Gov. Gavin Newsom California COVID-19 Briefing Transcript May 4

Gavin Newsom: (00:00)
And are underway not only to test but begin the process to more robustly track, trace, isolate, and quarantine individuals that have either contacted, or contracted, Covid-19 the disease and/or have been somehow impacted or associated with those that might be. We want to update you on the tracing technology that we’re putting into play some of the training that will be advancing some of the recruitment that we’re doing to build a workforce to build an army so that we can meaningfully modify the stay at home order. I want to speak as well today about meaningfully modifying the stay at home order. Some plans we have to make adjustments later this week and then we’ll talk broadly about series of updates related to our efforts to contain the virus and moreover to make sure we’re prepared for this next phase as we begin to modify the stay at home order. But again, let me begin by focusing on a new partnership that we have advanced with UCSF and UCLA.

UCSF and UCLA will be providing a virtual academy for a recruitment effort and training effort for new tracers. These are simply disease detectives that will be trained to support the existing workforce that persistent exists throughout the state of California to begin the process of advancing a tracing regime that will substantially increase our current capacity. I’ll back up and explain what I mean by that specifically. Currently, every County in the state of California does some form of tracing. We’ve been doing tracing as it relates to disease, infectious disease for years and years and years for decades, STDs, issues of HIV and AIDS, going back, TB, measles and other tracing capacity. We’ve been doing a lot of tracing since the beginning of this pandemic. You may recall when we started doing these press conferences, I would announce the number of people under investigation, not just in our ICUs and our hospitals, but these are people that came on commercial flights from points of the globe, primarily at the time, from Asia that county health officials were tracking, respecting privacy, but tracking from a disease control perspective. All counties have this tracing capacity in place. The question is how do you scale it so that we can include Covid-19 in the tracing? 23 counties currently are actively tracing. Again, all counties have a tracing component. 23 counties are actively tracing Covid-19 patients. Those that are positive, trying to figure out who they’ve come in contact with and if they test positive to do the same and so on and so on. Begin to isolate individuals, quarantine individuals. This is all foundational so that we can more quickly move to modify our stay at home order. This tracing again that’s happening includes a workforce of about 3000 people today, 2,845 individuals to be exact. It’s primarily conducted at the local level. There’s 61 local levels, 58 counties, but 61 health directors or health programs in the state of California. Interestingly, Long Beach, Pasadena and Berkeley have their own unique status.

I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole except to say that we’re working with 61 different agencies and they have, to some degree, tracing capacity. What we’re doing is now working with them in partnership with UCSF, in partnership with UCLA, to have an online trading Academy to increase their workforce capacity from again roughly 3000 people and to provide the capacity to train upwards of 3000 people a week to go through two phases in terms of building an army and a workforce. 10,000 being our first phase goal, 20,000 our second phase goal. So in the high end getting about 20,000 people into this workforce. First phase, 10000, second phase and additional 10,000 building off the existing base of 3000. A virtual training academy that will include 12 hours of online instruction, eight hours of in person instruction led by two of the most outstanding institutions in the United States, UCSF and UCLA.

The first training will go online this Wednesday. As I said, this is 20 hour course, 12 hours online, about eight hours in person. The ability to scale this is about 3000 per week and the first phase goal is about 10,000 in to that workforce. We’ve been working for weeks now with UCSF and UCLA. Just to get this training academy right and to make sure their curriculum and their current protocols will meet the exact needs of our counties. And when I say meet the needs of the counties, this is important. While this is a state led effort where we will provide the resources, we believe most of the resources will come from the federal government as they’re tracing support is prescribed, otherwise we come through the state through FEMA reimbursements and/or our emergency dollars. But we’ll provide the supports for the counties, but it will be county led and this is just foundational.

The counties are the experts, the counties have been doing this, we’ll provide the counties flexibility, but they’ll feed into one database. So there’s integration and there’s capacity for information sharing in real time, but the anchor really are the two UCs and this workforce that is a surge workforce that comes from existing employees that we can redeploy at the county level and existing paid state employees that can be redeployed at the state level. Cal HR, our human resource team, has already been identifying individuals that we believe have the right kind of background, cultural sensitivity, cultural competency, different language skills, health mindset. We’ve been scouring that workforce and we believe we have well beyond the capacity that would be interested in this training. If we don’t, we’ll supplement that, but we’re confident for phase one we do. We’ll supplement that by finding additional recruits for this effort, but all of our agencies are doing the work to identify these individuals. First cohorts starts getting trained this Wednesday, and again, all of this is important and I think is good news. Important because this allows us to move forward with some modifications of our stay at home order. I made a point a few weeks back that we needed to improve our testing as a predicate. Again, testing, tracing. We tend to use those hand-in-hand. The testing is really taken off. We’re now averaging over 30,000 tests a day. We’re over 768, roughly 768,000 tests that have been conducted that have been reported in this state. We believe there’s still substantially more tests being done, but the reporting is getting better and the testing is simply scaling about where we hoped it would be. We’ve averaged 25,000 over the last seven days of tests every day over the weekend average over 30,000 tests a day, and so testing is the backbone, but the tracing component requires a workforce, it requires an element of coordination and collaboration.

Building on the existing county supports and building capacity through this virtual academy will I think substantially help aid our efforts, as Dr Angel will talk about to identify individuals that have tested positive to identify their contacts with privacy first, always with a health frame, and then begin the process as required to isolate individuals and potentially quarantine individuals so they don’t impact and infect other people. Again, Dr Angel will talk more about this in a moment, but I wanted also to tee up this second point and that is the movement into the second phase. About a week ago, in fact, it was a week ago today, I said, “We’re weeks not months away from moving into a second phase,” on Friday, I said, “We’re days not weeks away from announcing that movement into the second phase.” So today we are announcing our efforts to update our stay at home guidelines and begin the process of moving into phase two.

That process will begin later this week. On Thursday the seventh, we will put out the guidelines. If the guidelines are met and modifications are made, then people can start reopening with those modifications in these particular sectors as early as Friday. But again, the modifications, the adaptations need to be in place before we can move into that second phase, but it can begin as early as the end of this week. Here’s the phase that we will be moving into later this week. We mentioned phase two included an earlier and a later consideration, meaning low risks and moving into a little bit medium to higher risk as we phase into these four phases. I know this can sound confusing, but lower risk is again the frame around this phase two. And lower risk we are defining in the retail sector and we’ll be making adjustments this week in the retail sector for pickups and for all of the associated logistics and manufacturing related to retail.

