Seven day average, you see up there, 8,911. We take a closer look at our positivity rates, number of people tested, number of people that test positive becomes a positivity rate with now record seven day average of daily tests over 124,000 daily tests on average, over seven days. By the way, 127,000 tests yesterday. Our positivity rate over a 14 day period is holding at 7.4%.

This time last week, it was at 7.4%. Our seven day positivity average last week, was it 7.7 when I announced on Monday, it’s now at 7.2%. So 14 days holding at 7.4. Our seven day dropping from 7.7 over week ago to 7.2.

Let’s get under the hood as we tend to do here and look at the numbers a little bit more closely. That 7.4% rounded up, you see 7.39% positivity rate over a 14 day period, this represents about a 9.2% increase over a 14 day period.

So you saw a big increase and now we’re seeing some stabilization, but again, no one is satisfied being north of 7% and we got close to 8% last week. So these numbers can change very, very quickly again, depending on our personal behavior, sum total of which will determine the direction of the lines on this graph and ultimately the direction of our ability to reopen this economy and get our schools back open as all of us so desperately look forward to.

As it relates to hospitalizations, we’ve seen a 16% increase in hospitalizations over a 14 day period. By the way, that is an increase but it is a decline in the increase we’ve experienced over a three week period.

Let me without confusing you more, be more specifically. Two weeks ago, we put up on Monday, our hospitalization numbers. It said we were increasing over two week period by 50%. last week, Monday, over two week period, we were increasing by 28%. This week, over two week period, we’re increasing by 16. So 50, 28 to 16. That’s an encouraging sign but I will enliven you with some additional thoughts in a moment as we walk through, not just hospitalizations, but ICUs and then start breaking things down by county. Remember these numbers are statewide. The aggregate in our state. None of us live in the aggregate. All of us live somewhere in the state and there’s a very different picture that you can paint depending on where you are in the state that is not painted by this chart.

That said, again, it is encouraging to go from 50, 28 to 16%, but we want to see it declined, not a reduction in the rate of growth.

Total population of individuals currently in our healthcare system, about 9% are identified as COVID positive, which is about where we left the week last week. Often, Monday, roughly 9%, traveling anywhere our numbers are anywhere from eight to 9% consistently over the last a few weeks. But we’re moving in a direction again where we’re seeing pressure on a hospital system will impact that more in terms of where, but total…

Will impact that more in terms of where. But total hospitalizations with COVID-19 patients represents 9% of the available hospital beds within our healthcare system capacity. ICUs, again, hospitalization numbers go up. Invariably you’ll see ICU admission increases as well.

Not dissimilar to the hospitalizations, two weeks ago, we announced 50% on the hospitalization increase over a 14 day period. Two weeks ago, I announced a 39% increase in ICU admissions. Last week, last Monday, it was a 20% increase in ICU admissions over a 14 day period. Today you’ll see that slide, 12% increase in ICU emissions over 14-day period. Not surprising. Hospitalizations, ICUs tracking, but lagging indicators of one another. We are seeing a reduction in the rate of growth, but a rate of growth, nonetheless, which only reinforces the seriousness of this moment and the importance of taking the personal responsibility we all must to practice the physical distancing, do our activities outdoors as much as we can, and obviously wear face covering.

That gives you a sense of where we are in ICU admissions. Let’s get closer to what our total capacity is within our critical care system. You’ll see there that chart, about 17% of the ICU capacity. That includes ICUs and NICUs. That number, those are for younger people. That number 17% has been in the 15 to 17 range over the last few weeks. Total system, we feel like there’s more of the orange you see on the chart than the blue. But again, certain parts of the state, this is absolutely not the case. You can reverse those colors. You’ll see real constraint in ICU capacity. I’ll be specific in Placer County today, just 18.6% of their ICU beds are available. There’s parts of the state it’s even less still, San Benito, 0% of ICU capacity available in that County.

