California Governor Gavin Newsom July 6 Press Conference Transcript

Governor Gavin Newsom: (00:00)
Yeah, I hope you all had a relaxing holiday weekend. A safe, responsible, and relaxing holiday weekend. I want to do what we’re accustomed to doing here at noon every week, particularly at the beginning of the week, and that’s update you on where we are as a state related to the pandemic and where we’re going. Tell you a little bit about what we did since we last met on Thursday, a little bit around enforcement, and then walk you through some of the trend lines before they become headlines in the state of California. Let me update you briefly on the number of counties in the state of California that we’re monitoring, counties that have been on a list of for three plus days, a monitoring list that we put out a number of weeks ago.

When I last left you on Thursday, there were 19 counties on that list. Today we have 23 counties. And you see up there, they’re newly added six counties. 19 plus 6 doesn’t equal 23. Well, you have counties that coming on and counties that are coming off. For example, Contra Costa was on, off now, back on. Santa Clara was on last week, no longer on. So we have in total new updated monitoring list, those six counties, Colusa, Madera, Marin, Merced, Monterey, and San Diego that were added to our monitoring list. This is the list we use for technical assistance to engage their local health officers or local elected officials working within the county to address criterian that they attested to that they put forward as a county that needs to be monitored and needs support. If we are no longer a line in terms of our initial expectations.

One of the most important things we can do in addition to technical assistance on that monitoring list is to do more to focus on enforcement. Now, we walked through the beginning of our enforcement efforts that we were anticipating implementing this weekend. I want to update you on what we did do this weekend, but I want to remind you that our enforcement was been prioritized on parts of the state where we have known violators, where we have high risk workplaces, or we have industries that should be operating at a scale, think of restaurants and bars, in appropriate and safe manner. And so that was the criteria which we advanced our updated efforts on enforcement. Our more targeted enforcement efforts with these teams that we have assembled these cross-pollinization of state agencies that sent out teams in six key regions in the state of California over the weekend. Our focus, again, is to remind people that we have put forward guidelines in this state. So much of the focus I’ve said in the past has been around when to reopen our economy, but not how to more safely reopen sectors in our economy.

And so we really need to get back to a focus on how to safely reopen our economy. What are the mitigations that need to be in place? What are the expectations that we set forth as it relates to wearing masks, both from a staff perspective and a patron perspective? What are the physical distancing criteria that we have attested to and put into place pursuant to those state guidelines? What’s the signage that has been put up so it’s visible and people have access to it? Physical distinct criteria and the like. And so we really focused in on workplace safety guidelines. Again, the enforcement is not just about being punitive. It’s also about educating people, allowing people to make modifications, but moreover, to address the bad actors, the folks that are simply just disregarding these orders, and to hold them to some account as well. But this is the primary focus of the enforcement education law, and the criteria that we put out, and the guidelines and the modifications that we’ve made, again, focusing on how to safely reopen sectors of our economy.

Over the last few days, we significantly increased our enforcement in these three critical areas. We had close to 6,000 in-person visits to bars and restaurants just from the department of alcohol beverage control. So ABC visited just shy of 6,000 establishments over a few day period. You’ll see over 440,000 individual contacts that were made, phone calls, visits, emails, and the like, through OSHA and our department of industrial relations. And I mentioned on Thursday the Board of Barbering and Cosmetology. We have to focus, obviously, on concerns in salons and the like, and so we directed based upon input we were getting from county health officials again, targeting these counties that are on the watch list. We targeted licensees that we had either received complaints about or had information that was concerning that we needed to get clarified.

So, significant improvement and increase in enforcement over the weekend. Most of it, again, from an educational paradigm, though there was plenty of citations. Local law enforcement… We are requesting more information about local enforcement on mask requirements and the like, but as you saw from West Hollywood, Santa Monica, and others, notably were stepping up their enforcement using local law enforcement to either educate, but also to promote, physically distancing or wearing face coverings. And those were tiered. Meaning first enforcement action may have been $100 up to 3, in some cases $500. As you know, many of these can go as high as $1,000 on enforcement. So I encourage people, again, we’re not going out there with a, a punitive frame, but we are going out with the resolve that this moment needs to make sure people are protecting themselves and protecting others to mitigate the spread of this virus.

