Governor Gavin Newsom California COVID-19 Briefing Transcript May 11

Governor Gavin Newsom: (00:02)
The current status and that is those numbers are completely flipped. We now are struggling with tens of billions of dollars budget deficits directly as an impact directly caused because the impact of this disease, COVID-19. Unemployment has skyrocketed in this state. Some $13.1 Billion of unemployment claims we have distributed, $ 13.1 Billion in cash has been distributed to people struggling and suffering because of the economic consequences, 4.5 million California that have filed for unemployment insurance and PUA, pandemic unemployment assistance, just since March 12th. 4.5 million just since March 12. $13.1 Billion distributed, 3.4 billion just last week. It gives you the magnitude of what’s happened in just a short period of time, 90 or so days in this state. Unemployment numbers that when new numbers come in, will be north of 20%, getting closer to 22, three, four, five percent very, very likely. And so the challenge is enormous and this challenge is one that’s not only presented to us here in the state of California, but it’s a challenge that will be felt all across the United States, and for that matter around the rest of the world.

You’re seeing numbers come in in states large and small, the impact to the general funds of their budgets. States like California that were running some surpluses now running historic deficits and challenges related to unemployment claims, the likes of which they haven’t seen since the Great Depression. These are challenging times and they require a collaborative spirit and they require a level of cooperation that led to conversation with our Western governors and our Western pact, where we decided it would be best if we go together and advance our needs and put to light and put into writing our hope and expectation of support from the federal government.

Today we are putting out jointly governors of Oregon, Washington, Nevada, and Colorado, and their respective leadership in their assembly and in their state Senate. Some are House of Representatives depending on the state, but the signature of the speaker, the leader pro tem of the Senate, not just the assembly in each of those states and the governor and our speaker, Anthony Renden, our pro tem, Tony Atkins, and the minority leader of the assembly of Republican, Marie Waldron signed a similar letter to the federal government, to Nancy Pelosi, to Mitch McConnell and others requesting aid in a $1 trillion range. That’s the range of support we feel we need as a nation, States, municipals as well as counties. This is the requirement of this moment.

That gives you a sense of the thrust of the needs that we are all feeling as states, as regions, as cities that are required to get through this pandemic and to make sure that we’re doing justice to you. To your public health, to your public safety, to our education system. Because remember, these budgetary shortfalls are so much bigger than any state, any city, any county, but they directly impact public safety. Our firefighters, our police officers, our first responders, they directly impact public education and our teachers. They directly impact public health and our ability for counties to support their public health systems. It’s not just states asking for bailout, quite the contrary. It’s requesting that we support those that we need the most at this time, our public safety officials, our public health officials, and make sure that we do justice to our public education system. So I’m very pleased with this pact. I’m very pleased with the letter and I couldn’t be more proud and honored by the signatures of all of those, not only our three leaders in the state, but substantively those leaders across the United States in this pact that represent legislative leaders, not just the executives themselves. So I wanted to begin with that, and also extend appreciation for the ongoing collaborative, this best practice sharing that continues within these regional pacts. It continues to, I think, impress not only me, but enliven all of us, the ability for our chiefs of staffs and our office of emergency personnel to continue to share best practices in real time. And just based on a lot of those conversations, this is one of the efforts that we are now making public here today. Another effort we’ve been focusing on is PPE and doing more together and figuring out ways that we can leverage our purchasing capacity a little bit more.

I want to just give you an update. On Friday in the state of California, we did something we’ve not been able to do in the past. And that is we released 11 million procedure masks to critical industries all throughout the state of California. 11 million masks were distributed just on Friday alone, 5 million masks went specifically to our Department of Social Services, to our childcare facilities, our in home support services and our other DSS run adult and senior facilities. And I want to just pause on that for a moment. We talk a lot about skilled nursing facilities of which there are 1,224, but the department of social services is responsible for an additional 7,442 senior and adult facilities throughout the state of California. These tend to be smaller, but still precious and important. And so when we have talked a lot about SNFs, skilled nursing facilities and getting PPE and more testing, it’s also incumbent upon all of us to expand that conversation to all of these other facilities.