Again, an indication, County by County, that things look very differently than they do system-wide or state wide. That’s why it’s so important to go back to this list, this monitoring list .here are the 33 counties. This is the total number of counties that are on the monitoring list in the state. San Francisco did come on the County, which we had anticipated, announced that likely to happen Friday, did. We are currently monitoring, with very close technical assistance provided, these 33 out of our 58 counties, in particular, because of a number of issues related to criteria they set forth, where we’re not seeing things necessarily improve in all those critical areas.

Again, this is a list that we are laser focused on. This list represents overwhelming majority of the population in the state of California. This is the list where if you reside in these counties, we just only reinforce and underscore the urgency of the individual activities in terms of modifying our activities to help us mitigate the spread in many of these counties. I highlighted Placer County, Napa County and others. We are seeing constraints in ICU, a number of these counties, more challenging as it relates to hospitals. That’s not just beds, that’s individuals staffing the beds. A lot of parts of this state, now, where we are seeing an exhausted frontline staff of incredible doctors and nurses and nurse practitioners that are being stretched.

We are helping to provide some semblance of support, including the support we received last week. I want to thank the Vice President for that support. 190 individuals, medical team, came from federal HHS to help relieve some of that stress. That is indeed top of mind in terms of where we are in certain counties, San Joaquin, Stanislaus in particular, that we have been monitoring very, very closely as it relates to hospitalizations, ICUs, and the issue of human capital, meaning personnel that need a break, that need to be supplemented, need to be supported.

As always I end these, well, presentations, as I often begin them, by encouraging you to wear these masks as we did today. Once again, encouraging you to practice the physical distancing, wash your hands, sanitation, always top of mind and one of the most potent things you can do to minimize the transmission of this disease. Then minimize mixing large crowds of all types and encourage you to continue to take seriously and be as vigilant as possible to work through the next few critical weeks in terms of the pandemic here in the state of California.

Just close with one additional comment. That is we had a relatively low and again, devastating number, nine deaths yesterday, but relatively low in terms of numbers we’ve seen in the past. Devastating for those families that were directly impacted in the loss of a loved one. Our heart goes out to each and every family. Again, a reminder of how deadly this disease is, as well.

But I’ve said this in the past. When you see numbers go up, you’ve seen numbers go down. Best to look at these trend lines over a seven-day period. While the numbers were low yesterday, comparatively, we’ve averaged 91 deaths over a seven day period in the state. It’s a little better than the 102 deaths, tragically, we were losing the week prior. But seven-day average, tragically, is 91. Just on Saturday, we lost 90 individuals. Sunday reported in nine individuals. I want people to be cautious about running with that news as somehow that’s a trend or should be a headline, when in fact we should be very sober about the loss of an average of 91 human beings over the course of the last seven days.

Look, we want to continue to do more on testing. We’re going to continue to ramp up those efforts. I’m pleased that we’re seeing an increase in the total average number of daily tests in this state. We’re going to do more that we can to get that positivity rate to start trending down, not just trying to mitigate its growth hospitalizations. ICUs continue to be a cause of concern in the state. That’s why we want everybody to double down on everything we have been doing so that we can get back to school, get back to work in the traditional ways, not just these modified ways with distance learning and modifications that make work activities more challenging, certainly, than they were pre pandemic.

That’s the update for today. Of course, here to answer any questions here as well with Dr. Ghaly, who more than happy to answer questions as well.

Speaker 1: (19:55)
Alexei Koseff, SF Chronicle.

Alexei Koseff: (20:00)
Hi Governor. I wanted to ask you about President Trump’s comments today that he’s interested in sending federal troops potentially into Oakland. Has the administration giving you any heads up that they plan to send Homeland Security agents to Oakland or any other California City? If they did, what would your response be?

Yeah, the answer is no. We would reject it.

Speaker 1: (20:30)
Karma Dickerson, Fox40.

Karma Dickerson: (20:35)
Hi Governor. Thanks for taking my question. With respect to schools, you laid out the criteria last week for schools to be able to not just be open in person, but stay open in person. Given that depends a lot on the situation on the ground and to avoid a situation where schools are having to open up and close down and a lot of confusion, is the recommendation at this point, would it be better if schools just consider if they’re consistently on this list, just to plan not to open in the fall? Additionally, when it comes to testing with respect to schools and overall, do we have an idea of when we might be able to see a little bit more of the supply come through the pipeline? Dr. Ghaly talked about more of an availability of those tests coming through schools and in the community. But when will we actually see more of an availability of tests, not just of testing sites?