And that spread continues. Some 5,699, just shy of 5,700, new cases reported on July 5th. This is the last reporting period. I’ve included in this slide a seven-day average. That seven-day average has begun to climb to now 7,876 cases on an average seven-day rolling period. That includes, by the way, the cases that were suspended… The data, rather, that we collected that was suspended in LA over the last three days, those numbers are included in that seven-day average. There’s some ambiguity because LA County over the holiday weekend was not reporting their daily counts on July 3rd, 4th, but we do have their counts reflected in July 5th, and in the seven-day average that you see on your screen. The ongoing positivity rate with an average daily number of tests now increasing in excess of a 100,000. In fact, we tested 127,000 people on Saturday, which was a record number of people that we’ve tested, now averaging 104,000 tests over a seven-day period.

Testing’s going up, and the positivity rate, not just the total number of positive cases in the state of California, also going up. The positivity rate over a 14-day period is now at 6.8%. Let me give you a closer look at the test positivity rate reflected in a slide many of you have become familiar with. We were at 4.9% positivity rate just 14 days ago, and now, again, it’s 6.8%. You look at the seven-day positivity rate. It’s now over 7%, at 7.2% to be exact. By the way, the 14-day positivity track represents just shy of 39% growth in that positivity rate over the last 14 days. Not surprisingly, as always, we share with you the hospitalization slides. When you see a positivity rate increase, you’re likely to see a hospitalization rate increase. This slide represents the increase over a two week period now to 5,790 individuals that we have hospitalized for COVID-19. This represents a 50% increase over a 14-day period.

As hospitalizations rise, we obviously focus in on our system capacity, our healthcare capacity. That number has been fluctuating from a low, going back a month ago, over 6%. We’ve been averaging around 7%. It just increased to 8% of our total hospital beds. You could see, we still have ample hospital capacity in our system, but we’re monitoring this, obviously, very closely. And these are, as always, numbers in the aggregate. And I’ll remind you, we don’t live in the aggregate. There are parts of this state where this number might leave you misled, meaning this number may calm the nerves. 8% of total capacity, that’s true, again, as a state, but there are parts of the state where that number is substantially higher. Obviously that’s part of our monitoring list. That’s part of our targeted enforcement and targeted engagement and support.

Hospitalizations rise. Invariably, we’ll start to see ICU admissions rise, though I will say it was nice to see that ICU admissions went down modestly in a 24 hour period. I went down 0.3%, but this slide tells another story over the course of the last 14 days. It’s gone up 39% over a 14-day period. Total number of people in ICU is at 1,706. This is a slide you’re also familiar with, that 1,706 total ICU COVID-positive patients represents roughly 15% of the total patients of the total ICU bed population. Ventilators continue to be plentiful at the moment, again in the aggregate of 1,416 ventilators. But again, ICU numbers are always of top concern. Our capacities represented in this slide, and again, this number represents statewide data, not county-specific data.

I want to remind you of some statewide actions we’ve taken recently. Again, pulling activities, to the extent we can… As many activities, business activities in particular, but more broadly, activities that are indoors… We want to move them outdoors. And we’ve done that in multiple sectors of our economy, restaurants being a notable example. We have also closed down bars in the areas of highest concern, and those are represented in those 23 counties that are listed at the top of the presentation. Over the weekend, there were local and county closures of beaches, statewide closures of parking lots related to the beaches, and I just want to thank all the elected officials and the residents more importantly. The residents of the state of California …

And the residents, more importantly the residents of the state of California that acted overwhelmingly responsibly. That were out in our beaches, those that were open and were responsible in terms of their social distancing and physical distancing. And I want to thank those that were educating the public, those that weren’t unfortunately acting in their best health interests or the health interests of others. The efforts to educate and to encourage and to enforce were I think very effective. They weren’t perfect and certainly people highlight exceptions, but I just want to compliment the local efforts, the County efforts, the educational efforts and the social persuasion that was very I think well-represented and demonstrated over the 4th of July holiday weekend. And thank everybody for again their concurrence in this effort. And as I noted just in the slide, this multi-agency enforcement, this efforts on these strike teams, more targeted enforcement was also demonstrable.

