Gov. Gavin Newsom California COVID-19 Briefing Transcript April 27

Gov. Gavin Newsom: (05:56)
Well, good afternoon, everybody. I just want to begin by extending, again, gratitude to 40 million Californians that over the course of the last number of weeks have not only bent the curve in the state of California but stabilized it. We’ve made real progress in this state over the course of the last number of weeks. That’s why I want to just confront the topic that is top of mind, and those are the images we saw over the weekend. The images down in Orange County and Ventura County on our beaches. Those images are an example of what not to see, people. What not to do, if we’re going to make the meaningful progress that we’ve made in the last few weeks extend into the next number of weeks.

The reality is we are just a few weeks away, not months away, from making measurable and meaningful changes to our stay-at-home order. That is a very optimistic point to emphasize. However, that’s driven by data. It’s driven by behavior. As we change our behavior, we can impact the science, the health and the data.

This virus doesn’t take the weekends off. This virus doesn’t go home because it’s a beautiful, sunny day around our coasts. The likelihood of having a virus-free world is not realistic in the next number of months. We’ll look forward to that day as herd immunity comes into effect and we have a vaccine that we can distribute and make available to hundreds of millions of people across this country, billions around the rest of the globe. Until then, we have to manage it. We have to manage risks. We have to manage and augment our behavior. That’s why I cannot impress upon you more, to those Californians watching, that we can’t see the images like we saw particularly on Saturday in Newport Beach and elsewhere in the state of California. Look, I am not naive. The overwhelming majority of our coastline was appropriately advanced, meaning the stay-at-home orders were advanced, the physical distancing, the social distancing on those beaches was appropriate. You didn’t see those images in LA beaches, in San Diego beaches, in Northern California around San Mateo County, up further north towards Eureka because we had strong guidelines that were not only adopted but were abided by, and we had local partners that supported those efforts and helped create the conditions on those hard park closures that allowed people to continue to conduct themselves appropriately. Unfortunately, there were these exceptions on Saturday, in particular, a little less so on Sunday. We’ve got to confront that.

I’m encouraged, I want to acknowledge that Newport Beach, I want to acknowledge their city council. I want to acknowledge the county board of supervisors in Orange County. I’m told they are looking to consider some augmentations and some more deliberative engagement to address the conditions and those concerns that were highlighted over the course of the weekend. But I want folks to know this as well, we’re doing the same at the state level. The California Highway Patrol with our state parks patrol, with other partners, and we will avail ourselves to more aggressive enforcement of the stay-at-home order, of the social distancing, of the guidelines and procedures that we expect to be followed all across the state of California.

I deeply respect localism. I deeply respect local decision making. I deeply respect the work that elected officials do all up and down this state of all political stripes. I recognize your anxiety and I recognize the pressures. As a former county supervisors, as a former mayor, I understand those local pressures intimately. I deeply understand the broader public sentiment about their need to get some clarity, get some confidence that we’ll go back to whatever modified sense of normalcy that we hope to see, that we’ll see that advanced sooner than later.

But I cannot impress upon people more, the only thing that will set us back is our behavior. The only thing that will set us back is people stopping to practice physical distancing, inappropriate social distancing. That’s the only thing that’s going to slow down our ability to reopen this economy, our ability to adapt and modify the stay-at-home order. As I said, weeks, not months. If the data continues to be as stable as it has been over the course of the last few weeks. The only thing that can stop that is more images, again, like we saw over this weekend.

I’m looking forward to working with those local government agencies, working much more aggressively on the enforcement side and continue to believe that we have remarkable capacity in this state to stabilize this curve and make the kind of modifications that all of us are eager to make. Again, none more eager than I am.

I just want to extend to that point, tomorrow we will be laying out more detail. Last week, on Wednesday, we laid out details on one of our six indicators, that was on the issues of testing, on tracing, on tracking, on social isolation. That is done with an economic justice framework and the issues around quarantine. Tomorrow, we’re going to break down the number five indicator which goes to our business environment, goes to schools and childcare facilities and the like.

Again, the hope and expectation is that we’ll be in a position in a number of weeks to make meaningful modifications, but again the data will guide that. The indicators will guide that. The only thing that could disrupt that, to set us back, to slow down our capacity to start to reopen our economy is behavior that’s inconsistent with the statewide guidelines. I just want to make that clear up top and, again, just want to thank all the incredible work that was done over the weekend by parks and by our public partners and by large cities that really conducted themselves appropriately and truly did justice to the guidelines that not only they set locally, but that the state of California has set. We’ll have a little work to do to improve upon Saturday, in particular, but I’m confident that we could do so and again look forward to robust conversations this week in that respect.