Right. No, I appreciate that. As you know, we provided a minimum of two months. We’ll continue to provide PPE of all types, not just masks, face coverings, face shields, sanitation, sanitizers, and other sanitation equipment to the schools. We’ll continue to provide them on as needed basis. As you know, we have this testing strategy where we’ll cohort individuals on a consistent basis and test staff. Look, as more testing capacity comes into play, more testing will be made available. I can assure you the reason we announced a new testing task force, the reason we reconstituted a new focus, a week ago, Dr. Ghaly making that presentation last Tuesday, was to intensify our areas of focus. That would include our schools as well.

We’re very aggressive in this space. We’re working overtime to make sure that we’re being as creative as possible. We’ve made a number of announcements, not just Dr. Ghaly, but myself as well, about how to start paying for these tests and what our expectations are in terms of the health plans and the like. We continue to work to provide more capacity, not only within our labs, Quest and Alcor, but also with our universities and our community partners.

I should note the CDC finally came through with the testing, the pooled testing strategy. That’s well known in testing fields, Blood Bank’s been using it for years and years, that allows more individuals to be tested. You pull those samples together. They provided up to four of those samples to be collected. Some cases you’ll see, well, an excess. We’ve been waiting for those guidelines to come down. I think that’s going to open up the opportunity to see more testing along those lines.

It’s beneficial in one respect, that if everybody comes out negative, everybody goes on their way. But it just takes a positive to come in there and then everybody has to be retested again. But nonetheless, this is again strategy that has been utilized in other parts of the world. Finally, we are able to move forward more aggressively here in the state of California. It relates to the question, specifically, you asked about preparing for the rest of the Fall. I’m not of that fatalist opinion in this respect. As I said, in the outset, it’s our decisions, not conditions, that determine that fate and future. I’ve said this on many occasions. Forgive me once again. I’ll repeat it. Future’s not-

On many occasions. Forgive me once again, I’ll repeat it. The future is not something to experience, it’s something to manifest. It’s inside us, not in front of us. Meaning we have agency, we can shape this conversation, we can shape the future by our specific decisions. And that is my hope and intention, is that we bend the curve as we did the first time in this pandemic and we do it again as we’re dealing with this flare up still in the first wave of this pandemic. And so if we can do that, we can get our kids back to school. I have four kids. I’m saying this as a parent as well as Governor of California. That’s my hope, my intention. And so I don’t want people to just believe that somehow we can’t shape that future and somehow we’re going to roll in over three or four months and someone else has written this script for us. This script has not been written. We have the ability to write it.

Speaker 2: (24:56)
[Paula Verinucci 00:24:58] Politico.

Paula: (25:01)
Hi, Governor. Thank you. You mentioned Vice President Pence and his assistance recently. The New York Times reported over the weekend that at one stage, you were asked or told that if you wanted federal government help to get swabbed, that you would have to ask President Trump himself and to thank him. My question is, was that the first and the only time you’ve ever gotten such a directive from the White House to personally request aid from the President, whether it was regard to the COVID emergencies or wildfire assistance? And did you think that that was an appropriate request?

A better question was, is it true? The answer is it’s not true. So the answer to your second and third question or two questions is that no one told me that. No one asked me that. So it never came to me. There may have been a conversation, but it certainly didn’t come to me. And the extent that we were able to procure those swabs, we were grateful and I expressed gratitude but no one told me to express it. I’m very consistent. Anybody that’s watching this, anybody that’s willing to help this state, I’m going to express deep gratitude for that help. And I appreciate you acknowledging that we have acknowledged the Vice President’s help specifically as it relates to 190 personnel. We continue to need more support. We need a national strategy, not just support here in the state. This nation needs more support on testing at a national level. And we continue to need more support on our efforts to contact trace, isolate, and quarantine individuals. And we certainly look forward to be able to compliment those efforts if and when they materialize.

Speaker 2: (26:48)
Sofia [Velog, SefB 00:02:48].