And I want to just thank our agencies, now 10 agencies in total that were part of those actions. Speaking of actions, there were a lot of counties that took action. Since we began this monitoring process to move deliberatively and enact at the local level, the County level with their health officers, their County elected officials, their own responsible strategies for enforcing their stay at home order and modified their stay at home order. I’m very pleased of the 23 counties six just joined us so we expect they’ll move in the next few days. 13 have issued local orders. Three said Riverside, San Bernardino and Curran just said, we will submit to the state orders and just got a call literally seconds before I came on air that Glenn County just acted. So we’re not waiting action from Glen. We want to thank the elected officials and the health officers and city managers for their work there as well.

So everybody is moving. They’re taking action, they’re being responsible and we are very, very grateful for that. So that’s the spirit of the moment. The spirit of the times is a recognition. Individual responsibilities now have been elevated, our collective responsibility as a community County level to secure local enforcement actions, education actions, modification efforts to help supplement them at the state level in a much more dynamic and much more targeted way. And again, just encouraging everybody to do the kinds of things that are foundational and fundamental to mitigating the spread of this disease. I’ll remind you, we did an incredible job collectively as a state. 40 million of you did a remarkable job to move aggressively early. The first state to move forward with the stay at home orders. We were able to bend that curve. In fact we never really had to bend it, we were able to mitigate the spread of this virus in substantial ways.

We have the capacity to do that again, to mitigate this increase in the total number of positive cases and the transmission of this disease. And the most important thing you can do from a non-pharmaceutical intervention, meaning non-therapeutic and non-vaccine is to wear face covering. It is a mandate in the state of California. It protects not just you, but others. And is a sign of respect, sign of responsibility. It’s also a demonstration I believe of character to meet a moment head on and to be forceful in terms of our resolve to mitigate the spread and to help save lives and impact the lives of those that may be vulnerable in ICU or in hospital because of coronavirus, because of COVID-19. As always practice physical distancing, social distancing, wash your hands and continue to do those things your mother and your grandmother were so intent on reminding you as we were growing up.

Just one final point because I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it, we’ve had a number of lives that have been lost over the last few days in the reporting period. Six people lost their lives on Sunday to the coronavirus and 18 people lost their lives on Saturday. Six people are six too many, it is substantially better number than we have seen in some time. The 18 reflects that as well, but that’s 18 lives, six additional lives, 24 lives torn asunder. Families lives also torn asunder rather and lives lost to this virus by no stretch of the imagination think that the mortality rate has diminished to such a degree that people can no longer lose their lives. They simply can and it’s reflected in the ICU data. It’s reflected in the hospitalization data. The damage that COVID-19 can do this pandemic is still in front of us, continues to spread at rates we have not experienced here in the state of California since the beginning of this pandemic.

That’s why we want to remind you of those important bullet points, wear a face covering, physically distance, wash your hands. And as always for more information about all of the above more information on how you can get tested, more information of how you can learn more, value yourselves to more data about your own County in your own monitoring of their effectiveness and what the rules and guidelines are within sectors and industry. Go to the covid19.ca.gov website. That again is covid19.ca.gov. With that happy to take question.

Speaker 1: (18:11)
Adam Beam associated press.

Adam Beam: (18:16)
Hi governor, thanks for doing this. Some data released today by the federal government shows that at least one business that you own received some loans to stay open during the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m wondering I know that before you took office you placed those companies into a blind trust, but I’m wondering if you could address that issue and why the company that you own felt the need to receive that loan.

You would have to ask the people that are running those businesses, it’s in a blind trust period full stop.

Speaker 1: (18:50)
Phil [inaudible 00:18:50] LA Times.

Brandon Pho: (18:53)
Hi governor. As you know, I mean as you just talked about today cases have been kind of exploding around the state. Was there any realistic way to reopen some sectors of the economy? And do you think that your administration miscalculated in doing so and the speed at which they were reopened for restaurants, gymnasiums and fitness centers for instance?

I think we can safely reopen. And I think if we wear face coverings we can mitigate the community spread of this disease. I think countries that have done that demonstrably have proven that. We’ve been very forceful in our expectations and encouragement for people to do the same. It’s a mandate as you know in the state of California. As it relates to the focus on how to safely reopen, predicate your question or at least to frame the spirit of your question about, can you safely reopen? I believe you can, but with enforcement and with individual responsibility. And that’s why we laid out in detailed terms some of what the guidelines include and what those expectations are. We set those expectations. We focused on how to responsibly reopen certain sectors of the economy. And now it’s incumbent upon all of us to not only monitor that, but to enforce those rules and regulations. It’s exactly what we’re doing.