Also, am very honored that we had some robust conversations with state of Nevada and the state of Colorado over the last-

State of Nevada and the state of Colorado over the last week. And those two states have joined our Western States Coalition. In addition to Colorado and to Nevada of course, the partnership that was formed a few weeks back with Washington state and Oregon. This now allows all five states to begin to work even more closely and more collaboratively. I must say it is a wonderful thing when chiefs of staff, all the governors get on the phone and are comparing and contrasting best practices in real time, are sharing data, sharing information. This partnership has already become very, very meaningful, and I just again want to extend my deep gratitude to mayor Brown, mayor Inslee, to mayor Sisolak and to mayor Polis, or rather governors Polis, Sisolak, Inslee and Brown, for their outstanding leadership and their support in this broader Western States agenda. Also want to update you just briefly on a new strategy that we’ll also be employing in terms of getting to the next phase as it relates to meaningful modifications of our stay at home order.

As you may know, a few weeks back we announced a new economic advisory body, a new recovery body with some of the best and the brightest minds we can source in the state of California that are advising us on our recovery efforts, short term, medium and long term strategies. Longterm around re-inventing, re-imagining the future. One of the conversations that came out of this task force was the importance of breaking down by sector, and we’re certainly looking regionally in the state, but also looking by sector and really drilling down on the specific and unique needs of every sector of our economy.

In an effort to further that cause and to do so with some transparency, we’re inviting the press and others in on a series of digital round tables that I’ll be hosting with leaders in small businesses, medium and large businesses by sector. Also bringing in customers and bringing in experts from our advisory committee to help guide the conversations to really start to break down not just broad strokes hospitality or retail, but by type of retail, by type of sector within the broader sector of hospitality, bars, restaurants, and the unique nature of dining experiences with tablecloths, without tablecloths, and the issues of bars and restaurants that are combined, issues of different types of licenses and different types of retail.

Those that could do curbside pickup, those that aren’t necessarily afforded that because of the way their physical construction works. Are they in a shopping mall? Are they with multiple other businesses? Are thy on a second floor? All of these things will be broken down and we’ll start to socialize those conversations starting tomorrow. Again, bringing the press into those digital round tables. And again, it’s not just about the immediacy of working to get specific language on guidance for meaningful modifications of our stay at home order in the short term, but it’s really about talking about the future and what that retail experience may look like a year from now, two, three years from now. And so having this dynamic process, these two way conversations in a more granular level we think is not only appropriate but will be absolutely determinative in terms of how and when those guidelines are put out over the course of the next few weeks.

And so that was something else we wanted to preview. Again, tomorrow we’ll be having that first digital round table and inviting people in to participate in that. We’re also pleased as well that we made some progress over the course of the last number of days. I’m apt to remind you of all the N-95 masks, procedure masks and other PPE that we procured. We have distributed some 43.7 million N-95 masks to date in the state of California. We have also distributed roughly three million procedural masks or rather four million, excuse me, procedural masks. Over the course of the weekend, we were able to procure 3.1 million additional procedural masks, so we’ll go from four to over seven million masks that will be distributed. That’s very…

We continue the physical distancing. We appropriate ourselves in public by putting on face coverings when we are in contact or proximity to other people, and make sure that we continue to advance our stay at home orders. I get the data, by the way, every morning. We have a dashboard that’s provided on movement, on number of companies we were working with that provide that. We made those public a few months ago. We actually showed some of that data here a few weeks back. It says what we all know. Not only did we see an increase in movement and mobility over the weekend, but we’ve seen week to week, particularly in the last two weeks, a modest increase.

The vast majority of you are still socially distancing and are abiding by the state of home order, and not everybody that’s moving, even an increase in movement, are doing so inappropriately. But it does suggest again that we are seeing movement all across the state of California. And boy, it wasn’t just antidotal, those photographs from those two county and the beaches this weekend. We saw specifically data and movement to the beaches that only reinforced that data from a very statistical perspective.