These are where you have six or seven people, sometimes even less, in small group homes that are very vulnerable to this virus as well. So we were able to get those five million procedure masks into that system and broaden our capacity to deliver on our promise to provide that protective gear that’s so essential and foundational. For not only our public health, the safety of those residents and staff, but also to help us move forward and reopen the economy. Accordingly, we were able to get 4.2 million masks to farm workers and into our agricultural community, 4.2 million just on Friday as well. 750,000 to our grocers and our food supply chain, 500,000 masks went into the Department of Education on Friday. And tens of thousands of masks went to transit agencies across the state. Again, all of this is foundational in terms of getting where we all want to go, and that’s into this second phase and beginning to continue, or rather to begin more robustly modify our stay at home order.

So we talk a lot about testing. We’ll be talking more about that tomorrow. We talk about tracing. We talked a lot about that last week, and the good work partnerships with UCSF and UCLA and how we have that first cohort of 500 that are being trained, almost all of them now trained both online and in person in those 20 hour trainings, but PPE is also foundational in this effort as well. So that’s why I just wanted to share with you those updates and that information as well. Just in addition to that briefly, we’ll open up for questions here in a moment. I want folks to know that we had some very constructive conversations over the last 72 or so hours, 19 different counties engaged our public health officials in dialogues around the self certifications, these variances that we will start seeing throughout the state of California. So very healthy dialogues. I think there are nine more scheduled that we have lined up just today.

So we’ve been active in that space, actively working with these counties. In some cases, we are very close and tomorrow we’ll be making some announcements that the counties haven’t already in that space in terms of their attestations to their plans, their prevention plans, their containment plans, and all of the guidelines that we put out around them. We’ll more formally put out the detailed sectorial guidelines tomorrow to help advance those efforts, that’s in the dining space and that’s in the office space, some malls, et cetera. So more prescriptive language, with flexibility, but prescriptive in terms of those guidelines being a little bit more formalized. Those come out tomorrow and we’ll see, I’m sure, more conversations take shape and more engagement being advanced.

… and more engagement being advanced once those guidelines come out, as well. But good news, progress in that space. And I know others are more eager to move more quickly and we will work with every county, with every city in a practical and responsible way. But here’s the caveat, this is a health driven conversation. It’s not because we don’t want to. It’s not because we would not like to. It’s not because we want to be particularly oppressive in terms of people’s desires and needs. It’s because public health dictates that we do this in a judicious and thoughtful way.

We’re not going to deviate from that path. That’s the foundational principle that guided us into the stay-at-home order, and will guide us out of the stay-at-home order. Data, evidence. But again, we are flexible in this respect. We’re not ideologues. In terms of the engagement, we recognize no two counties are like, no two cities within the counties are alike and we want to be responsive and respectful to those calls.

But note that, these are dynamic conversations. Each county requires an enormous amount of attention and support, and we’re getting incredible response from the vast majority of counties that have done an enormous amount of work already. But there are some stubborn data points that are impediments in terms of total number of hospitalizations, total capacity on surge, total capacity to trace and test, and, of course, death rates that continue to be challenging.

I mentioned just last week that we had seen a good week with decline in deaths rates, only to see the week of death rates go back up. We begin this week with good news in that respect, but the weekend numbers, I always… Well, good news in this respect, 25 deaths… Devastating, nonetheless, 25 lives lost. Families torn asunder. But 25 deaths to begin this week, far cry from how we began last week with a substantially higher number of deaths.

But, we’re still seeing lives lost from this pandemic. We’re still seeing the number of positives increase. They increased again overnight by 1, 250 roughly, but we are seeing some good signs, as well. Hospitalizations, though they went modestly up 0.9%, we saw ICUs, yesterday, drop 0.4%. So again, hospitalizations, ICUs bouncing back and forth, but study death rate a little bit better today. But we saw those numbers last week increase and continuing to see the positive numbers go up. And that’s just a point of caution and concern as people get ahead of themselves a little bit. And I recognize those symptoms, in terms of the cabin fever we’re all feeling, and how businesses are so eager to get back to work. But it is absolutely incumbent upon all of us to be thoughtful and judicious as we move into this next phase.

And, just to end and to reinforce an important point, this is a dynamic process. Last week we made an announcement as it relates to retail, manufacturing, and logistics allowing, from a statewide order, those restrictions to be lifted. Modifications still in place, but the statewide prohibitions to be lifted into these lower impact industries.