Let me be more precise about what I mean by retail. As early as the end of this week, you will have the capacity as a retailer with the modifications and the guidelines we set forth on Thursday to begin to reopen for pickup clothing, bookstores, music, toys, sporting goods stores, florists with Mother’s Day coming up. Other sectors are rather other businesses within that retail sector and the supports and the accessory support on logistics and manufacturing within and around those sectors will be allowed to move forward into this phase two. We are also allowing, with considerations of additional criteria, the ability for containment plans and protection plans to be put into place in regions and counties throughout the state of California where we recognize their different conditions and we believe different criteria should be put into place.

So we are also announcing today the capacity for these other counties and regions to move further into phase two with plans that need to be locally certified, with plans that need to be locally certified by criteria that includes the capacity on testing, the capacity on tracing, their capacity on physical distancing and sanitation, and their capacity to protect the most vulnerable residents in their community, particularly seniors in congregate facilities, those that are incarcerated, those that are homeless and other individuals. If those criteria can be self-assessed self-certified by the local health official in concurrence with the county supervisors, can be self-certified attested to in concurrence with a local health official and the county supervisor, we will allow additional movement through phase two. And so that includes, let me be specific, the prospects of restaurants with modifications opening, hospitality more broadly, opening again with modification. Not into phase three yet, but well into phase two, primarily in that restaurant space and other specific capacity again has to… It has to be done in a very thoughtful and judicious way. It’s a health first focus.

Indicators have to be maintained and Dr Angel will talk about what those indicators look like, stabilization on rates of hospitalization, ICU or over 14 days or declines and again, testing and tracking capacity. But one thing I know very well is many of these counties, many of these regions have done already a ton of work in this space and they’re ready to go. And so I have great expectation that you’re going to see a lot of these communities with local certification in place. All of those will be made public. All of those have to be done through a process that goes to the California Department of Public Health where that adaptation and that testament at the local level certification of all those conditions and criteria from a health frame are going to be met. Once that is done, we need active monitoring, surveillance to make sure that the disease is not spreading.

If it is, one of the criteria is a trigger to re-modify the changes. And so we just want folks to know we need to toggle back and forth here on the basis of what’s happening in those communities in real time. I know this… Trust me, I know this can sound very confusing, but let me just again, before I bring up Dr Angel who will make it much more simple and has slideshow to reinforce that, just make this point. We are entering into the next phase this week, end of the week with modifications. We will allow retail to start operating across the spectrum. We will allow regional variation but only after self-certification of particular criteria that will allow even further implementation of our phase two. This is a very positive sign and it’s happened only for one reason. The data says it can happen, but we recognize as we begin to modify, behavior is modified and possible community spread may occur.

If that’s the case and we do not have the capacity to control that spread, to trace that spread, to track that spread, to isolate individuals that may have been in contact with Covid-19, we will have to make modifications anew and so this is a sober announcement. It’s done on the basis of health directors in local communities guiding our effort here at the state and I just want to thank everybody for their collaborative spirit and their hard work over the last few weeks really putting these modifications to play. One final point and then I’ll pull it over to Dr Angel. We are not telling locals that feel it’s too soon, too fast to modify. We believe those local communities that have separate timelines should be afforded the capacity to advance those timelines. So let me unpack that. For example, the Bay Area, Northern California, they have guidelines where they are a little more strict than these guidelines. If they choose not to come into compliance with the state guidelines, they have that right.

Others, because conditions are very different in the Bay Area and other parts of the state and more rural parts of the state and Northern California as an example, they may want to go even further. Again, we will afford them that right with conditions and modifications that meet the health needs of the entire state. Because one thing we know is none of us are isolated. We may be more so in terms of our proximity to others, but none of us are immune or isolated from people traveling within and out of these communities back and forth. And so we have to manage this from a broader perspective, not just a very small perspective, but we do nonetheless recognize the variations and the diversity across the state. And so thus the ability to go stronger or to modify and begin to loosen up even more.

So if that hasn’t confused you a little bit, you haven’t been paying attention. If that hasn’t confused you a lot, well the good news, I hope to ameliorate that confusion and concern because we have Dr Angel that will I think more succinctly put all this in perspective and has a slide show to back that up. And of course we’ll answer questions for additional clarification but this is an optimistic day as we see a little bit ray of sunshine on the horizon. Adaptation, modification, first and foremost. But as you’ll see with the report card that Dr Angel, our health report card that we’re putting out today, why we’re in a position to make this announcement. Dr Angel.

Dr Angel: (18:11)
Thank you, governor. It’s a pleasure to join you again to talk about this very positive opportunity that we have moving forward here. And again, this is because the data tells us that we can, but that data is only a reflection of all of the hard work all of us here in California have done. All of those people who’ve stayed home, all of those people who have worked in our essential workforce to make sure that we can stay home safely, that’s why we are where we are today. I want to start first with a reminder about our specific goals as we move forward through this process, until California is protected, until we have immunity, meaning that it is safe for us to move without modifications, we will keep four things specifically in mind when we make our decisions. First of all, we want to make sure that no matter what we do, we maintain and ensure our ability to care for sick.

Dr. Sonia Angell: (19:03)
… what we do. We maintain and ensure our ability to care for sick within our hospitals. Making sure that our care delivery system is protected, is essential as we move forward, particularly into this point. As the governor said, “As we begin to move forward, to move out of our homes, we increase the risk of people getting sick and when people get sick, we want to make sure we’re there to protect them.” We also are very focused on making sure we prevent infection and those people who are at high risk for severe disease. We are clear that we need to build the capacity that to make sure that we’re continuing to protect the health and wellbeing of all Californians.

And then ultimately we are focused also in making sure we reduce the social, emotional and economic disruptions that are occurring based upon this very important stay at home order that we put into place, which is one of the reasons why we are so pleased to be able to talk about moving forward and opening some areas of our sector with modifications because the data tells us so. And so the report card that the governor referred to, I’m going to share with you now here specifically, these are based upon the key indicators that we have always discussed in our roadmap. But there are specific metrics related to those indicators that are particularly important as we talk about moving from stage one to stage two. So those key areas, and we’ve mentioned them before. I’m going to mention again and talk to you a little bit about how the progress is in each of them.