Speaker 1: (20:17)
Elex Michaelson Fox 11.

Elex Michaelson: (20:21)
Governor it’s clearly that the case numbers are rising, but the mortality rate you just talked about is quite a bit of progress. Obviously we don’t want anybody to die, but those death numbers are way lower than where they were a few months ago. I’m wondering what you attribute that to and how that informs potentially the policy going forward.

Yeah, it’s the right question and it’s certainly an accurate observation. It’s encouraging though. I would remind you last week in one reporting period over 24 hour period we had 110 lives lost. And so contrast that to six in the last, these individual data points aren’t necessarily in and of themselves trend lines. Though, there is a broader trend line that is substantively accurate and that is as we’ve seen an increase in testing now over a hundred thousand a day, and an increase in positivity rates, we are not seeing a commensurate increase yet in mortality. That said, those are lagging indicators, hospitalizations, ICU and deaths. So we are and I think the spirit of the way you framed your question you recognize this cautious as well as modestly optimistic, but cautious. Nonetheless look, I think the most important thing we’ve learned from a lot of the new data that’s come in that goes direct to your question is the cohort of individuals now that are being tested positive is getting younger and younger.

And so that cohort 18 to 34, 34 to 49 year olds, when you stack those together you’re looking at majority of the new cases. And so a lot of these younger folks may be coming into hospitals, but with not as acute needs as what we were seeing in the past. Where we saw the percentage of those that were testing positive, the number being a cohort much older. We’re seeing stabilization relative and boy I caution even just saying that, let me be cautious in saying that. But seeing some stabilization in our residential care facilities for adults and our skilled nursing facilities, our veterans homes. And we’ve been able I think to substantially address some of those spikes we had seen a number of months ago. And all of that narrows I think to where we are in terms of presentation of this data and hopes and expectations in some respects that the mortality rate may be more modest than what we’ve seen in the past.

Speaker 1: (23:03)
Rachel [inaudible 00:23:03].

Rachel: (23:07)
Hi governor, thanks for taking my question. I wanted to know how you thought the contact tracing program was going, how many people have been deployed and if you’re worried or if you’re hearing from counties that are worried that the case counts are just getting too high to affectively trace everyone’s contact?

Yeah, so we had over 10,600 people, I mentioned last week 10,170 nods over 10,600 people that have been trained from UCSF and UCLA. We had a phase one goal by July 1st to get roughly 10,000 people. That first cohort phase one trained, we were able to accomplish that. We have just shy of 9,500 that are now ready to go and are being directed by County health officials. Again, remember this is a bottom up, not top down strategy content.

Remember, this is a bottom-up, not top-down strategy. Contact tracing has existed for decades in this state, in this country, and HIV and AIDS, STDs, issues of TB, measles, and the like. Some counties are more robust in terms of their baselines they already have in place. We are supplementing that, and we have trained with the counties as partners, this new cohort, and so close to 9,500 that are identified and available to the counties, over 10,600 that are trained. That cohort of those trained being made available to counties in real time, many more being trained on a weekly basis, and we want to continue to see more contact tracing.

We’re doing PSAs in a culturally competent way with trusted messengers. I showed you PSAs for the mask-waring requirements of the state, but we’ve also been doing a lot of PSAs on contact tracing, particularly in communities where there’s still a little bit of nervousness, to be fully candid with you, of a member of a state government or local government, or for that matter, even federal governments, making a phone call. You can imagine diverse communities. Let me be more specific. The Latinx community. We’ve got do a lot better in terms of getting the right messengers to give people confidence that their information will be maintained as confidential, will not be shared with federal authorities, and it’s in their public health interest to participate in the contact tracing.

So a lot of work in that space. Your questions inspired me to perhaps give a more comprehensive update, which I’m going to do in the next few days because I think this deserves more attention and more illumination as it relates to our outreach efforts and how to make contact tracing even more effective. I’ll take advantage of using this also as a PSA of sorts in the next few days by providing more information to you.

Speaker 2: (26:07)
Carla Marinucci, Politico.

