Gavin Newsom Orders California to Stay at Home Due to Coronavirus: Announcement Transcript

Governor Gavin Newsom: (00:18)
… not just something to experience. It’s something to manifest, that our fate and future is inside of us. It’s decisions at the end of the day, not conditions that determine that fate in future. We’re not victims of circumstance. We can make decisions to meet moments, and this is a moment we need to make tough decisions. This is a moment where we need some straight talk and we need to tell people the truth. We need to bend the curve in the State of California. And in order to do that, we need to recognize the reality. The fact is, the experience we’re having on the ground throughout the State of California, the experience it’s manifesting all across the United States and for that matter, around the rest of the world, require us to adjust our thinking and to adjust our activities. In the State of California, many people are very familiar with these adjustments.

A number of days ago, there were six Bay Area counties that led with stay at home orders. Now as I speak, some 21.3 million Californians reside in a community, in a city and/or county that have similar orders. A state as large as ours, a nation state, is many parts. But at the end of the day, we’re one body. There’s a mutuality and there’s a recognition of our interdependence that requires of this moment, that we direct a statewide order for people to stay at home. That directive goes into force in effect this evening, and we were confident… We are confident that the people of the State of California will abide by it. They’ll do the right thing. They’ll meet this moment. They’ll step up. They have over the course of the last number of weeks to protect themselves, to protect their families, and to protect the broader community in this great state, in the world that we reside in. I have confidence in that.

I have confidence, because I have seen it every single day. We’ve seen it in cities, large and small. People still doing essential work. People still providing essential services. People still going out to the grocery store to get food, walking their dogs, practicing social distancing. Nonetheless, when they’re out in the streets, people still getting their medicine. People still going about doing the kind of essential work that is required to meet this moment. The order provides for all of that, just as these other orders that have been put into place in cities large and small across the state have afforded. People will ask, “Well, how will you enforce?” As I say, there’s a social contract here. People I think, recognize the need to do more and to meet this moment. People will self-regulate their behavior. They’ll begin to adjust and adapt as they have been quite significantly.

We will have social pressure that will encourage people to do the right thing, just to nod and look. Saying, “Hey, maybe you should reconsider just being out there on the beach, being 22 strong at a park.” It’s time for all of us to recognize as individuals and as a community, we need to do more to meet this moment.

Enforcement comes in many shapes. The regulatory framework, you have licensing frameworks. I don’t believe that the people of California need to be told through law enforcement that it’s appropriate just to home isolate, protect themselves, go about the essential patterns of life. But do so by socially distancing themselves from others, and do so using your common sense.

Now why is it important that I advance this new order? It’s for the following reasons. We’ve been doing pandemic planning in the State of California for now over a decade. Now we’re moving into application implementation, and that includes the latest technology and data collection. The ability to work with artificial intelligence to match that data up, to really look at trend lines before they become headlines. What we’re seeing not only on the ground, but we’re seeing through the data, is this spread continues at a pace that we had anticipated in a number of our models. Let me be precise. It’s a number that we have been using for the purposes of guiding our resource delivery and guiding our decision making.

We estimate in the United States, we’ve heard this number across the rest of the world, that people… 30% of the population, as high as 70% of the population, may contract the virus. In California, we’ve been working with those numbers as a nation state, 40 million strong. We’ve been organized around an attack rate, as we refer to it, of about 56%. That the virus will impact about 56% of us. You do the math. In the State of California, that’s a particularly large number. That number in and of itself, shouldn’t be overly alarming. The vast majority of us, the overwhelming majority of us won’t have symptoms, will be perfectly fine. But there is a subset that we’re concerned about that will not only be impacted by the virus, but also potentially can impact others, including impacting our capacity to deliver the high quality services. Not only to meet the moment as it relates to COVID-19, but to provide for all the acute care that millions and millions of Californians depend on every single day.

So we’re looking at a hospitalization rate by using those numbers. Forgive me, I know oftentimes, these numbers get confusing. But a 56% attack rate, if you assume that R-nought, which is a number of individuals that you may come in contact with that can contract the virus. If you use that formula, we believe with a 20% hospitalization rate, a little bit on the higher end though. Some would argue could be much higher, some believe it might be much lower. But 20% hospitalization rate. It’s about 19,543 people that would need to be hospitalized under that scenario, above the existing capacity of our system. That’s the planning methodology we’ve been using. I’m being very straight with you and these are numbers I can assure you governors, mayors, administration across the country, are working with.