But again, data and science and health will drive our decision making. And if we continue to make, again, the kind of progress we’ve made over the last few weeks, the next few weeks, I think we could be in a much better place than some had imagined and hoped for. But again, let’s abide by these rules and abide by these guidances. Let me also just briefly, before I get into the daily numbers, mention one other sector. We’ve been working very hard on these unemployment insurance claims. Some $4.4 billion has been distributed, $4.4 billion since March 15th, just since March 15th. It’s an unprecedented amount of money that has been distributed. 4.3 million checks have been cut, and we continue to see claims increase. The increase, the rate of growth is a little more modest than we saw a few weeks ago, but again in record territory. People have rightly commented about the call center needing to be opened up beyond the 8:00 AM to noon.

We did so a week ago, eight to eight, seven days a week. People then rightly commented they’re having a hard time getting, because of the call volume, getting a human being to answer and have expressed frustration. We have acknowledged that frustration on multiple occasions and we’ve leaned in. We announced 1,340 people have been redeployed to help support our unemployment insurance claim process, including supporting the call center. Just for the purposes of additional information and advancing that conversation further, we added 600 additional people to that task in the last few days. Later this week, we will be putting text capacity to answer questions by text, so SMS. That will go into place in the next few days. We put a new chat bot up a few days ago on the most frequently asked questions. Again, all about reducing the stress, reducing the volume. I mentioned just before the weekend that we were integrating some of the work around call centers and making sure that we are putting different protocols in place. That substantially started to take shape over the weekend.

We’re not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination. Let me tell you why. Just last week, 15 million calls came in to that call center. 15 million. And over one million minutes were spent, one million minutes, with a human being answering questions. So one of the things we recognize we need to do is reduce that call volume. We think the SMS, the texting will help in that efforts. These chatbots will certainly we believe help in that effort. And we’re also looking at some of the rules and regulation to loosen them up in terms of the need to make as many inquiries. That’s also an important thing that we started doing late last week into the weekend, and hopefully it will be bearing fruit later this week. So just know we get it. We’re doing everything in our power to get it done. I’m not going to sit here and complain about old IT systems, except we have an old IT system. And let me just acknowledge head-on, that’s not the only old IT system in government.

Interestingly, this has long been a point of passion for me, a large scale IT procurement. And while we were making some progress over this last year, we recognize we have a lot more progress that needs to be made including the department of motor vehicles, lest I not remind you of their infamous IT system. These things can’t change overnight, but know we’re working day and night to begin to do justice to your expectations and your rightful demands for performance from the state of California and all of our partners at the local level, and we’re committed to doing better every single day. So I just wanted to update you on unemployment insurance claims as well. As we do every day, I also want to update you on some trend lines before they’re headlines as it relates to the data that comes in on the number of deaths, hospitalization, number of positives in the state of California.

Over the weekend, we started to see a modest decline from that peak last week in the number of lives lost. Over the last 24 hours, 45 lives lost. Tragic. Again, human beings, not just numbers, not just statistics, but encouraging sign nonetheless over the course of the last number of days from that peak into last week. We’ll see where it goes in the next few days. Always a point of caution, lagging indicator, but that number down from over 100 just a number of days ago. We did see 1300 new individuals test positive for COVID-19, but we’re also seeing substantial improvement in our total testing. Now over 553,000 tests have been performed in the state of California. We’re starting to hit those benchmarks that we laid out to you in terms of substantially increasing our testing. I should just note we’re also seeing those benchmarks of commitments I made last week on those 80 new testing sites from Optum Serve, first one up there now in Humboldt, focusing on rural Californians, others going out in real time today and through the next week.

Also Verily, the partnership with Verily, we talked about a number of weeks ago with Google. They’re also focusing on places like East LA, inner city California, not just in the rural parts of the state. So not only are we increasing the numbers of tests, I just want to make sure people understand where we are testing is becoming more appropriate to the needs of 40 million Californians. And so we’re trying to meet people where they are as opposed to demanding they meet where we are. Again, a lot of progress in that place, and that progress will certainly help us with those green lights of indicators moving forward with these meaningful modifications of the stay at home order that all of us are looking forward to. So that’s the number of positives, over 1300 more in the last 24 hours. The number of hospitalizations, 1.4% increase. Again, we’re seeing some stabilization, decrease, modest increase, decrease, modest increase in the number of people hospitalized.