That brings us to this point where we can make these exciting announcements that we’re anticipating the potential to make some changes as soon as this Friday. So first of all, the key metrics include stability of our hospitalizations, personal protective equipment inventory, making sure that we have healthcare search capacity, that we have testing capacity, that we have contact tracing capacity and that we have public health guidance in place. And with all of those indicators, we are on track. So how, so first of all, with respect to stabilization of hospitalizations, this is a graph that we’ve showed you. This is how we’re understanding how it’s affecting our state at large. We’re looking at the number of hospitalizations of people who have COVID-19. Across the top is over the past 14 days, the trend in the total number of people hospitalized with COVID-19.

And across here, the second lighter line shows the trend in the total number of people hospitalized in ICUs with COVID-19 and you’ll see that’s a pretty flat line there. It’s stabilized. We’d like to see that, it even looks like it might be going down a little bit, but that’s cautious optimism. Regardless, it has been stable and that really supports making these decisions, but there are important other things that we need to take into consideration that are also on our report card. With respect to Personal Protective Equipment, PPE, incredibly important as we move into this next stage. So on hand today we have over 18.2 million surgical masks, 5.8 million face shields and 7.2 million gloves. We will be, and are distributing those rapidly to our local counties and health facilities and other locations where they are needed.

And we have also ordered and anticipating, hundreds of millions of surgical masks and N95 masks, that should be coming in. So we’re progressing very well in that. With respect to search capacity, we have 14 facilities statewide that are ready to accept patients. This is outside of our traditional care delivery system. That’s a total of over 2,072 additional beds that are ready to accept patients if we need to use that space. We also have 10,000 plus ventilators throughout the state that are not in use and available to respond if needed. And we have 94,000 applications received today from folks applying to join the California Health Corps. That’s an additional workforce that we can use to help support additional needs throughout the state if needed. So our surge capacity is in really a good place.

With respect to testing. We are growing our testing capacity. You hear about this virtually every day. We have met our goal of 25,000 tests per day and we have 86 new testing sites statewide that are going to be focused on both rural and urban underserved areas to make sure that we can address testing needs. Those are rolling out. They should be out soon. Again, this gives us optimism that as we’re moving towards the end of this week, we will have testing that will be necessary for this early stage in place. Of course we continue to grow our testing facilities across the state because we know that’s a vital importance, so we will continue to focus on this. As I’ve just shared with you, we’re in a good place to start talking about this most. So let me talk and reiterate a little bit of what the governor had mentioned earlier specifically that we have been focused now on stage one.

As you know, stage one is our essential workforce and during this time we’ve been really focusing on making sure that that workforce is safe and secure. We will be anticipating moving into stage two but we’re going to do so in a way that’s measured and thoughtful. And in order to do that, we are going to start moving into stage two this Friday we believe and it will only include specific industries. So just to reiterate which industries this very first part of stage two will include. It is expanded retail with curbside pickup and then associated manufacturing and supply chains for that retail. What does that mean? Well, it means other retail places like bookstores, clothing stores, florists, sporting goods stores. All of those will be available and open for curbside pickup along with all of those individuals who are working in manufacturing related to those types of areas.

Now, we’ll have the opportunity to go back to work, but remember this is with modifications. That means we want to make sure that the both the workers and the customers are safe in these settings, which means that there will be modifications to ensure a physical distancing and making sure that the unique circumstances of those workplaces will be addressed. And so for that, guidance will be coming out this Thursday to provide additional information and assist industries that are making those changes to make sure that all of us are are safe as we move into this early next stage. So what’s not included in this early next stage but still is in stage two in this very opening, we’re not going to go immediately opening offices for example.

We’re not going to go immediately to seated dining at restaurants. We’re not going to be opening shopping malls at this time. We’re going to start with those sectors that I just mentioned. These sectors however, will be a part of stage two and you can look forward to us sharing guidance and announcements on when it will be safe to open them. Again, remember we’re following the data and we’re looking very carefully at this. We’re going to move as rapidly as we can, but as safely as we can through stage two. Regional variation I know has been a really, really important topic. I’ve been on the phone and in contact every single day with our local health authorities. Really understanding their local conditions, understanding regional conditions and getting really guidance from them.

We’re learning from one another constantly over this process and so we’re excited to share with you now a process in which counties can request or a test for a variation during stage two. That means that counties can move more quickly through stage two but only if they attest that they’ve met specific state readiness criteria. We’re going to be sharing those readiness criteria later on in the day, but they follow very much the indicators that we’ve talked about earlier. Really they’re all those things that we as a state and in conversations with the local counties really understand are important that they’re in place in order to make sure that we move into this next stage in a way that minimizes risk.

So counties are going to create and submit these readiness plans and then those will be made publicly available online for all of us to review and see and understand how those counties that are maybe moving in a different rate through stage two, how they are planning to make sure that the risk is minimized for all of their residents. And then I just want to go a little bit into contact tracing again. This has been one of our key tools as we think about moving into stage two, it’s important because as people move more, we increase the risk for people to get sick. If people get sick, we want to identify those individuals very early and then make sure that all of their contacts are also identified. In doing that, we can create a way to minimize the spread of a COVID-19 if it enters our communities and allow us to continue on safely with continued movement through staging.

So contact tracing is incredibly important. To speak specifically about where we’ve gone with respect to progress of developing this very important infrastructure. We are identifying up to 10,000 individuals who will be contact tracers and available across the state. That’s through the first phase. When we hit 10,000 we’re going to go for another 10,000 more and we’ll be redirecting existing state staff so we don’t necessarily need to bring in an entirely new workforce at this moment because we have lots of people already available to do this. Staff will be requested by and then assigned to local health authorities and the model is designed to be scalable. So we can start in one place and very quickly build it up so that they have the resources that they need if indeed there is a number of cases in a place where a county needs additional contact tracers to make sure that they’re able to control the the COVID-19.

The training is going to be done through a virtual training academy. This training academy, will be available to individuals throughout the state. It will be high quality and free training, not only to the individuals but also available to all health departments free of charge. So this is something that is a service to our state across any county and will be available there to make sure that every county can build up the resource that it needs to make sure it protects their community. And then finally there’s also included in this a data management platform that’s going to be available again to all local public health departments without charge. It’s going to have a very heavy emphasis on health. Those are the questions that we’re asking about. That is the information that is important in this context.