We recognize that there are counties that are still holding a little stronger. The Bay Area wants to continue for an additional week and we respect the right based on local conditions for people to be a little more strict. At the same time, with these variances, we recognize the same. We want to see people loosen up with conditions that can be met and expectations that can be delivered.

But it’s also important to note that we continue as a State to continue to move into this Phase 2. And we will be making announcements. This is a dynamic process, this is a very iterative process. There’s a flow here that you should anticipate where the Department of Public Health will be putting out guidelines, we hope, on a consistent basis to continue to modify the statewide order.

So it’s a way of long-windedly saying this, for counties that feel like they’re just locked in and somehow they’re not going to be able to move, that’s not the case. We as a State will move together. You may not be afforded the opportunity just yet, based on public health, to move forward with the variances. But that doesn’t mean the State is not moving forward together with you and others. And so, we’ll be making some announcements this week, in that respect, that are in addition to the variances where we’re all moving through Phase 2 together. But it’s an important point to reinforce that we’re not locked in to the status quo. As long as we keep doing a good job, keep protecting people’s public health, continue to see these lines stabilized, and continue the good work at physical distancing that’s demonstrable, still, despite an increase of activity across most of the State of California.

I just want to, again, thank everybody for all their outstanding work getting us to this point. Over 70% of the economy in the State of California, over 70% of the economy, is open with some modifications. 70 plus percent. That’s just something that I want to reinforce. As we move into that next 30% we’ll do so with your health front and center. Economic considerations of health, also, always part of our larger considerations. But we’ll do so in a very methodical and deliberative way as we have to date. And so with that, happy to answer any questions.

Speaker 2: (16:29)
Scott Schafer, KQED.

Scott Shafer: (16:32)
Thank you, Governor. As testing was ramping up, the priority was given to healthcare and other frontline workers along with people who are sick. You and others have said you don’t want to get tested because testing capacity should be reserved for them. But now, although testing capacity is still limited, my question now is, who do you recommend seek out a test? Depending on where you sign-up, you might get a message saying it’s going to cost $100 or more. So, what do you say to folks who might want to be tested or need to get tested, but are scared off by the out of pocket costs? And in general, who do you think should be getting tested?

So, I would encourage people to go to covid19.ca.gov, covid19.ca.gov. We have a tool that’s been used by an extraordinary number of people to put in their zip code, their address, and find out the closest location to a testing site. That will prompt questions that could be answered and allow you, in many cases, to do online reservations. These are the OptumServe sites, the Verily sites, and then the 251 community sites that we have in our system. That site is dynamic and we’ll continue to update it accordingly.

As you know, Scott, California is the first State to move beyond the CDC Guidelines in terms of who we recommend for testing. And we started to loosen that up a few weeks back, pursuant to the advice and counsel from our testing taskforce, to asymptomatic individuals working as essential workers in and around vulnerable communities.

We want to see that more broadly, much more broadened in the coming weeks as more testing capacity presents itself. Here’s me not getting ahead of myself… Tomorrow, we’ll be updating you and others on where we are in testing and where we think we’re going. I’m trying to give you as much as I can without jumping ahead of the announcement tomorrow. But we’ll reach a major milestone tomorrow in testing. We’ll also be updating with key points about the new testing capacity that we have in this State. Be it the traditional PCR testing, the serum testing, and also new point-of-care modalities, and other antibody testing that is being done in the State.

So we’re going to put all that out. We’re going to expand that scope of understanding. But I hope people in the interim continue to go to covid19. ca.gov website and avail themselves to the testing that exists. And I’ll just end by saying this, it relates to costs. Through the Medi-Cal system, it’s reimbursed through the plans. Money should not be an obstacle to getting testing. And regardless of your status, we’ve also clarified, that cost should not be borne. But we’ll get more information and clarity, and tomorrow’s announcement will be very relevant in that space, as well.

Speaker 2: (19:32)
Stacey Shepard, Bakersfield, California.