The number of people in ICU is basically flat from yesterday, just one individual more than in the last 24 hours in the ICU. So again, stabilization, but let’s keep it that way. That’s why I began talking about the beaches. Why run that, I know, I’ll say it again, that 90 yard dash? Who does that when you’re so close, when you’ve been making so much progress? Let’s just get through this thing together so that we can go so much farther, so much quicker. Worst thing we do is we start to sort of rest on our laurels thinking somehow the virus has decided to take a break or go on vacation. Virus is as prevalent as it’s ever-

[inaudible 00:26:00] or go on vacation. Virus is as prevalent as it’s ever been. It’s as transmissible as it’s ever been. Nothing’s changed in that respect. The only thing that changed is our behavior for the better, and that mitigated the spread, and has provided us the opportunity to build a foundation where we can then begin to make the modifications, and so, again, I just want to encourage people to continue in that spirit, and advance in that space, six feet apart minimum. Practicing social distancing, physical distancing, abiding by the stay at home, and we’ll do our part to make adjustments, and amendments when the data shows those green lights, and the data provides us the indication that we can move there. Hope it’s in the next few weeks, I believe it will be, but that’s based on our behaviors in the next few weeks, so let’s get there together, and let’s get there in a much stronger way than we otherwise could.

That’s broad strokes, the updates for the day, and I again want to just express great gratitude to all of you that continue to do everything you can to really meet the spirit that this moment requires, and that spirit includes all of you that have signed up for the californiansforall.ca.gov website to contribute your time, your passion, and your expertise to volunteer. It is just a wonderful thing to see those numbers continue to grow, and continue to expand in terms of every part of the state people participating, contributing, supporting their neighbors, supporting one another at this incredibly important time. Let’s also keep that spirit of contribution going as well. With that, happy to take questions.

Speaker 1: (27:45)
Jonathan [inaudible 00:27:46] KCRA News.

Jonathan: (27:51)
Hi governor. Thank you for taking my question. Earlier you had mentioned that you had possibly wanted to work with law enforcement agencies to be a little more aggressive with the enforcement. At least in our area we haven’t heard of any citations, does means you’re wanting to take a step more towards that or is the goal still education about social distancing guidelines versus enforcement?

Yeah, I appreciate it, no. The predominant focus is education. We did a lot of PSAs, we did paid media. I was very explicit last Thursday, a little bit on Friday about our concerns, and the expectation, particularly in these two counties that had soft openings as opposed to hard closures, and it manifested as we were concerned. Though, I think because of the great work the state parks, and their parks patrol, and our partners at the local level did, it was mitigated. Look, there were thousands of contacts, particularly on Saturday, substantially less so on Sunday for multitude of reasons.

There were no citations or arrests. There were a few warnings scattered all throughout the state of California. I think that’s a better approach. I don’t want to be punitive. My gosh, someone has lost their job. Last thing they want to do is walk their dog, they’re with their kids, and they’ve got cabin fever and they just want to take a rest on the beach, and all of a sudden they get a citation. I don’t want to see that happen. You don’t want to see that happen. None of us do, but if there’re people thumbing their nose and abusing it, putting their lives at risk, because they’re impacting the lives of others and ultimately setting back the cause of reopening the economy as quickly as we’d like to, I think we may have to do a little bit more.

And so, I mentioned it a moment ago let me mention it again to answer your question a little more specifically, we have a all hands meeting. We have a lot of these meetings, but with this is the principal topic with the Police Chief’s Association, our County Sheriff’s Association, CSAC, that’s our county partners and others to see if we can work even more closely together over the course of this next week, and the next few weeks, so that we can keep this momentum going, and not see a setback and everybody’s saying the right things. I think they want to do the right thing, including those local officials that wanted to open up the beaches. I think to their credit, they saw what happened. They’ve listened to the concerns and some of the criticism that all of us have received and I think there’s an understanding, and willingness to work collaboratively together.

By the way, it extends not just to enforcement, it’s also some strategic considerations. When we talk about hard closures, it’s primarily these parking facilities. Soft closures include parking facilities, but you broaden some of the parking restrictions even beyond the formal parking areas, you begin to further the efforts to mitigate a surge of visitors, so there’s some other things we can do and we will be doing a lot more of those things in the next number of days and weeks.

Speaker 1: (31:02)
[inaudible 00:31:02].

Speaker 2: (31:07)
Thanks governor. On this testing ramp up that you’ve discussed, you’ve talked a lot about increasing testing in rural towns and communities of color that have seen inadequate testing, but what we’re hearing a lot about is challenges when it comes to testing on the uninsured population. Can you talk about that and to the extent where [inaudible 00:31:33] which California’s testing goals are being complicated by lots of health coverage?