Carla Marinucci: (26:10)
Hi, Governor. My question is about San Quentin. As you know, there were no cases there until the end of May, until its transfer from the California institution. Now you’ve got 1400 incarcerated and more than 150 employees. Staff and volunteers are relating conditions that they say are inhumane, that these prisoners are being isolated in solitary, et cetera. Are you considering an onsite visit to this prison to see these conditions for yourself? And what are your specific plans to address what one epidemiologist is describing as a Chernobyl situation there?

Yeah, we’ve been working on this every single day for the last three weeks. When I say every single day, yesterday, Saturday, Friday, Thursday. There is no break. There’s no holidays. It’s a top priority for our administration.

We currently have 2,445 prisoners at CDCR that have tested positive for COVID-19, a prison population north of 110, 120-ish thousand. But we do have 2,445 people who have tested positive. You rightly, though, have pinpointed the area of top concern, though not the only concern in the system, and that is San Quentin, 1,388 individuals that have tested positive, inmates in that prison. We have decompressed that prison since March 1st from 4,051. We have a plan to bring it down to 3,082 in the next few weeks. I am going through individual by individual, people with medical needs that are acute, people we are fast tracking, expediting parole review and individually reviewing those cases in order to move people forward.

We’re working with probation and parole to expedite the identification of housing. You don’t want to just send people out onto park benches, into homeless shelters. We’ve got to make sure that we responsibly move people out, but with a deep sense of urgency, because you’re correct. In late May, we had prisoners transferred from one prison, Chino, into San Quentin. They should not have been transferred. The receiver, the federal receiver, has been in place since 2006, made that abundantly clear. And I appreciate the receiver recognizing responsibility in that respect, and accordingly, today made an announcement on a personnel change as it relates to the medical officer being replaced, and I am very encouraged by that being a first step in the actions we can take to collectively address this.

As I said, it’s not the only prison of concern. Vacaville, other prisons are continuing to be of top concern, but we saw flare- ups. I’ve been very transparent with you and others in presentations, going back a number of months. We saw increases in Lancaster. We saw a substantial increase in Chino. We were able to get our arms around it, and it’s a way of expressing this. The protocols process, the procedures we put in place to mitigate the spread when we saw a flare-up. Chuckawalla and other facilities over the course of the last few months, we’re engaging in similar activities here, but with a deeper sense of urgency, much more comprehensive approach, an incident command team that we posted up, and at San Quentin multi-jurisdictional incident command team.

We’re identifying decompression strategies that include transferring prisoners in a safe and responsible way, but not cohorting them with others in facilities, in Kern, Wasco, looking at all their alternatives in Alameda County. I could go through robust details with you in nuance and specificity because it requires nuance and a very specific frame of mind and engagement to address this legitimate concern, crisis we have at this site. And so note that it is our top focus and priority, and every day we are working to move more and more of our most vulnerable population into an environment that’s safe and/ or back in an expedited and responsible. Send us back into the communities, along the protocols and processes that you’ve become familiar with, that we engaged in the beginning of this pandemic, where we are near the end of a term, and we can responsibly adjudicate risk factors and promote and provide support outside of those prison facilities.

Speaker 2: (30:56)
Scott Rodd, Capital Public Radio.

Scott Rodd: (31:01)
Hi, Governor. Thanks for taking my question. A number of hospitals, as you said before, are straining over the increase in hospitalizations. You had mentioned that, while in the aggregate there is capacity, but specifically for the hospitals that are struggling, that are sending patients, far away to get care, is there a plan in place to try to mobilize hospital beds or staffing to ensure that those places that are hardest hit can quickly gain capacity so they don’t have to send patients, say, hundreds of miles away to get care? What does that plan look like?

Yeah, it’s a very detailed plan, one we’ve socialized over the course of the last number of months. It’s called our surge plan within our hospital system. Its primary focus is around existing footprint in and around hospitals, decompressing your system against the traditional, rather, your day-to-day patients that would otherwise come in for non-urgent care needs. You reduce the total number of people coming in for elected surgeries, as an example. You create more capacity. Footprints on the campus of many of these hospitals, we have surge plans that will allow them alternative care sites within those footprints, the ability to utilize differently existing facilities within the hospitals. Those are sort of nuances within these surge plans.

Those search plans we made very public over the course of many, many months. In fact, last week I also updated you a little bit on what those surge plans look like, including these alternative care plans outside of the hospital system, where we have set up, for example, up here in Sacramento, just nearby, the old ARCO Arena. We’ve set up beds and sites to be used as needed.