Sofia: (26:52)
Hi, Governor. Your administration initially said that for counties to get those out of stations to reopen more quickly than the rest of the state, that they would need at least 15 contact tracers for every a 100,000 residents. We reported last week that at least 17 of the counties that secured the attestations did not meet that threshold when they submitted their documentation. So I’m wondering why did your administration decide to let them reopen without meeting that threshold? And are you planning to handle that threshold differently next time if indeed numbers go back down and you’re faced with a situation. A similar situation where counties want to reopen more quickly, will you be handling that piece of it differently next time?

Yeah, let me … It’s a wonderful opportunity because Dr. Ghaly and I were having a very robust conversation about this two hours ago. He’s here and he is principally on the front lines of this issue and this question so better to get it directly from the source.

Dr. Ghaly: (28:01)
Thank you, Governor. Indeed when we rolled out our attestation process, we asked counties to demonstrate a number of different things. And one of them was around contact tracing. We asked them to be able to demonstrate the capability and have a plan to build up to 15 per 100,000 residents in their county. And each of those counties did that. They were not required to have them identified named at the moment. We knew that we were building up our contact tracing program, that we at that time had a lower number of cases being reported statewide, and that this was an opportunity to prepare around contact tracing, not necessarily to have it all there. So at that time, each county that attested to that variance process did indeed say that they had a plan and a credible plan.

Dr. Ghaly: (28:55)
We talked to many of the counties about those plans and verified that they could be done. We also knew that through state assistance and our redeployment of state staff, which we set a goal to have thousands of state staff ready to go support the counties, that we could help them get to that critical level. So indeed at the time, maybe there were counties that didn’t have those 15 per 100,000 named. We knew that they had a plan to get there and continue to work with those counties to meet those plans and go beyond that as the increased level of transmission requires.

I should note because of the trained cohort of contact tracers now in excess of 10,000 in the state phase one, we look forward to training more in partnership with UCLA and UCSF with a new platform that we have established. We also … And it connects the dots to the schools as I mentioned last week. I’ll reinforce it again today. We will be directing our contact tracers to partner with County health officials and what we refer to as LEEs. These are the local education administers to make sure that we are doing everything we can to make more robust the contact tracing efforts, particularly as it relates to school reopenings in the state.

Speaker 2: (30:21)
Samantha Young, Kaiser Health News.

Samantha Young: (30:26)
Governor, hi. I know you’re not going to weigh in on specific falls, but I’m wondering how much of an [inaudible 00:30:31] you have for signing bills that are not COVID related. Lawmakers have been asked to scale back their legislative packages when your administration is obviously very busy with the COVID pandemics. If you could just shed some light on that.

Yeah, no, I appreciate it. We were preparing for wildfire season. We were successful in getting PGNE out of bankruptcy. We worked to balance a $54.3 billion budget deficit. We’re very pleased that we had some good revenue news that appears at least at the moment to be a little better than we had anticipated. We continue to be doing work all up and down this state and a myriad of different sectors, including putting out what we referred to as a NOFA for $600 plus million to address the homeless crisis in the state. So we’re not backing off on any of our responsibilities in this state. So I appreciate the spirit of your question but no, my response was in spirit capacity. We have the capacity to do many different things and there are many things we must attend to in this state and should with some urgency attend to. And I look forward to signing many bills that the legislature sends down and we’re working very collaboratively on a number of those bills that we think are of the highest priority in areas that are well-defined as priorities in this state.

And I’m very grateful to legislative leadership, the speaker, and the [pro-tam 00:32:00] for how they have organized a construct during this very difficult time where they are not in a traditional legislative session. I know how pressure-inducing that is and challenging that is for them and I just want to compliment them on their leadership and their stewardship. And we look forward to working collaboratively together, particularly over the next well, 30 to 60 days. Well, less than that. By the end of August, we’ve got to work through this legislative session and getting a lot of those things across the desk. Hopefully many of them signed and to the extent we have some disagreements, few of them where we may have to send them back for reconsideration.

Speaker 2: (32:41)
Kim Tobin, NBC four.