But I think it’s time to tell you what I tell my family. What I tell my wife just as I did two nights ago, when I told my daughter that I don’t believe that this school year she’ll get back into that classroom. Those are difficult conversations, and I know they’re conversations you’re having in real time, and you’re having with one another as I speak. And I deeply appreciate the anxiety of these difficult conversations, but we must have them. But as we work through that planning process, 19,543 beds in our system, I’m able to look at our existing capacity. Let me be specific of what our existing capacity looks like.

We have 416 hospitals in the State of California. We have capacity to provide care beyond our hospital system. But within the hospital system, we have a capacity to surge the number of beds beyond the 78,000 currently staffed beds, by an additional 10,207. By the way, that number changes on a daily basis. But that’s today’s number. So looking at the 19,500 plus individuals in our planning, looking at that surge capacity, about 10,000, we are looking at a delta, a gap, that requires about 10,000… Well, 10,000 beds. 10,000 members of the community to staff those beds. That’s currently what we’re up against. But here’s the point. That’s a planning document. If we change our behaviors, that inventory will come down. If we meet this moment, we can truly bend the curve to reduce the need to surge, to reduce the need to have to go out and begin to cobble all those assets together. Though I want you to know, we are doing just that.

We always plan. We always anticipate. Let me give you some proof points. Today, we just secured a very large hospital in Northern California, Seton. It’s now part of our portfolio, and we’re going to populate that hospital as an example to meet the moment. Tomorrow, we’ll announce a hospital in Southern California. That’s 750 beds, those two hospitals combined. We start to stack this, 750 here. The motels that we’re currently, and hotels we’re currently negotiating with, we start stacking those master leases for those hotels. We’re working. I had very, very positive conversations with the leaders of two of the finest public university systems in the world, UC and the California State University system. We’re working with those systems to identify appropriate dormitories to help us with the surge. We start stacking those numbers.

We’re working with the federal government. I had a conversation today with Vice President Pence and President Donald Trump together on the phone, talking about our needs. In addition to my conversation today with the Secretary of Defense, about these mobile medical and field units that they have committed to pledging, not just to California, but to folks all across this country. You start stacking those things. We have I believe, the capacity to meet this moment, but not unless we change our behaviors and do what is necessary to meet this moment. Let’s bend the curve together. Let’s not regret. Let’s not dream of regretting. Go back say, “Well, we could have. Would have. Should have.”

Now in the data, all points to where I think most of us know we’re going. One has to be transparent, one has to be honest. It’s difficult at a time being the bearer of these messages. I can assure you, home isolation is not my preferred choice. I know it’s not yours, but it’s a necessary one. We started with seniors, 65 and over, the most vulnerable population. And will continue to overly focus on that population and those with compromised immune systems. But we now need to broaden it to all Californians. That’s the order we’re putting out today. It’s consistent with the leadership we’ve seen at the local level, including… I want to acknowledge Mayor Garcetti and others in Los Angeles and LA County that are recognizing and meeting this moment as well.

In addition, I want to thank speaker Nancy Pelosi. We had a very long conversation today. Talk about meeting the moment. We’re so blessed to have her leadership in California. She’s very familiar to Northern Californians, certainly familiar to me as a former mayor of San Francisco. Our conversation was not only about what she has done and what is being done in the Senate as we speak, but what will be needed over the course of the next number of months as we come back, as we recover, as we will.

This is not a permanent state. This is a moment in time. And we will meet this moment together, and we will look back at these kinds of decisions as pivotal decisions. If we’re to be criticized at this moment, let us be criticized for taking this moment seriously. Let us be criticized for going full force and meeting this virus head on. We’re doing so today in the State of California through this order, and we’re doing so by continuing to build collaboration and partnership across every level of government and the private sector.

Let me conclude by just making a few points to fill in that. We had today, a very important conversation. It was punctuated earlier today by President Trump and his press conference with the CEO of Gilead, it’s a California based company, around treatments. I want to compliment the President in his focus on treatments. It is a focus of positivity as we work to bridge towards a vaccine. It was a very encouraging conversation. It’s a conversation that we can have with many other CEOs of companies. Not just in the State of California, but for that matter, around the rest of this country and around the rest of the world. There are treatments in trial. Our UC system, all five hospitals, are already actively engaged in those treatments and the courses that are part of some of these antivirals… and some of these medicines that you have all learned about today because of the President’s announcement. That’s very encouraging.

We want to continue to build capacity and to build partnerships. Along those lines, we are working to build capacity and partnerships to get more protective gear in the State of California. You’ve all been seeing headlines. Some of them, we’ve driven by our own anxieties in that space. Others, by their own limitations in access and gowns and gloves, glasses and other protective gear.