Stacey Shepard: (19:36)
Hi Governor. My question relates to the regional variability and the requirements laid out for counties. Here in Kern County officials held a briefing this morning. And, they announced that we pretty much meet all the criteria for the regional variability, except for the infections per 10,000 and the death rate. And, in particular, our death rate is impacted by one nursing home here that accounts-

Speaker 3: (20:03)
… death rate is impacted by one nursing home here that accounts for 60% of the deaths in our county. And so I just wonder, the local officials said that they’re going to ask the state to reconsider some of these things, reconsider maybe the infection rate or the death rate, and I wonder if specifically, if you could respond to that and are you going to start giving some consideration for the fact that nursing homes may account for a disproportionate amount of cases or deaths in a county? And do you think that you’ll find some way to work with these counties on these benchmarks that might be difficult for them to meet?

Yeah. The good news is we already are, specifically your county. The leader of the senate, Republican leader, Shannon Grove, reached out to me directly today on those specific issues that were brought up. Look, I recognize the variations within variations and I obviously recognize deeply and I think soberly. We all recognize what’s happened to our seniors in these skilled nursing facilities, but it’s important to make this point: they’re not isolated, the SNFs, they’re not isolated, the assisted living facilities. Staff is moving around, staff needs to be protected. Staff are members of our community. Staff live in the cities they operate, the communities operate, some don’t. Some commute long distances. This is a dynamic disease. The virulence of this disease is well documented. Number of lives lost is devastating and we want to make sure that whatever we do, we have the health of community in mind.

But the answer to your question is, of course. I said this when we announced the variants, we announced the modification, the guidelines, were open-argument, interested evidence and there’s a lot of really interesting nuance within these large counties, and that obviously needs to be taken into account. We’re going to be as flexible as we possibly can as long as the public health officials are guiding us through this with your health and the community’s broader health, always front and center in terms of those decisions and determinations.

Speaker 4: (22:13)
Alexei Koseff, SF Chronicle.

Alexei Koseff: (22:18)
Hi, Governor. I wanted to ask you about the fight going on between Elon Musk and Alameda County public health officers right now about the Tesla manufacturing plant. Does your administration consider car manufacturing to be an essential part of the economy during this time? And do you think that Tesla should be allowed to reopen with proper safety guidelines in place to resume manufacturing right now?

Yeah. So manufacturing, as I noted just in the outset of the conversation here today, mentioned a full week ago in the state of California, we have made meaningful modifications on manufacturing and logistics, including by the way, just on the front-end, car dealers that go back many, many weeks, modifications were made earlier on in that space. So that’s our position as a state.

As you just heard me say a moment ago [inaudible 00:00:23:18], we recognize localism both from a county, previous call and questions about a county that wants to go further, and other counties that don’t want to even go as far as the state, which is the case in Alameda County. My understanding is, they have had some very constructive conversations with the folks at that facility, the county health director, and they’re working to focus on the health and safety of the employees at that facility. And my belief and hope and expectation is as early as next week they will be able to resume. I’m certainly encouraged by what I’m hearing in that space, and again, I respect the decision on a regional basis of these counties coming together on the basis of what’s happening on the ground conditions as they present themselves uniquely in the Bay Area, as one example, versus other parts of the state.

But manufacturing broadly throughout the state of California is no longer restricted, with modifications.

Speaker 4: (24:27)
Phil Willon, LA Times.

Phil Willon: (24:30)
Hi, Governor. Given the state warning letters that were sent out to Yuba and [inaudible 00:24:36] counties last week, threatening some of their emergency funding and aid, what powers of the state are you willing to exercise to enforce the state restrictions? I mean, funding, business licenser? And secondly, this is a followup to something you mentioned last week, but Major League Baseball has since put out a proposal to return to playing in early July with no fans. And each game still need or require about a hundred people to be in the empty stadiums. Is the state going to allow something like that based on what you know?

Yeah. I talked to the commissioner of Major League Baseball, and he said, “We won’t do anything that’s not consistent with state guidelines.” So I’m not concerned about what they do as long as it’s consistent with state guidelines. We’ll see where we will be in July. I’m very encouraged by the progress the state of California has made to date, and we are making meaningful modifications in real time. We’ll be making subsequent announcements tomorrow as it relates to putting out the guidelines for these regional variations that can be self-attested to. But we certainly look forward to Major League Baseball and all sports resuming, but again, the question is when, and that will be determined on the basis of public health and public safety and the spread of this virus. And so we will see in that space.