Yeah. Dr. Galley here can talk more specifically about that. That, absolutely, should not be an impediment for a multitude of reasons that we have announced regardless of your status in the state of California for a multitude of reasons that should not be an issue, but Dr. Galley can fill in more the blanks in terms of what those actions have been, and why he feels confident that, that’s not an impediment.

Dr. Galley: (32:10)
Thank you governor. We do continue to stand up sites across the state targeting areas that haven’t had enough testing, haven’t had any testing in some areas, and certainly as we look at our data to target those neighborhoods, and communities where we know there’s disparities in outcomes with COVID-19 to make sure those populations receive the testing in a quantity that they deserve. We’re building towards that, and we’re making new strides every day. Early on in our response, the governor made some very important moves, indications that our commercial health plans should, and will support the payment for COVID-19 testing regardless of where an individual is, or what plan they’re a part of.

Dr. Galley: (32:59)
He directed our team at the Department of Healthcare Services who run the medical program to ensure that no individual Medi-Cal beneficiary would experience any economic harm while they seek testing. We have worked with our clinic partners to make sure that there’s clarification on how that billing arrangement and payment arrangement can be made, so that we don’t have any issues getting an individual tested, and for those who do not have either commercial insurance or Medi-Cal, those who are uninsured, that we make sure that anyone who runs a test on an uninsured Californian is able to get reimbursed adequately, so that does not become an impediment.

Dr. Galley: (33:43)
We expect to see these questions more and more as individual clinics, and individual settings that begin to do more testing begin to ask the question and we look forward to demonstrating how they can get payment for those tests, so that the community message across California is if you think you need to be tested, especially as we change our prioritization, and testing guidelines of who should, and can be tested, that there is no impediment to getting that done. We see it as a very important part of opening or modifying our stay at home orders in the weeks to come, so we are dog-eared in working hard with our county partners, health plan partners to make sure that this and any other testing impediment is cleared.

And, as always PPE is an issue as well. Accessibility testing, but you got to have the appropriate amount of personal protective equipment, and so, that’s why we continue to work so aggressively to make sure we get these masks in particular, but not just mask, gowns, shields, gloves and other PPE distributed as quickly, and [inaudible 00:34:53] as we receive them.

Speaker 1: (34:55)
Alex Michelson, Fox 11.

Alex M: (34:59)
Governor, thanks for taking my call. A lot of people, business owners, employees are grateful for all the government assistance, grateful for all the charity work, but they really want to do is get back to work. In terms of, what are the types of businesses that you’re looking at that could potentially reopen first. Are we looking at maybe retail businesses with proper social distancing? Give employees and business owners sort of a sense of what is to come.

The good news is we’ll be laying that out in detail tomorrow. We’ll be highlighting indicator five of our six indicators. That indicator is specific to business. We’ll talk regions, we’ll talk sectors, we’ll lay out a strategy for phasing those things, and as I said, preview based upon the data to date, and based upon the importance of continuing to practice social distancing and physical distancing. If the data leads us further, and the indicators continue to hold that in the next few weeks, we’ll start making some meaningful modifications, not the next few months. That’s why I, like I just talked about the importance of not seeing what we saw this weekend on our beaches, because the only thing it gets set us back is our individual and collective behavior.

Speaker 1: (36:15)
Stephanie [Bear 00:36:16] Buzz Bee news.

Stephanie B: (36:19)
Hi governor, I had a few questions about the state’s contact tracing plans. Is the state working with any tech companies to automate contact tracing through a phone app, or other technology? And then, last week you said that the state school was to build a contact tracing workforce of 10,000 people. How many people has the state hired so far? What are their backgrounds? How is the state going about paying them?

Yeah. We just announced literally a few days ago, but we did our survey. 22 counties have robust tracing capacity that’s already in place. We’re building off that existing workforce. We are going to announce, I don’t want to get ahead of myself, a partner with a well known brand in the state of California, but not tech brand yet. This is more a well known medical institution in the state of California to guide our efforts. As I specifically said last week, we had done that survey not just to the counties, but of our existing workforce on allowing people to fill out forms about what their unique skill set is so that we can then redeploy that workforce that will be redeployed from, again, a bottom up perspective, building on the existing capacity, and the expertise, and workforce at the county level, supplementing at the state level, and then, building capacity of partnerships institution that we’re very, very shortly going to announce that we’ll be, substantially, doing the training that’s required for the workforce.