Kim Tobin: (32:46)
Hi Governor. We have been talking about testing a lot here, where we are in LA. And specifically some of the issues that we’re seeing here that you briefly mentioned and I wanted to see if you to go into more depth on was the amount of time it’s taking. Right now, places like Quest are saying that they’re seeing an average wait time of about seven days, but we’ve talked to people who’ve seen-

Longer.

Kim Tobin: (33:07)
Maybe taking 13 days to get results. And at that point, they maybe have one day left to have a day of quarantine. But what’s being done to alleviate some of the stress and overflow that the labs are seeing in order for people to get that current status of if they’re infected or not?

Paula: (33:25)
Yeah, no. As you’ve seen an increase in the total number of tests and I’ll just remind you. You don’t need to be reminded but those that may be tuning in, just remind you over a hundred days ago, we were testing less than 2000 people a day. That’s not a lot of strain on the system in terms of getting those test results back. Now, as we noted averaging over 124,000 tests a day. No longer 2000, 124,000 over the last seven days. It’s not just California you’ve seen increased tests across the country. You have these national labs, Quest being one of those national labs, putting pressure. And you’re absolutely right to point out these time delays, which are profoundly consequential, particularly in vulnerable populations, congregate settings, skilled nursing facilities, and incarcerated settings and the like.

Paula: (34:11)
But all that said, the reason our taskforce was reconstituted was to substantively answer that question and the reason Dr. Ghaly is here today and was here a week or so ago when he laid out the parameters of some of those reforms was also to answer the question on time to results. And because he’s standing to my left six and a half feet away, I will ask him to answer that more specifically so he could be more LA-specific as well.

Dr. Ghaly: (34:42)
Thanks again, Governor. And yeah, thank you for the question. Absolutely. The turnaround time for tests is a very important issue. We’re laser focused on it. That average of seven days is probably a true average, but the range is some tests are coming back in 24 to 48 hours. Those priority one, or tier one testing people in the hospital where the hospital does it themselves have their own high throughput instrument. They’re sending it out to Quest lab core, other labs, and they come back pretty quickly. But then, there’s other tests that are being collected in other settings where that turnaround time is quite long, 13, 14 days indeed.

Dr. Ghaly: (35:22)
And what California is doing through the new testing taskforce 2.0 if you will, is really focusing on getting the collection sites on the one hand and matching them up with labs that can process those tests on the other hand more quickly. So instead of sending all of those tests, that increasing number of tests that the governor references, just to the same labs that we’ve always been working with, we’ll continue to work with. We’re exploring how to get those labs to other laboratories where they can be processed more quickly. So in some ways, it’s matchmaking between where the tests are being collected and where the test could be processed to bring down-

Dr. Ghaly: (36:03)
Tests are being collected and where the test could be processed to bring down that test turnaround time. All of that said, we did lay out last week, prioritization or tiering for our tests that both were, who should be tested on the one hand, but also how quickly those tests should be processed on the other. And we hope that is going to allow us to make sure those people, those populations that need the fastest turnaround time get it indeed. So that we lower transmission, make better treatment decisions, and serve Californians better all around.

Next question.

Speaker 3: (36:40)
Taryn Luna, LA Times.

Taryn Luna: (36:44)
Governor, your HHS secretary has said that the state’s models around contact tracing and transmissions didn’t assume these high levels we’re seeing today. So where does the responsibility lie for the current shortages and problems? On Californians who are not doing the right thing or on your administration for not having a more realistic projection of what would happen when the state reopened?

It’s very dynamic, the disease. It’s very dynamic in many respects, meaning California was very successful early on, the nations first stay at home order, to mitigate the growth of the spread of this disease. We were able to extend that curve for a period of time that gave us some confidence once counties attested, self attested, to be able to meet certain criteria that we can phase in a reopening of the economy. We have on multiple occasions presented different models. In fact, so much so that we presented a Tableau of models going back some time. It opened up our data, the first in the nation to do machine readable, downloadable data that people can mash up and they can work through their own criteria of thinking in order to establish a different framework of engagement as it relates to modeling. Because modeling broadly across the spectrum, not just here in the state of California, but all across the country has one thing in common. And that is these models are iterative. They’re constantly being updated. They’re constantly changing in the basis of different conditions changing.