It’s a broad database of all of an individual’s personal information is really focusing on that health information that’s needed to protect and to control the specific case of COVID-19. And it is absolutely confidentially managed. The data platform itself is going to support both the case investigations and the contact tracing itself. And it’s also going to be interoperable, which is incredibly important so that the information can move seamlessly with our disease surveillance system. And it’ll also support system checks via chat, email, phone automation, making it really easy for individuals to be able to share the information about how they’re doing with those in the county that are helping support them in either isolating or quarantining.

Depending upon whether or not they have a case or they might have COVID-19 themselves or whether or not they’re a contact of one and being managed very closely to make sure that they’re safe and healthy. So that’s it. That’s the update that I’ve wanted to share with you about this very next step and it’s really a thrill to be here at this time to be talking about all of this positive movement forward. Thank you.

[inaudible 00:30:39] doctor and again we’ll be available to answer questions and I imagine they’ll be many questions. We’ll also be putting out all of these guidelines in a very public way and that should also answer more of the detailed questions. I just want to reinforce a couple of points. Dr. Angell made that need to be reinforced. PPE is foundational in this as well. I talked about testing. She talked about testing beginning to increase on a consistent basis. Those 80 plus new sites that we’ve been able to lock down and most of them are already in place. A few more will be put in place. We’re just working on the exact location within regions throughout the state of California. Supply chains beginning to loosen up a little bit. Still concerns in that space.

That 25,000 average. That’s that last phase, we want to get substantially higher number of daily tests and as I noted just over the weekend, we’ve averaged over 30,000. You recall the goal 152 tests per 100,000 Californians that’s about 61,000 or so tests a day. Our goal, as was stated a few weeks back, is to get to 60,000 to 80,000 tests. I just want to make it clear. We recognize we have a lot more work to do in the testing space. We talked about the importance of tracking and we’re working with some of the world’s leading experts in that space and it’s a wonderful thing that we can say that. Because most of them are in the state of California since this state has been doing outstanding tracing work in the past. Again, just not at this scale and the scale will be advanced to this virtual academy and through workforce that we currently have that we believe can adequately be redeployed at least for that first phase of 10, 000.

The ability to do so will happen in real time building off the existing 2,845 individuals growing by a few thousand every week. Again, that will allow us to move more broadly into the second phase, but the PPE is foundational. Some 4.53 million N95 masks have been distributed. Dr. Angell gave you a list that is now in inventory. We’ve never had inventories like that in many, many months because the good news is product is now coming in at scale. Just on the procedural masks, these surgical masks, just from one contract, over 10 million of those masks have come in over the course of the last week or so. That’s why we have already distributed some 14.2 million procedure masks. That number was pretty static up until this last week. More product coming in, more going out as quickly as possible.

Fundamentally, the masks and PPE become foundational in terms of moving into this phase because we want to do so by protecting our workers, protecting our business leaders, protecting customers, and making sure that they have access to this critical PPE. Deep sanitation requirements again. These deeper guidelines will be required to move further than their announcement today. That’s all part of the criteria planning that I know many locals have already done and modifications that we’ll need to see through a prism of public health in consultation with county officials, county boards of supervisors. So as that comes in, we will be making public those variances to the statewide state home order. And I’ll remind you just again, because it’s important, those that have more stricter guidelines, we are not preempting their guidelines, we’ll still allow them to move forward.

Capacity is important. People ask, ” Well, why do you have these empty facilities that you’ve built?” Well, we’re pleased that they’re empty. We built them in anticipation of a surge that did not materialize because of the stay at home order because of millions of Californians being thoughtful, not only about their own health, but community health and the physical distancing that allowed that curve not to ever rise to some of those models suggested. It’s been flat and continues to see modest declines. That’s put us in the position we are today. But it is essential as we modify that we are continuing to be very sober about how we conduct business. And I’ll just say this as a business person myself. As someone that started many, many businesses before I got into politics, just because you’re open doesn’t mean customers show up.

And I just want to remind people, you don’t open your economy without customers that are willing, feel confident and safe that their health needs are met. And that’s why these modifications are so foundational in terms of making this announcement mean anything. Because for a lot of folks will say, “Well, that’s nice, I can open up, but with these modifications I’m not sure anyone’s going to show up even if I open up. And even with the modifications, obviously there’s so many constraints.” And we’re not naive about that and that’s why we want to continue to, based on the health data, make additional modifications, loosen things up even more to address those legitimate business concerns that are self evident in all of our announcements.

So good news on the PPE, good news on progress, on tracing and setting up this new academy and new capacity to scale. Very good news on testing that continues to march in the right direction. Regionalization now top of mind and now progress into phase two of our efforts. And so I hope people receive this warmly today, but I recognize for some it’s simply not good enough and I recognize that deeply. And that was exampled over the course of days and weeks where people are expressing themselves more firmly. And expressing themselves in terms of their own anxieties and fears about their own personal financial health, their mental health, the concerns about their community, this state and this nation. And more broadly the world we’re trying to build together as we work through this pandemic. Know your voices are being heard, know that they’re being respected.

Some are a little bit more pointed than others, but I understand where that comes from and all I ask again is we conduct ourselves, do so to the extent we can safely. And do so in a way that protects not only your personal health but the health of others you may come in contact with. I know that there’s some businesses that are not waiting for these announcements. There may be in some cases, unfortunate consequences and I don’t say that to be punitive. I’ll just say that as a proof point. I know that just the alcohol beverage control here at the state of California has investigated 81 businesses that opened up as bars and some restaurant bars. 80 of them are shut back down because of licenses that were threatened to be pulled. There’s no reason to do that.

I know there’s a deep desire to do that. There’s no reason to do that without the expectation again, that the public health officials and agencies across the state are going to do what we can to continue…

Agencies across the state are going to do what we can to continue to get people to do the right thing and abide by these stay at home orders. But one thing is clear, overwhelming majority of you are doing the right thing and I cannot wait to make more announcements in the days and weeks and I’m confident we will as we just hold the line a little bit and again not go back to old routines too quickly without the modifications and adaptations that are required of this moment. In the spirit of collaboration and the spirit of modifications, I want to really thank the leadership down in Orange County in particular in around Laguna beach and San Clemente beach, which we were able to work with the locals there in law enforcement. They put together an outstanding plan to begin to reopen those beaches and we not only applauded that, we enthusiastically embraced it. And as a consequence with those modifications, with their reopening strategy, locally driven, those beaches will be reopened.