Look, the plans that we have advanced in Imperial County, as an example, are a proof point of the strategies that we’ve been utilizing. Over 500 people have been moved, decompressed out of that hospital system into surrounding county systems. Once those county systems have absorbed their share, like San Diego County, as an example, we then have protocols, procedures, processes that were pre-assigned, predetermined where we move people either further north. We did move people further north into the Bay Area, as an example, over the last week from that county.

And so it’s about collaboration. It’s about sharing. It’s about a very detailed plan, process, and procedure that we mapped out. And with the outstanding work that 40 million Californians did at the beginning of this pandemic, it gave us time to develop those plans with more specificity and more nuance. And to the extent they’re needed, we’re able, not to dust them off because no dust has been collected. We’re able to actualize those plans with a specificity that’s required, a sense of urgency that’s required at the moment.

Speaker 2: (34:08)
Brandon Pho, Voice of OC.

Hi, Governor. Thank you for taking my question. You’ve noted that the state is taking ramped-up enforcement measures, and that would presumably include cooperation with local law enforcement, so how do you reconcile that with a place like Orange County? Our specific hospitalization rates are also climbing, and our sheriff has taken an opposing attitude on enforcement of the mask order, and it seems he will. According to a recent statement, he put out, quote, request voluntary compliance, unquote, without any mention of citations. So it seems some local jurisdictions like ours will have a hard time falling in line. In order to achieve that ramped up enforcement you mentioned, how will you do that down here? Do you feel that with some counties like Orange County, enforcement is better left with and done most effectively by state regulatory agencies?

Well, no, it’s not best left to the state. Quite the contrary. It’s best left to local, with support of the state. And to the extent that local officials are unwilling or unable to enforce, then we will step up our enforcement at the state level in a more targeted way. I led the presentation today, giving you specific examples of what we did over the weekend. That included Orange County. But I also left you with this specific example, and I’ll remind you if you didn’t have a chance to tune in last week on Thursday, that we’ve also criteria-ed and conditioned money in this year’s budget. There’s two and a half billion dollars. We’ve been working in the spirit of collaboration. The vast majority of counties are doing the right things. Vast majority of sheriffs are doing the right things. But those that want to be a little more obstinate and unwilling to do what they’re legally responsible to do, which is to enforce the law, that’s why they were sworn in, to enforce the law, it is the law of the state to move forward to enforce the provisions of local health officers and-

The provisions of local health officers and provisions that are set forth by the state. If they choose to not do that, we have made contingent over two and a half billion dollars, or specifically two and a half billion dollars in the budget, that we will make contingent upon performance. If they’re simply unwilling to do it, then we will redirect those dollars to communities that are and we assume, if that’s not an incentive enough or rather a disincentive enough, then we will assume more responsibility still. But I would like to think, I don’t know of another state that’s conditioned billions of dollars to local efforts to enforce local orders, but I believe it could be very impactful and we’re working with CSAC, our county partners to do that in a responsible way.

But let me close because I’d be remiss on this question without highlighting what I highlighted on Thursday ad that is the president of CSAC happens to be a county supervisor in Orange County and she has been exceptional. She has been supportive of these efforts to enforce in a responsible way, to educate, to help modify and enforcement a responsible way and she appreciates the spirit to which the state is engaging in those conversations and we’re working with her and Graham who runs CSAC and their team to work out the criteria and conditions as it relates to the distribution of the two and a half billion dollars.

So I have great respect for the overwhelming majority of officials in Orange County that want to do the right thing. If there are handful that don’t we’ll work through them, around them, or we’ll work through whatever the problems are.

Speaker 3: (37:51)
Joy Benedict, KCBS.

Joy Benedict: (37:55)
Hi governor. Happy Monday. Thanks for taking my question. Mine is also about enforcement. Earlier, you had mentioned that there were about 6,000 businesses that were visited by the ABC. Do you know how many of them were cited and if so, what were they cited for? And you have a plan to continue that in the future?

We do have a plan to continue. We’re continuing on a daily basis. We’re continuing to monitor these 23 counties with targeted specificity of enforcement that will continue. It wasn’t just one off, though this weekend I do confess, though we’re stepped up enforcement efforts out of concern for the mixing that would have otherwise occurred, had we not collectively as a state at the local county, state level done more to educate and encourage people to modify behaviors in a more responsible way.