We’re well on our way of meeting our internal goals, and the next few weeks you’re going to see thousands and thousands of people, well on our way to hit that 10,000 goal sooner than actually some of us had even anticipated when we made the announcement last week, and again, that’s based upon the extraordinarily robust existing infrastructure that’s in place. It may not be total numbers, but it’s the quality of those local efforts that are consistent. By the way, even in this crisis, and this is important to remind people.

We’ve been doing contact tracing for years, and years and years, decades in the state of California. TB, measles. Substantively, you’ll see a lot of work in this space on STDs, some gonorrhea outbreaks in the last number of years, HIV and AIDS brought to a whole nother level, and some counties are more enriched in this space than others. We’re building off that local expertise that already exists, and then, expanding it with this surge workforce based on the surveys that we had conducted a number of months back, probably almost two months ago, seven or so weeks when this crisis first took…

Seven or so weeks when this crisis first took shape and we started those surveys and then we will augment on those efforts through this online portal and training program that we’re just about to announce and I want to do it today but I don’t want to get ahead of myself and so no, in the next day or so we’ll be even more specific including the answer to your question on what the tech platform. We have a multiple choices in this. I just want to make sure we don’t pick one too soon and unnecessarily and lock ourselves in but we are very close to having that platform set up as well.

Speaker 3: (39:40)
David Baker, Bloomberg News.

David Baker: (39:45)
Hello governor. You had last week talked about how the federal government and President Trump in particular, had promised the state 100,000 swabs, testing swabs last week, which then got ratcheted back a little bit to, to 90,000 and 250, 000 this week.

David Baker: (40:02)
Do you need, get the 90,000 last week? Are you assured that you will get the 250,000 coming up this week? And if so, are there any other testing bottlenecks out there in the different bottlenecks you described last week, like with reagents and things like that?

Thank you. We received the 90,000. distributed 90,000. Nothing to believe. It’s Monday, that this week we won’t receive 260,000. They’re promising the make up for the ten. But when that comes in I’ll let you know and there’s nothing to suggest that won’t happen.

We’ll still need multiples of that and so by no stretch the imagination is that enough. Remember it’s not just the total number of tests, we want to continue to increase the number of times an individual is tested, including the types of tests; the serology tests, not just the traditional PCR tests.

Therein lies answer to the second part of your question. Every week we tend to shut a one concern down, there is another concern that that rares it’s a head and so you’re correct. It was for a while reagents and then it was specifically RNA extraction kits and then it was swabs and this last few weeks, but there’s also transport media, which I mentioned in the survey of the 251 largest vendors that we have, including our private and public labs, our private partners and public labs, that continued to be a problem.

Remember I said in that survey, 50 to 55%, the 251 largest testing providers, said swabs was a number one issue. 50% said some of the testing kits, the transport media, the tubes were also a problem. So that continues to be a space where we’re doing more and working, not just our federal partners, but working to procure directly those specific supplies.

But look, substantial progress is being made, but by no stretch of the imagination does everybody have ample supplies, including again, PPE, which is critical in terms of making sure that these tests are conducted and appropriate level. OptumServe, Forgive me for being a little more long winded, but I want to be precise. OptumServe in those 80 sites we announced last week, those are end-to-end tests all locked in, all fully loaded in terms of supply and diagnostic capacity and verily has substantially made progress in the six additional sites that we announced last week in terms of their supply chain.

So we’re confident in those new announcements that supplies for the moment are ample and I’ll remind you that 1.5 million serology tests that Abbott has committed to and we have procured, those are going to sites or the machines are already in place and we’re confident that those also are fully loaded commitments.

Speaker 3: (43:05)
Jeremy White, Politico.

Jeremy White: (43:09)
Hey governor. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask you about the two states that joined the regional path today, Nevada and Colorado, as you mentioned. The governor of Nevada noted how many customers, excuse me, visitors from other western states come to visit Las Vegas for example. I’m curious to know the regional framework you’re contemplating with other governors, would it potentially include policing the borders between those states? Limits on people crossing those borders depending on how different governors are rolling back or keeping in place these orders.

Yeah, I think look, you scope a potential. That’s a potential. But I can say this just based on my personal conversations, many of these governors, we have not had that conversation so that is not our current scoping. Frankly our current scoping is on what meaningful modifications look like. Comparing and contrasting conditions at the local level, recognizing the regional variance even within our states.