That’s the spirit of the moment, spirit of the time, sense of cooperation, recognizing the frustration that we all have and recognizing that we are all in this together and could go a lot farther together in that collaborative spirit. We look forward to making similar announcements in the next days in that respect. But the good news is these public open spaces are opening back up with plans in place now to deal with all the concerns around physical distancing and social distancing. We have the same collaborative spirit with our county’s overwhelmingly few exceptions, but I’m confident we’ll bring them back into the fold. The health directors have been just extraordinary and of course our team, I couldn’t be more complimentary of. Dr. Angel showed you just briefly before we open up the questions that stabilizing line on hospitalizations and ICUs. Again, like deaths those are numbers that we monitor because they should be monitored consistently, but they are lagging indicators.

The community surveillance that will be doing the tracing and tracking will allow us more of the real time picture of what’s going on and that’s again [inaudible 00:40:19] in this next phase that’d be the area of our focus. But the good news is that tragically we lost 39 lives, but 39 is a far cry from where I began last week with numbers that were substantially higher. Again, 39 lives torn asunder, 39 families devastated the loss of a loved one. But 39 nonetheless, a more optimistic number to lead the week with in terms of number of deaths than previous weeks where we’ve seen it in the high nineties even low one hundreds. We saw a spread of 1,321 individuals that tested positive for COVID-19 that’s within the margin of error, kind of where we’ve seen over the course of the last few weeks. We saw hospitalizations declined by 1% and we saw ICU patients increased by 0.9% less than 1%. so we’re really starting to see some stabilization in the hospitalization in the ICUs as well, including those people under investigation.

Remember those PUIs we saw in both the ICUs and hospitalization, the PUI numbers drop as well. Again, all of those green lights for the announcement were teeing up today holding fairly steady and that’s why I want to just applaud all of you for holding steady on the stay at home orders and the physical distancing. If we could continue through this very difficult process where there’s plenty of headwind, I get it. A lot of whitewater and a lot of sort of stress and push and pull locally, regionally and statewide and even federally. We’ll get through this and we’ll get through it stronger than we went into it. I don’t think that I deep in my bones, I know that but we have to do it together and we have to do it through the prism of public health. And I just again, I want to thank all of you for allowing us to make this announcement today because you have taken this public health call to heart and you have done the good work that allows us to be in this position.

And finally just briefly, I want to just mention some good work that is being done, continuous need to be done and that’s on the issue of unemployment insurance and on the issues related to getting those checks out to millions and millions of Californians. $7.8 billion has been distributed since March 15th through our UI and the PUA, the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. I know it’s not happening fast enough. I know it’s not happening at the level people deserve and demand, but it is substantial progress. The POA process I know has been stubborn and frustrating for many individuals. We were able to get those minimum checks plus the federal checks, some $767 on average for each week out to individuals more will be forthcoming. Call volume continues to be intense, but they’re getting through. They’ve gone through some 4.1 million claims to date, which is encouraging, but again discouraging if you’re not one of them that has received the checks. And we hear you and just know that that process and the protocols are improving almost on an hourly basis through this weekend and through the next few weeks we think that will be streamlined even further.

So that’s where we are in terms of the update there. In terms of just broader updates, I just wanted to mention again as I began, I’ll close before questions that our hope is that we’ll be making more and more updates in real time. We’re not going to wait weeks and weeks to make subsequent updates. We hope that these counties are doing what they can to present the evidence for these modifications and present them quickly as they do. We will make those very public and give you updates on the work that is being done in those communities large and small. But we are definitely now at a point, this sort of hinge moment in this pandemic where many had hoped we would be. Many hope would be sooner, but we are from public health lens where we are and I feel some confidence if we’re thoughtful about the next phase that we can get through it by protecting the most vulnerable and meeting health needs of 40 million Californians.

But again, I’m not naive if conditions radically change, if these public health indicators radically change, we will have to appropriately ratchet up, not just ratchet down our stay at home orders. Let’s hope we don’t have to do that and again, based upon credible work that all of you have done I don’t expect that. With that we are of course happy to answer questions.

Speaker 4: (45:09)
[inaudible 00:45:09] L.A. Times.

Speaker 5: (45:12)
Hi governor, hope you’re doing well, a couple of quick questions. One is your modification of the retail or retail restrictions does that apply statewide? Just want to get clarify that. And two, what sort of trigger points are there going to be for state intervention again, I mean as far as from a coronavirus and preparation perspective and for those counties that don’t comply? We already have three counties that aren’t following your stay at home order. What will the consequences be for counties that go beyond what you’re laying out?

Well, let me say first it is statewide, but again it’s a statewide order where the state can go together. For those communities that have extended their stay at home, they can continue to do that. For those that have not, they can quickly come into compliance as early as Thursday when they read the new guidelines as early, as long as those guidelines are adopted as Friday. Meaning you’ve got to have the adaptation in place, you’ve got to meet the guidelines, but the guidelines will be put forth on Thursday so we anticipate as early as Friday. As it relates to consequences look, I think we tend to focus on exceptions and not focus on the overwhelming majority. The overwhelming majority are doing the right things and I think with even the exceptions, I mentioned this last week, there was one county where I specifically said this, I think it was Thursday or Friday, that I was very impressed with the modifications that they were promoting. The protections for seniors, the modifications on physical distancing.

That’s the spirit of what we’re looking for. We just need a more formal process. So a lot of that work is already being done. Some were ready, fire, aim as opposed to ready, aim, fire. But we’ll work with them. But I’m confident in our capacity to go together. I though mentioned and it’s just a proof point the work that the ABC did it’s not a shot across the bow, it’s not a way of expressing animus and angst. It’s just an expression of fact that there are many mechanisms to enforce those with licenses. One way to enforce them is through state licensing process. But again, it’s a very small number, a handful. They get tons of attention some of these places, but they’re diminimous in terms of the aggregate total numbers and we’ll try to address those. Local folks primarily are the point of contact in terms of this enforcement.

But there are occasions where the state will enforce. But again, I think we’re at a place where people want to work together, get along. People are just deeply anxious. And that’s been the expression of the last week, well last few months but substantive the last week that I deeply respect and appreciate. We just have to be thoughtful about how we express ourselves.

Speaker 4: (48:06)
Kathleen Ronayne AP.