Here’s the good news in the State of California. I was talking to the Vice President and the President today, thanking them for the first national stockpile transfer of assets that we just received, where we received quite literally, hundreds of thousands of gloves and face masks. Not just N95, but also surgical masks. We’re going to be starting to get that cache of assets out into our diverse communities throughout the State of California. Many of you know we had our own cache. We had our own storage of N95 masks. We still have 10 million of those masks, and we are getting them out in real time. We started with 21 million. We have about 10 million still. As we distribute those, we’ve distributed those first 11 to 55 counties in the state. And we’ll continue to get those N95 masks out there. We recognize that distribution can’t happen fast enough.

We also talked to a well known entrepreneur today around ventilators. As many of you know that have followed our press conferences here in the state, we have 7,587 ventilators in our hospital system. And we have 514 through a cache at the Department of Public Health that are being repurposed. We have an additional 200 in our EMSA cache that we are repurposing. And then we ordered an additional 200. But we’re going to need to increase the manufacturing of those ventilators. We are working with the private sector and well known entrepreneurs to consider to help us in that respect as well. Starting to repurpose some of the manufacturing in this state to meet the moment, particularly to prepare for our seniors and others that may need that support.

So again, this is a difficult moment, and this is one that I know is filled with deep anxiety. As a father, as a husband, as a parent of four young kids. To families in particular. To folks that have had to drop their kids, no longer drop off at school, but now are living with their kids 24/7. Putting together learning plans, trying to figure out the nomenclature of what their seventh grade science teacher understand. I think all of us are coming to appreciate our teachers.

We’re all coming to appreciate each other I think, a little bit more. We don’t see this the lens of rural/urban. We certainly don’t see it through the lens of a Republican and Democrat. I think we’re all human beings, deeply capable of loving one another, meeting this moment, and beginning to love ourselves enough to recognize it’s our individual decisions that are going to determine our capacity moving forward.

Covid19.ca.gov. Covid19.ca.gov, is a site we have put up to provide information. We’ll be putting more detailed information out in the next hours and days, about the exemptions to the stay at home order. But again, for those living and many of the Northern Californians already impacted, you’re very familiar with those exemptions. And for those of you who are not, again, we’re going to keep the grocery stores open. We’re going to make sure that you’re getting critical medical supplies. You can still take your kids outside, practicing common sense and social distancing. You could still walk your dog. You can still pick up that food at one of our distribution centers, at a restaurant, at a drive-through. All of those things, we will still be able to do.

And then to secure that in closing, I want folks to know that we’ve lost a lot of volunteers that simply are concerned and understandably, are staying at home. Our food banks and others that have relied on volunteers and the community spirit, need a little support. So we’re going to provide that support. This shouldn’t be alarming, it’s humanitarian only. But we’ll send out about 500 of our extraordinary leaders in the National Guard to help with the distribution and the food. Again, just purely humanitarian.

We’ll be announcing some very, very exciting partnerships with social media companies like Next Door, to provide kits, information, Q and As. To start to check in on loved ones, check in on your neighbors, things that you need. One, pagers, so you know what kind of things you need at home to protect yourself. Those that are socially isolated. Our seniors struggling with loneliness as much or more than anything else, to make sure we reach out. Maybe call five people a day, just check in on them. So we’ve got a whole kit we put out with that social media company.

We’re going to be doing more of the AmeriCorps and Conservation Corp in the State of California. All of this in the spirit of meeting the moment, including the spirit of reaching out. Those that are healthy, young. Those that can make an appointment, be socially appropriate in terms of their distancing to get a blood drawn to help those in need. Our blood banks need support. Interestingly, we are not able to provide, because we’re not doing the large blood draws and fairs, the kind of capacity we’ve seen the past. The good news about the social isolation in some respects, the need in the short term has gone down, so it shouldn’t be alarming. But we want to meet the moment if indeed our blood banks need additional resources as well. So again, it’s a spirit of the moment. Stepping up, stepping in, recognizing our own individual capacity to meet this moment. Not just relying on others. Doing it safe and thoughtfully.

Again, I just cannot express more appreciation for the collaborative spirit that has defined this moment across agencies, across jurisdictions, across this country, into the White House, the Pentagon, health and human service agencies across this country, sharing best practices across state, and of course, the CDC and their leadership. So with that, we’re here to answer any questions. I’ve got a team assembled behind me. And I thank all of you in the State of California for recognizing this moment, and meeting it.

Speaker 1: (20:29)
First question, Sophia Bollag, Sac Bee. Sophia Bollag, Sac Bee.

Sophia Bollag: (20:45)
Hospital staffing. Specifically, can you explain whether we have enough doctors and nurses, and what your plans are to staff the additional medical facilities you’re acquiring?