As it relates to the issue of enforcement, I’ve been very clear in the past. You’ve heard me say on multiple occasions, just number of contacts we’ve made to businesses that have opened, understandably frustrated and concerned, they opened a little bit earlier than perhaps they should have for the protection of their own employees, let alone their customers. And the vast majority of them have been contacted, have applied caution and have reconsidered their opening. So it’s not heavy-fisted or heavy-handed rather, or close-fisted. We will continue to work as collaborative as possible. And as I said, the spirit of the work we’re doing with these counties has been incredibly collaborative.

Now, we’ll see. In every case, not every county’s going to be able to get a variance. I imagine there’ll be expressions of frustration and angst in that respect. And if they jump ahead, we’ll continue to use the tools that many local governments have already been using. But you mentioned two counties that have been incredibly cooperative over the course of last week, and we’re having some very good conversations. And those examples you used are proof points of confidence that I have that we’ll be able to work through a lot of the differences we may have.

Speaker 4: (27:26)
Ben Christopher, CalMatters.

Ben Christopher: (27:29)
Hey, Governor. So just to piggyback on what Alexei was asking about Elon Musk. So he in his Twitter thread said that he will relocate his headquarters to Texas or Nevada, both of which has eased their shelter-in-place restrictions more than California. So wasn’t it the purpose of the Western States Pact, of which Nevada is a part, to avoid a situation like this, where different state mandates can create confusion or competition? And I guess more specifically, do you have a response to businesses like Tesla that might be considering divesting from California because of the stricter public health orders here?

Yeah. The Western State Pact was about many things, it wasn’t about any one thing or another. In fact, very substantive, it was about what we were announcing today, a joint letter, it’s about sharing of best practices, it’s about a more collaborative spirit, it’s about recognizing there’s regional variations within our own states. I mentioned on multiple occasions, I’ll reinforce it here today, the incredible council support and advice we got from Colorado and Oregon, just as two proof points, on our regional variation plan that they had moved forward with, that we are moving forward with as well as just examples of us working collaboratively.

Look, as it relates to Tesla, I have long been a strong advocate and supporter, early adopter with technology. I have not only known that company, but I’ve known its founder for many, many years. I have great reverence for their technology, for their innovative spirit, for their leadership and I have great expectations that we can work through, at the county level, the issue with this particular county and this company in the next number of days.

So look, I have more confidence moving forward in our ability to support a company that this state has substantively supported for now many, many years. And in return, we have been beneficiaries of their incredible growth, ingenuity and innovative spirit. We look forward to many, many decades of that relationship. And I know many of us are frustrated by where we are in this pandemic.

Some of this, a lot of this, most all of it, no one could have ever seen coming, but we’re working through all these issues in real time; we’re getting very close. Even those Bay Area modifications come in in the next number of days, within a week or so, and I’m confident we’ll get through this regardless of what some people are saying.

… but I’m confident we’ll get through this, regardless of what some people are saying on social media and in the press currently.

Speaker 5: (30:07)
Doug Sovern, KCBS.

Doug Sovern: (30:11)
Thank you, Governor. Not to harp on a Tesla, but I’m just curious, have you spoken to Elon Musk about this, and I’m sure you know that he went ahead and reopened his factory this morning, in direct defiance of the county, whether he’s still in constructive negotiations with them or not, but have you spoken to him about this? And what is the message, not only to him, but to other business owners watching this around the state who may be emboldened by what he’s doing, by seeing him just go ahead and reopen and engage in a profane Twitter exchange with a member of the state legislature.

Yeah. I can’t attest to the fact that he’s reopened today, not aware the details of that, but the answer to your question, yes, we did have a conversation a number of days ago. And again, we made the modification. He wanted clarification on the state modification, where we did move forward with the manufacturing and logistics and retail augmentations. Again, 70% of the economy in the State of California, now open.

At the same time, we do have regional conditions. You work in a community that is among those that went regionally in a pact where we are respecting the rights of their health directors to make decisions that they see best for themselves. And to the extent we can be helpful and accommodating, we will be to move these conversations along more quickly.