Kathleen Ronayne: (48:10)
Hi governor, I didn’t hear you say anything about… And sorry if I missed it parks or open spaces. So where does that fall in terms of opening state parks, allowing reopening parking on certain trails that have been closed, how does that fit into this? And then the other question would be you mentioned that 23 counties right now were actively tracing. Can you just give a little bit more detail on where that’s happening? Which counties are already doing that, if they’re in big population centers et cetera?

Yeah, so all counties have tracing capacity but the 23 counties are specifically tracing for COVID-19. I’ll ask Dr. Angel or Dr. Galley to come up here in a moment, talk about where those counties are and fill in a little bit more about the specific protocols they already have in place. But I appreciate the question because it allows us to reinforce that we have a workforce in place. As I said, we estimate based on our survey that 2,845 so roughly 3000 of these tracers are already trained in place outstanding workforce at the county level.

And so we’re going to build off something that already exists and that’s what gives us confidence in our capacity to deliver on these tracing estimates. Why don’t we just go to that question first because Dr. Galley’s walking up as we speak. He’ll talk about some more about this 23 counties and I’ll get to the other point of your question in just a moment on open space.

Speaker 6: (49:39)
Thank you governor. We have last week we shared with you that we did a survey of all of our counties across the state to determine what they’re doing now for contact tracing. And also to understand what the gap is that they foresee in the future so that we could build this 10,000 person strong workforce to augment that local effort. We have many counties. 22 is the number that’s currently doing quite a bit of contact tracing. That includes some of our biggest counties, Los Angeles County, the Bay area County, San Diego County and then smaller counties as well. Some of our Northern counties definitely have some track and trace capability.

Speaker 6: (50:27)
As we build up that workforce and we’re able to post publicly which counties are doing how much contact tracing and what the additional augmentation to those counties will be. We are going to be proud to share that with you as a demonstration of this broad state effort to build that workforce and stay ahead of COVID-19 transmission and do exactly what Dr. Angel laid out. Which is be able to when possible suppress the transmission so that we don’t need to depend on that surge capacity that we have so rigorously built across the state.

Thanks for the question on the open space. As I mentioned just specifically in San Clemente and Laguna, an example of the work we’re doing with locals. We’ll continue that process day in and day out, but you’ll see those protocols or rather the guidelines unveil a little bit more specificity in Thursday as well. But let me just make this point because there’s been some reporting it wasn’t the case where I don’t necessarily know exactly where it came from. The parks, some are closed. We have over 200 state parks that have been open that remain open. We have you’re correct and I think that’s an important distinction. There’s some that have partial closures, parking lots and the like but still activities in all of these parks, large and small across the state and across our beaches. But again with the modifications in place. So the open space is part of this phase two more information and modifications will come to light including the ones I mentioned today on those two specific beaches in Orange County, but more broadly you’ll see more of that on Thursday.

Speaker 4: (52:19)
Jeremy White, Politico.

Jeremy White: (52:22)
Hey governor, thank you as always. I just want to be clear on allowing some areas to reopen ahead of others. I know you said it’s going to be a decision to have to be certified by health authorities and by county board supervisors. Will the state maintain some sort of veto power if those plans don’t pass muster or if you see cases increasing, what role will the state have to intervene?

Yeah, I mean to the extent that we start to see community spread, we start to see that the self certification and the commitments they made at the local level aren’t manifesting that they weren’t able to hold up their end. And to the extent that’s the case, then the state can once again intervene. But we want to do that in the spirit of recognizing that we have great confidence in local health directors, great confidence in local officials to understand the conditions in their unique communities. And we have a level of trust but also verification because we’re going to publish those containment plans, those documents and in them you’ll see very specifically when these guidelines come out are our expectations and they’re very prescriptive. Flexibility of course, but prescriptive in terms of the testing protocols, in terms of the tracing capacity, in terms of the ability to meet hospital surge and ability to protect the most vulnerable residents in their community.

Particularly our seniors in these congregate facilities, our homeless. And so those will be the criteria, they’ll self-certify and then we’ll have monitoring provisions and they will also have to have claw back provisions themselves if they self-certify, they’ll have to have a president that says if we’re not medium, we recognize we have the ability to make adjustments to ratchet back up as well. And so again, I just think we’ve been working Jeremy with C-SAC, the league of cities, they’ve been spectacular. They’re working with all their partners to not put pressure but to develop consensus with their partners and their represented cities. And again, I just have confidence we’ll be able to do it. But again, if the numbers don’t bear out that’s on me where I have to sleep knowing I’m keeping people’s health first and foremost in mind. The health director, department of public health, Dr. Angel directly will have the ultimate authority to make sure that those provisions ultimately are met.

Speaker 4: (54:51)
Josh Haskell, ABC7.

Josh Haskell: (54:54)
Yeah governor, what did you see from Orange County specifically on their plan of reopening beaches that impressed you and will that happen this week? And once retail does open in the state, how do you convince Californians that it’s safe to go to these businesses once they’re open?

Yeah, let me tackle both good questions. So the local electeds we sat down with and worked with over the weekend virtually, health directors they really led those conversations to say, look, the beaches are going to reopen, how do we do them in a way that can least allow us the kind of decompression that can avoid people mixing and then once again seeing a large increase in the number of positive cases and community spread? And so we worked with them on guidelines and procedures to basically enforce a reopening that is phased and appropriate to local needs, local conditions. And so with deference to their plans and proposals, which are unique and distinctive in both cases, we signed off on those and we immediately lifted. In fact, I think it was announced this morning formally. We worked through it over the weekend, but it was announced formally this morning, so that’s already gone into effect on those two beaches.

We’re very close with the others and we’ll announce them as soon as we sign off on those plans. You’re seeing San Diego a lot of wonderful examples of people and communities, health directors, people broadly defined in terms of those informal positions of authority and those that are really using their moral authority to help guide these efforts that are putting together very thoughtful strategies. And so those are the guidelines and those are the models and we’re sharing those best practices up and down the coast. But again, good news spirit of collaboration, partnership and we hope to be making announcements on all those other beaches in hours, days, certainly we hope by the end of the week. As it relates to the broader question that now I’ve forgotten. This is what happens when you’re all asking multiple questions.

Hotter question and now I’ve forgotten. This is what happens when you’re all asking multiple questions. The second part, ask your question, can you come back on and remind me what that was?