Here’s the good news. Remarkable. Those were in store, rather in business visits and there were only a handful of citations because the overwhelming of people were doing the right thing. I just, I want to applaud that. The overwhelming majority of restaurants, the overwhelming majority of bars that were allowed to open on the basis of the amount of food and meals they provide, again, there’s different licenses that are still opportunities to still promote or rather operate businesses that have unique licenses. The overwhelming majority of them were conducting themselves outstandingly.

So the last count we have 52 citations. I don’t have the details of every one of those 52 in terms of the specifics. We’ll provide them to you but I was very encouraged by the team that came back and said that even if people were out of compliance, the engagement got people back into compliance very quickly and that’s the spirit to which we are engaging in this level of enforcement. It’s to modify. It’s to fix problems. It’s not to penalize businesses that are struggling already but those that simply could not modify or are unwilling. Absolutely. They need to be held some account and that’s what those citations represented.

Speaker 3: (40:17)
Final question. Alexei Koseff, SF Chronicle.

Speaker 3: (40:24)
Alexie Koseff.

Hi, governor. I wanted to return to this, the rising number of cases among the younger people. Do you know what or has the state be able to identify what is leading to that increase and is it a cause for concern for you that you’re seeing that increase now in cases in younger people and separately have these outbreaks in the state prisons put a strain on the hospital system in some of these communities where the prisons are located?

Let me take a latter part of your question. That’s certainly the case. We longstandingly had a relationship to San Quentin with Marin General Hospital. It certainly put some strain on Marin General in particular and that’s why we have been working with Saint Francis hospital in San Francisco and looking Seton down in San Mateo County, to absorb some of that responsibility.

We’re also looking, you look at San Quentin, it’s really a campus. It’s not just a one op prison. Almost operates its own small city. It has old facilities on site. We have teams of people now on site repurposing some of the older facilities and looking at strategies to cohort individuals and to treat individuals so that we can mitigate perhaps some of the burden outside of those gates on the rest of the system. But certainly that’s something we’re watching and we have, as part of our incident command, the county as part of that cohort command unit that’s working to dress issues in real time to make sure that we have collaborative spirit so we can absorb those that may need medical care. The vast majority of people don’t but those that do, to make sure their needs are met.

As it relates to the younger cohort, this follows trend lines that you’ve seen across the country, not surprisingly the young invincibles as we refer to them, young folks that just feel they are invincible, that just don’t feel it’s going to impact them and if it does, it’s not a big burden. So we have a lot of work to do and I think you’ve seen that represented in the efforts we’ve done to make modifications to our stay-at-home order, around bars, certain activities that we have seen a younger cohort in particular begin to mix and we’ve started to see an increase in the spread.

So we just cannot impress upon people, regardless of their time of life, to have a state of mind of consciousness, health focus, health first consciousness. Even if you’re young and feel you’re invincible, someone you may come in contact with, if you’re presymptomatic and you still feel no symptoms, you can potentially spread that disease to someone who may have a compromised immune system.

So you don’t want to dream of regretting. You don’t want to learn about something like that and live with that the rest of your life. So I think it’s just about education. It’s about more encouragement and yes, more targeted enforcement. Again, enforcement in every way, shape or form. Modifying through enforcement, mitigating through enforcement, getting compliance or enforcement and to the extent, one needs to be punitive to enforce with fines and codes and regulatory oversight.

So across the spectrum we’re doing that and we expect to be doing a lot more of that until we see these numbers begin to decrease.

That said, our energy, our enthusiasm in this space for bending this curve, has not diminished and we have not lost our energy, our capacity, our focus, our determination, our desires to do what we did at the outset of this pandemic and that’s to bend the curve, to tame this growth, to mitigate the spread of this disease.

We will do that. I am confident in our capacity to do that. With more targeted focus, a more energetic engagement we’ll deal with these hotspots within congregate settings. We’ll focus on the most vulnerable, not just in our prison system but also our homeless and our seniors and our vets. We’ll see to the same energy in our skilled nursing facilities and our residential facilities and the like.

I just encourage all of you as is the case, every one of these presentations, to do your best, to do the same. Wear these face coverings, practice physical distancing and until we meet again tomorrow, have a wonderful, safe and healthy day/evening.

Take care, everybody.

California Governor Gavin Newsom July 6 Press Conference Transcript

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