We have fundamentally though had a [inaudible 00:38:16] star and that is to prepare ourselves for worst case scenarios. And we’ve done that consistently since the beginning of this pandemic. We laid out a strategy to provide a surge plan in the State of California. Tens of thousands of new beds that would be available in the worst case scenario related to some of the early modeling that showed an uncontrolled disease pattern that could overwhelm our hospital system. Overwhelm our ICUs. Overwhelm our capacity in terms of human resources. Overwhelm our ability to beat basic needs in terms of PPE and the like. So we went out aggressively and very proudly to get hundreds of millions of masks through a BYD contract. And we brought those in. No other state in the country is more well endowed in terms of having an inventory of masks and PPE.

We’ve distributed an unprecedented amount. We’ve gone out and we’ve acknowledged we need to do more on testing and we have put the accelerator on and increase that testing exponentially. We gave a phase one on our contact tracing and it assumed, you’re right, on the modeling 3,600 cases a day. And that’s why we continue to test even more people in anticipation that we’re going to have to make our contact tracing even more robust still. So it’s a constant, never ending process of iteration. I point no fingers, never have, never will. No fingers. I take responsibility as Governor of California because this is my state. I love it. The core of my bones in my soul as a fifth generation, Californian, I care about every single person in this state. I don’t care if you’re a Democrat or Republican, you agree with me, disagree with me. I care about everybody.

And my job is to try to bring people together. My job is to try to hold us all to a higher level of accountability and expectation. I can’t demand anything of people that they’re not willing to do on their own. I just hope to influence a process and a behavior. And that’s what today was about, encouraging people to practice some more personal responsibility along the lines that they have for many, many months. The reason we bent that curve had nothing to do with the State of California, it was a state of mind that was demonstrably advanced by 40 million Californians that met that moment early on and practiced that kind of social distancing through the stay at home order that allowed California not to become what other States were experiencing. And now because we reopened and the modifications and the guidelines, weren’t universally abided by, we’re asking people to just sort of sharpen the focus, sharpen their efforts. And that’s exactly what we’re doing here today.

Speaker 3: (41:01)
Final question. Kathleen [inaudible 00:00:41:04], AP.

Kathleen: (41:06)
Hi governor, you’ve talked about the relative safety of outdoor settings compared to indoor. Earlier today, you mentioned that there’s new guidance for hairdressers and barbers to be outside. Is there any consideration for letting schools or classrooms operate outside? Could that be part of the waiver process for schools that want to resume in-person learning.

It’s not currently in terms of the guidelines we put out specifically so far, but I’m open to argument. We’re interested in evidence and certainly we’ll work with our local health officials, but we have the guidelines that we set out, we put forth as it relates to this counter monitoring list for 14 consecutive days. Once you’re off that, we can start to recalibrate for being open for in-person instruction. We talked about additional waivers that are afforded elementary schools, which are also part of that guideline. And we obviously are doing everything we can to help the collective and that is to deal with the background infection rates that fundamentally impact the decisions for schools to ultimately open.

So with that, let me thank everybody for your questions, your time and your consideration, tuning in. I want to remind everyone power and potency, a simple act, simple gesture, wearing face covering. Again, not just to protect yourself, but to protect others and moreover to send a message that’s important at this moment that we are in the midst of this pandemic and it is not going away anytime soon, as much as we all would like it to go away.

And so the sooner we get back to practicing a little bit more personal responsibility in terms of the work we’re all doing. In terms of physical distancing, in terms of not mixing with cohorts outside of our household and wearing face coverings. None of that easy, I recognize, and again, not admonishing [inaudible 00:07:02], I’m just encouraging everybody. The sooner we do that, the sooner we can reopen these schools. Sooner we can get back to some semblance of normalcy. Sooner we can extinguish this virus. It will be extinguished, but it can be done on an accelerated timeframe. And that’s why can’t press upon you more, please, please, please wear these face coverings. Take care of everybody.

California Governor Gavin Newsom July 20 Press Conference Transcript

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