Speaker 7: (57:08)
Go ahead, Josh.

And it’s clear no one around me was listening because they would have told me what your question was, Josh. Forgive me.

Josh: (57:24)
I do you convince Californians it’s safe to go to these businesses once they’re open?

That foundational question. Look, at the end of the day, the only way you can do that is you have a health first frame. The only way you do that is you take the guidelines we’re putting out and you make them real. The only way we can do that is to continue to mitigate the spread. The only way we can do that is to make sure that customers that come in can practice physical distancing. Customers come in, are confident in deep sanitation in those facilities, are confident even in curbside pickup, those protocols are in place.

So it’s incumbent upon the business leader to protect not only the customers, but their employees at the same time because of the obvious concern that all share in terms of having a safe retail experience despite these significant modifications. The same would be said for logistics and manufacturing. Again, the PPE part of this is so important in that respect. And the good news is we’re broadening the availability of these masks to more and more people, more and more sectors of our economy, that will further that cause as well.

Speaker 7: (58:40)
Kurt Wagner, Bloomberg News.

Kurt Wagner: (58:43)
Hey, yeah, thanks Governor Newsom. I was hoping you could share a little more information about the Western States Pact. It feels like a lot of the states are moving at different timelines, so I’m curious, what specifically are you working on with those other states and can you give us a sense of what California is getting in terms of benefits from being part of that group? Thanks.

Oh, I love it. Almost a setup question, in this respect. Colorado and Oregon were very, very helpful. Their chiefs of staff, Governor Brown, Governor Polis working with our chief of staff and our team on the regional variation guidance we’re putting out. They quite literally, that’s a proof point of the work they were doing in this space, helped guide in advance our work that we are putting out. I talked to Governor Inslee a couple days ago. We go back and forth in what they’re announcing, what he’s announcing, and so it’s a wonderful collaborative.

And I will say this. Our chiefs of staff get on the phone together on a consistent basis comparing and contrasting best practices, asking questions, and having the group come back and answering the questions. So, I just want to applaud that collaborative and just let you know, very substantively, it is alive and well and demonstrably been very helpful to the state of California.

Speaker 7: (01:00:01)
Jim Roope, Westwood One News.

Jim Roope: (01:00:06)
Good afternoon, Governor. Thank you very much. I was wondering, last week when you mentioned phase two and when will we be rolling into phase two, you mentioned the economic importance of childcare being part of that so people could go back to work. Is childcare part of this early phase of phase two later on this week? And also, this virtual training thing you have going with contact tracing. Is this another California first? If you can answer those questions, I’d appreciate that, sir.

Gavin Newsom: (01:00:39)
Yeah, as it relates to childcare, as you may be aware, childcare has been afforded throughout this pandemic with criterion conditions that predated the announcement a few days ago. It’s not part of phase two, it’s part of our existing phase, phase one. We have criterion conditions, we talked about those new popup childcare facilities, we talked about the $100 million emergency grants that the legislature afforded us to be allowed to invest. We talked about the $350 million we’re pulling down from the CARES Act that I’ll be announcing by the 14th as part of the May revise of the state budget to further those efforts. But, again, childcare is already allowed with conditions and criteria and specifications and modifications in the existing phase that we’re in. So it’s not part of phase two because it’s already in place.

As it relates to the partnership with UCSF and the partnership with UCLA, I want to first acknowledge the local partnership. I called chief of staff of Mayor London Breed, Sean Osborne, complementing the mayor, complementing UCSF, which is near and dear to me as a former mayor of San Francisco, for their partnership at the local level. They inspired subsequent conversations with the state to expand that partnership with the entire state. UCSF had the capacity to do a lot but not the entire thing and that’s when we decided to go within the family to another one of our UCs, UCLA, to help broaden this academic opportunity and this virtual training program.

To the extent it’s a first, it may be, it’s certainly unique and novel. But I will say this, in the spirit of collaboration with other states, we’ve also been comparing and contrasting what they’re doing, not just with our formal compact, we’ve been talking to our counterparts even back east about war tracing strategies, the technologies they’re using, and the protocols and procedures. All of us, I think, learning from one another. I’m very proud of this partnership and very proud of how robust and enriched our existing tracing already is in the state and to the extent we can share these best practices. We certainly look forward to.

Speaker 7: (01:02:54)
Jen Calfas, The Wall Street Journal.

Jen Calfas: (01:02:59)
Hi, Governor. The Wall Street Journal today has reported California has borrowed money from the federal government to continue to pay out claims for unemployment benefits. I was wondering, how does California plan to pay back the federal government? And has California depleted its state trust fund money, or is it borrowing from the federal government in some kind of anticipation of it depleting soon?

Yeah, so we’re getting close, as probably 90% of the states, though don’t quote me, but a substantial number of states are this unprecedented unemployment. Again, eight or so weeks ago we announced the lowest unemployment rate in our state’s history, 119, which then became 120 consecutive months of no job growth. A few months back I announced a roughly six billion dollar projected operating surplus, announced that our bond rating had been increased not once, but twice over the calendar year, a record reserves that we were projecting into the new budget year, how we were paying down pension obligations over a multi-year period. Just like that, conditions have radically changed. Over four million people have filed for unemployment insurance, unprecedented in our state’s history.

In just a number of weeks we’ve been able to deliver some $7.8 billion of claims. So the answer is yes, we’re getting very close to that point. And the extent we paid back the last time we had to source unemployment at this scale, 10 plus billion, during the last great recession. We were able to claw back and pay that back. That would be a process that we would once again engage in to pay back any obligations we have. We are good for our word. The state balances its budget and we’re in for a very challenging budget season this year, but we’re not unique in this country, but the scale of California of being the nation’s fifth largest economy, the numbers are rather extraordinary. And so you’re right to write about this, right to ask the question, and know that we’ll work with our federal partners on the most important answer to that question, and that is to get federal support.

It is not without consideration that I say this. One, that believes that you need a resourceful mindset, that the answer is no, you didn’t ask the right question. They should take account and some responsibility. This pandemic is bigger than even the state of California. And the economic consequences of this pandemic are such that we can’t balance our budgets without substantial cuts unless we get additional federal support. We’ve been working very collaboratively with speaker Nancy Pelosi, and so much so that she came out with recommendations that are very much in line with what this state has encouraged over the course of the last few weeks to help not only the state of California, but red states, blue states all across the United States of America, not just at the state level proper, but the county and city levels as well to help us through the next three to four years because of the acuity of this crisis. And that includes help with unemployment insurance.