Tomorrow again, we’ll be laying out more detail on our roadmap and our specific indicator number five and what the phased in approach will look like. You’ll see conversations that we’ve had with other governors where we have taken some of their counsel and advice and incorporated into the presentation we’ll be providing you tomorrow. It’s just a proof point of the collaboration and the sharing of best practices back and forth.

But look, if we’re at a different phase in this and there’s other concerns, I imagine that’s a scoping potential of the purpose of the western states compact is some consideration and some collaboration, some heads up, some coordination on something along the lines that you suggest but not at the moment.

Speaker 3: (44:59)
Final question. Jim Roope. Westwood One News.

Jim Roope: (45:05)
Thank you very much. Good afternoon governor [inaudible 00:45:08] I look most people do right now, but I have a question for Doctor Ghaly if that’s okay.

My gosh, you’ve broken my heart or not. You’ve elevated me. Doctor Ghaly.

Jim Roope: (45:17)
Oh, sorry. Thank you very much. Doctor, we’ve been seeing a lot of documentation, hearing a lot of information about how the virus lives on surfaces, so on and so forth, but we understand, what I’ve understood now through all of these briefings is that the virus is a protein and then a droplet, it’ll survive for a little bit. Once that droplet dries up, while the virus could be still detected, its DNA would still be there, it’s not necessarily infectious. So we have information on how long that virus can live on somewhere, how long it can be detected but do we have information about how long the virus is actually infectious on these surfaces or do I have all of that wrong?

Doctor Ghaly: (46:00)
No, you thank you for the question. I think it’s an important one many people are asking. We talk about how it’s transmitted from person to person. We’re talking about six feet apart and what about the surfaces that that person that you don’t normally interact with was just standing at and we are learning more and more about how the transmission of COVID-19 takes place. I think we’re learning based on what other countries are publishing in the literature, what we’re learning in some of those major epicenters in the states of where they’ve had many, many cases.

I would say that because we are not 100% certain how it lives on surfaces, whether it transmits off of those surfaces, that we continue to push out those very basic guidelines. Wash your hands frequently. Don’t touch your face if you can avoid it. Mainly your eyes, mouth and nose. Make sure you cover your cough. Keep physical distancing as much as possible. Stay at home when you’re able to and if you must leave your house to go to a necessary essential visit to the store or the pharmacy to use a face covering and to keep as far apart as possible.

I think as we learn more and more, whether it’s an hour on a surface, six hours on a surface, whether that transmits and is actually infective, transmissible and can cause someone to contract COVID-19, we want to be abundantly cautious with all of our citizens around California and giving that consistent strong guidance of what to do now.

As we learn more and more about the science, we will share that with you, try to be clear about what it means and how it might change our requirements or recommendations around how we behave. But for the time being, we continue to stick to the initial message around physical distancing and doing the basic common sense things around covering your cough, washing your hands and taking normal measures to protect yourself, your families and your communities.

Thanks for asking the person went to medical school that question and let me just extend appreciation to everybody. All the good work you’ve done to suppress the spread in the state of California and good work is provide us the opportunity tomorrow to give you an update on our indicator. Again, six indicators. We did the update last Wednesday on testing, tracking, tracing, isolation and quarantine. Tomorrow we’ll be talking about the opportunity to begin to modify and potentially the course of the next few weeks, not months, modifications to the stay-at-home order that are go to the question of businesses and sectors and regions in the state of California but that’s because of your good work.

If the data starts to show different things, the spread is not suppressed, if we go back to our behaviors pre COVID-19 behaviors too quickly, then these announcements, these guidances, our ability to get back to modified normalcy, will simply be delayed.

And so again, it’s in the spirit of collaboration, spirit of expectation and in the spirit that is defined the last few weeks that I just implore you to continue to do the great work you’ve done and continue to tell your friends and family, particularly younger folks, that that work is not over.

The virus is as transmissible as it’s ever been and again, it doesn’t take the weekend off. It doesn’t take any time off. It is ubiquitous, it is invisible, and it remains deadly. Ask the 45 families who lost a loved one in the last 48 hours.

Please, please continue physical distancing, social distancing, continue to abide by your local and the state guidances and continue in that spirit of contribution and as always, I’ll end just reminding you, if you feel the urge to contribute your time, your energy, your passion, your expertise, Californiansforall. ca.com.

Take care everybody.

Gov. Gavin Newsom California COVID-19 Briefing Transcript April 27

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