Yeah. We’ve been working very collaboratively. Just yesterday, we had representatives representing the panoply of healthcare delivery system broadly defined from the hospitals on down. Representatives and doctors and others. Nurses, clearly. We are currently looking not only at the assets within the system, but we are looking more broadly at scope of practice and reforms that are necessary under these circumstances. I’ll give you a more specific example.

One of the really ennobling incredible things about our public employees in the State of California, is we’ve been putting out a survey to those employees and asking them if they have skills in other areas. Their willingness to step up and say, “I’ll happily work outside of my job description. I’m happy to lend a hand.” So we’ve got nurses and doctors and paramedics, all part of the California workforce, in different capacities. We’re pulling them in to help supplement. Also, working with our federal partners at HSS as it relates to adopting a staffing regime and strategy that can help support not just those mobile field units, but also potentially to help us with these hospitals that are coming online. I don’t know if Dr. Ghaly, you want to amplify and fill in any blanks as it relates to additional thoughts relating to staffing.

Dr. Ghaly: (22:14)
Sure. We continue to work just as the Governor said, with our partners across the state in the healthcare professions, including working on the ratios and different things to make sure we can staff up. We’re looking at individuals who have recently retired to come back and support these new facilities and existing facilities. We know that some health care professionals who are not as busy in their outpatient practices, nurses, doctors, nurse practitioners, other healthcare professionals, can step up and are willing to join us as we build up this capacity in new facilities and increase our capacity in our existing facilities. So it has felt and it continues to feel like an all hands on deck mission. We’re having great conversations with all of our partners across the state. The willingness is enormous. We are daily receiving emails and calls with the willingness to step up and help. We know this is going to be a challenge, but we believe Californians together are going to meet it.

Next question.

Speaker 1: (23:21)
Kathleen Ronayne, Associated Press.

Kathleen Ronayne: (23:22)
Hi, Governor. Thanks for doing this.

Thank you.

Kathleen Ronayne: (23:27)
Do you have a sense of how long this statewide shelter in place order is going to last? And then, you talked about the state has been modeling and has been seeing where this has been going for days now. Why now, did you decide to issue this today? Was there a specific number or thing that changed that made you take this extra step?

No, I think we’ve been very fluid as you know, almost on a… not almost, on a daily basis. We’ve been adjusting to changing conditions. Not only here in the state, but changing recognition across this country, and understanding of what’s happening in other parts of the globe that require us to adjust our thinking. Quite honestly, on an hourly basis, not just a daily basis.

So based upon the meetings we had yesterday with our healthcare professionals, based upon the conversations we had this morning with fellow governors, with the President, CDC and others, based upon our models, based upon our trend lines, based upon some new information that came in as it relates to those models from Johns Hopkins among others, we felt it was appropriate to raise the ante and do what we can to bend that curve. Let me remind you, the numbers we put out today assume that we’re just along for the ride. We’re not. We want to manipulate those numbers down. That’s what this order is all about. The projection said we will have, but we don’t live by- (Silence)

Speaker 1: (25:00)
All right, guys. Just wanted to give you an update. We do have over 240,000 cases worldwide. We are listening in to Governor Newsom statewide. What they’re calling it out there in California is the Safer at Home. Again, that’s going to be a lockdown for the entire State of California. Going to be tuning in with our sister station, Fox LA, right here on News Now.

Speaker 6: (25:22)
Can you guys hear me?

Yes, they can.

Speaker 6: (25:26)
Yeah, hi. Thanks, Governor. I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us tonight. We’re hearing a lot from state workers that they are still being told to come in and work. You touched on this a bit last night. But does the state have the capability to have workers telecommute in the numbers needed for social distancing?

Yeah, that’s being worked on in real time. We had a remarkable conversation last night with our largest public employees union, Tele Town Hall. We talked about so many of the essential services that are provided in the state. Let me put that in perspective. When you consider police and fire and those in our corrections industry broadly defined, you’re over 50% of the workforce operating in some form of 24-hour support. So it’s deeply defined as essential.

Those in non-essential positions that have skills are being surveyed to see if they could provide essential capacity and fill in voids that may exist that persist throughout our system. But when we look across the peneplain of services, the overwhelming majority of those services, we believe we can meet based upon that criteria. That criteria is being processed in real time, in terms of making the actual determination to your question around how many individuals can telework. How many people don’t have that kind of broadband access, or otherwise are not positioned because of their particular job to get any big benefit from telework. So all that is being processed, and we’re working very collaboratively with our teams in HR to make all of that real. But it’s a constant never ending adjustment.

Speaker 1: (27:13)
Thank you, Devin.

Speaker 7: (27:14)
How about that? Governor Gavin Newsom, announcing a new world for California-

Gavin Newsom Orders California to Stay at Home Due to Coronavirus: Announcement Transcript

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