But I look forward to getting manufacturing back in the state, more logistics work, more retail. We made those modifications again with conditions, health and safety conditions first and foremost. And as someone comes from the private sector, a business businessperson before I got into politics, I deeply recognize the anxiety that people are feeling about the economic pressures and the need to reopen. And we look forward to all of these companies reopening, re-energized, and getting all of our workers back in a safe way, and the economy moving in a big and very dynamic way very, very shortly.

Speaker 5: (32:14)
Sharon Bernstein, Reuters.

Sharon Berstein: (32:18)
Hi, Governor, one last Tesla question. So I was just wondering, I mean, there are photographs circulating of a full parking lot over there indicating that there’s lots of people in there. If they have opened, should they be sanctioned for that, or should the county just leave them? I mean what would you do?

As it was just mentioned, I need the details of that, as my understanding is when I walked up to the podium today, that wasn’t the case. Again, I’m trying to monitor hundreds of thousands of businesses all throughout the State of California. I’m trying to work with businesses large and small, working with these counties large and small, to do these meaningful modifications. We are being guided by health directors, health departments, but guided by people’s public health and the health of their employees, and the communities they broadly serve.

And we’re very pleased to hear the collaborative spirit that was taking shape over the weekend, as it relates to the health and safety of employees in that one particular facility. And to the extent that they’re moving forward, we’ll work with the county health officials. But again, it’s county led enforcement in these cases. And to the extent their modifications are being violated, I imagine Alameda County Health Department would be the first to check in with, and we’ll certainly be doing that as a follow-up as well today.

Speaker 5: (33:53)
Final question, Kathleen Ronayne, AP.

Kathleen Ronayne: (33:58)
Hi, Governor. There’s going to be a legislative oversight hearing today at 1:30 on the process for vetting contracts to buy a PPE. And there’s been some news reporting on the prevalence of no bid contracts and some deals that have fallen through. Are you confident in the state’s betting process on these deals that we’re making for PPE? And what would you say to lawmakers who have questions about that?

Well, we’ll be saying a lot to those lawmakers. We’ll be having a hearing. All our team is over there to answer those questions. I’ve answered those questions on two or three occasions last week as well, and look forward to their presentation today. And they’re being very responsive to members of the legislature.

And again, I couldn’t be more pleased that we were able to make the commitment we were able to make and actually deliver on it. Eleven million surgical masks we were able to distribute to get to our childcare facilities, to get to our in-home supportive service workers, and to make sure that they’re protected. To get half a million into our public education system, 4.2 million to farm workers and in the ag community. So the good news is we are making real progress in terms of being able to procure the PPE and now distribute the PPE. And that will allow us to move forward with additional announcements on the stay at home order and meaningful modifications to our economy over the course of the next days, weeks and months.

But I have real confidence in our team and how they’ve conducted themselves. And as I’ve said on multiple occasions, I’ll repeat it, was a wild wild West there a few months back. And I hope we don’t develop amnesia about the world we all were living in, every state in this Country. So many cities, not just the Federal Government, and I imagine that will also … I hope and expect that will be also part of the spirit of the conversation that they have today, a recognition of the time we were in, and where we are today, and all the progress we’re making.

So, yeah, with that, let me just thank everybody for that progress because foundationally and fundamentally it’s because of the work of 40 million Californians that have overwhelmingly met the moment that we are making progress in this state, 70% of this economy now open, meaningful modifications continuing to be made on a regional basis. And even with some of these headline generating issues and events, I’m confident we’ll work through those in the days and weeks.

But we are entering in a phase of this recovery where we’re going to have plenty to talk about, plenty of debate, plenty to dialogue about. This is a dialectic going back and forth. But again, there’s just one constant, and that’s the vigilance guided by public health and guided by the data and guided by these foundational indicators around testing, tracing, our ability to track, deal with hospital surge, protect our employees, protect customers, and do justice to all of these efforts so that we can build confidence once again. And that confidence will in turn allow this economy to rebound. Not just survive this pandemic, but to thrive for many, many years.

So looking forward to further conversations in that space, including tomorrow, with some updates on testing and some of these variations. And again, want to just thank everybody for all of your outstanding work. Stay healthy, stay safe, and continue to do what you can to practice physical distancing and wear face coverings when that is more challenging. Take care everybody.

Governor Gavin Newsom California COVID-19 Briefing Transcript May 11

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