Speaker 7: (01:06:07)
Karma Dickerson, Fox40.

Karma Dickerson: (01:06:12)
Hi, Governor. To ask you about to talk further about the counties that have already preempted the move to move to phase two. Can you talk about whether they are able, if they certify to go past phase two, because we do know that there are some counties that are well into parts of phase three at this point, so would that be permissible if they meet the certification guidelines that are laid out?

No, not at this point. And the only thing that can slow that down is getting ahead of yourself, putting your community at risk, the healthier community, and hurting the people that are doing the right thing. We want to make progress, we want to do it together. These are meaningful modifications where they can start to reopen restaurants with modifications. If they meet these regional criteria, they can start doing the same across the spectrum, office space, et cetera. But let’s do it thoughtfully and judiciously. Let’s do it together. And I say together, not just one-off cities, but with the counties, with the health directors, with the state, and that spirit of partnership.

If they get too far ahead, again, forgive me, I will use the example for the third time, there’s mechanisms to pull back. I just don’t want to be put in that position, or if I am, no problem, we will do what we have to do. But mostly it’s enforced to the local level. The enforcement doesn’t occur at the local level, the state has a myriad of enforcement capacity.

By the way, I was talking to many other governors that are in the exact same position about some of the things they’re doing and some interesting insight there in terms of that enforcement. But all of it’s pretty common sense. But we’re looking at a few exceptions. I continue to want to focus on everybody doing the right thing, which is the overwhelming majority. And I just believed that’s the spirit that will guide the next few months.

Speaker 7: (01:08:00)
Jonathan [Iostos 01:08:00], KCRE.

Jonathan: (01:08:02)
Hello, Governor. Wanted to touch more about that. See if you have a response specifically for [inaudible 01:08:11] counties opening many of their businesses today. And also the city of Folsom sending you a letter requesting to open as well. Just wanted to see what your thoughts are on their approach when trying to reopen.

Again, I recognize their desire, I recognize their frustration, and I hope they recognize the consequential nature of today’s announcement. And I hope they recognize the spirit of which we’re making the announcement. And many of those communities I know have thought through criterion condition to protect the most vulnerable residents in their communities. They have in most cases, not every case, but most cases haven’t done without those considerations.

A lot of that work has now been done, which is fabulous. And now they can make that presentation more formally, their health directors, and work with their county supervisors very quickly in the next week or so, and begin to make those presentations public and get into the latter part of this second phase. So I think we’re all within a margin of error of one another, and to the extent we go too far out and put the public’s health at risk, there was a reason we put the stay at home order in the first place.

This virus has not gone away. Let’s not develop amnesia. Let’s not forget why we’re in this position in the first place. Let’s not be naive about the virulence of this disease and the capacity for us to do what historically has been done, and that’s people pull back too quickly and there’s a second wave. Let’s read a little bit of our history. History doesn’t repeat, it rhymes. And I just hope we are stewards of our public health first and foremost in those cities and counties, and I know the vast majority are.

Speaker 7: (01:10:04)
Final question. Nicole Mixon, Capital Public Radio.

Nicole?

Speaker 7: (01:10:17)
Brody Levesque, LA Blade.

Brody Levesque: (01:10:20)
Good afternoon, Governor. Thank you for taking my question. I’d like to know if you had given any thought to your budgetary processes for some of the LGBTQ nonprofits and organizations and the centers that help out, because as Senator Scott Wiener had firmed in a virtual town hall meeting a couple weeks ago. They’re more or less basic math extinction. And to go with that, it’s been a couple weeks since I asked you about numbers in terms of what we’re looking at with this COVID impact on the LGBTQI community. So if you wouldn’t mind, take a crack at those, sir. I’d appreciate it.

Thank you. This budget is profoundly challenging. All of these requests, needs, desires, legit requests, needs, and desires would be put in perspective when the numbers come out. We’re going to be making some very challenging decisions. We’re also going to be protecting foundational parts of our budget, but one can not over-promise what we’re capable of delivering considering the magnitude. You just do the math on four plus million people that have filed for unemployment insurance just since March 12th. Not January 12th, just since March 12th, to get a sense of the magnitude of our responsibilities to meet the needs of all our communities, but always it’s top priority for me and for this administration and I know for the legislature, is to protect the most vulnerable communities as a priority. But again, we have an enormous challenge in front of us and we’ll do our best to meet the moment by protecting some critical programs in our state to the extent possible despite some of those challenges.

As it relates to the specific data specific numbers, I don’t have them here, at least here, so let me get back. We know where to find you. I’ll ask Dr. Angel, who last answered those questions, to see if she’s updated those numbers or has been able to extract those numbers because again those numbers are not readily available to the state. We have to pull what information we can from local government. I’ll give you an update on where they are.

But let me just update in closing all of you on, again, the progress you have made. We are in a position today with that health report card that Dr. Angel put out to be able to be making the announcement we are on meaningful modifications to our stay at home order moving into phase two, providing the opportunity to get deep into phase two for certain regions in the state based upon fundamental criteria. We’re able to move forward with our tracing partnership because of the incredible work at the UC system and our local health partners. And we’re finally seeing some real movement on testing and on PPE that give us some confidence that we can do all of this with your health first and foremost in mind.

I want to thank again the incredible local partners at worked over the weekend so we were able to make the announcements, and Laguna and San Clemente Beaches, thank you for your leadership and for the seriousness to the task that you displayed in terms of that partnership. I want to thank all our local partners for the work we have in front of us working with county health directors and county supervisors to make these modifications real. This Thursday, we’ll put those out. We’ll start to see some real changes through the weekend and through the next few weeks. We’ll monitor this in a daily real time way with transparency and ultimately accountability to the public health. And I want to just thank you all as always for continuing to keep public health front and center.

The physical distancing you’ve been practicing, the appropriateness of wearing face coverings that you have displayed when you can’t practice physical distancing has allowed us to make this announcement and let us continue to be vigilant, continue to focus on our public health, focus on our personal as well as community, public safety, and continue to, again, do the incredible job that you have done over the course of the last number of months. Let’s stay the course. Let’s stay together. Take care, everybody.

Gov. Gavin Newsom California COVID-19 Briefing Transcript May 4

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