San Diego County Reports 283 New COVID-19 Cases

Speaker 1: 00:01 Governor Gavin Newsome today expanded on the commitment he made last week to provide more support for essential workers in the battle against COVID-19. He announced that strike teams will be deployed to the central Valley of all the lines of the teams that helped when COVID-19 cases spiked in Imperial County, Speaker 2: 00:20 I'll remind you, those teams included members of the office of mercy services. So the members of OSHA team members, the department of social services, uh, as well as partners that we developed at the local level and Q including, uh, community based organizations, Speaker 1: 00:39 Newsome says a federal grant has also provided $52 million to increase testing and quarantine housing for essential workers in the eight counties of the central Valley. The COVID positivity rates in each of those counties range from 10.7 to 17.7%. The state average is 7.5 in San Diego County health officials reported a total of more than 880 new COVID cases. Over the weekend, the County continues to exceed several state trigger points and San Diego remains on the state's COVID watchlist. Yet anyone who went out over the weekend was sure to have spotted individuals, groups, and even businesses not complying with COVID guidelines like wearing masks and observing social distancing. San Diego County officials say they are creating a safe reopening compliance team to offer guidance to businesses confused about COVID compliance and to crack down on businesses and organizations operating in defiance of those rules journey may have San Diego County supervisor Nathan Fletcher and supervisor Fletcher. Welcome to the program. Speaker 2: 01:48 Thank you very much for having me. Speaker 1: 01:49 How long is it going to take to get this new compliance team? Speaker 2: 01:53 Well, I think what we're talking about is increased compliance teams. We have some efforts that take place now. Uh, our epidemiological branch goes out for outbreaks and looks at practices what's happening. Um, and as we've seen in, in, in multiple egregious examples, whether it was a restaurant in PB, uh, a church or a gym in San Diego, we have sent staff out, uh, worked with local jurisdictions. What we're talking about is how do we, how do we expand that? How do we formalize that? Uh, how do we better engage with cities? Um, because the reality is until we have a vaccine or a combination of vaccine and therapeutic treatments, uh, we're going to be in this new normal for a while. And while the vast majority, the overwhelming majority of businesses are doing what we ask and we're grateful to them. Uh, we can't let a handful of folks, uh, who are willfully defined public health orders impact our region's ability to remain open. Speaker 1: 02:44 Is this expanded team going to respond to complaints from the public, or is there some other way it will approach inspecting businesses? Speaker 2: 02:53 Well, we're still putting in all of the details together, but I suspect it will be a mix of both. You definitely get complaints. Many of them are documented, uh, accompanied by photographs and video of, of what's happening. Uh, and you get those, those come in through the, through the public. And those are certainly, we want to be in a better position, uh, of being able to act on those. And what we're talking about are that the really willful and blatant violations that are putting people's health at risk, uh, if somebody is walking their dog in their neighborhood, uh, with their face covering around their neck, I think that's unlikely to be something, uh, whatever rise to the level of enforcement. But when you see these, these truly, uh, flagrant violations, again, that threatens our ability as a region because that facilitates spread. And so we want to be able to better do that. And we get a lot of referrals through our case investigators, our outbreak investigators, our contact tracers, and they will feed in concerns that they have as well. And then it'll be a matter of prioritizing them. And then really working with the local jurisdictions who have code compliance officers who know their businesses to go out and take the appropriate level of action. Sometimes it could be education or, Hey, we need to tighten this up in the instance of someone where it's very flavored and willful that could be issuing a public health order, closing them Speaker 1: 04:02 Can go all the way up to actually closing the business. What about fines for businesses that refuse to comply? Speaker 2: 04:08 Well, that is a part, and that's currently in place now. And I think we're looking at all of the options about how can we do this best, you know, and again, trying to separate out those folks who are, who are making a good faith effort, who are doing the best they can, who are trying to comply with the orders, uh, you know, versus the truly, uh, willful defiance of public health orders. Um, and again, the, the ability to get through this as a region enforcement has to be a tool. Um, but the reality is we need the public to understand, look, we are all in this together, and if we want to resume as much of our life or normal life as possible, then we have to come together and we have to slow the spread. And so that means avoiding large indoor gathering. That means utilization of base covers the things that are put in place are not out of a desire to be punitive or tell people what to do. It really is out of a desire to allow us to have as much open as possible. And so we have to do better on the enforcement part and we're working to figure out how we do that. Um, but we're also really hoping, uh, that, that enforcement isn't the centerpiece of this, that, that everyone will buy in and understand why as a community we have to come together. Speaker 1: 05:13 But just to be clear, you do see stepped up enforcement as part of the new compliance team. That is correct. Okay. So governor Newsome announced last week, a new effort to require businesses to report COVID outbreaks directly to public health officials. How will that Speaker 2: 05:30 The ongoing cooperation is, is what's vital on the flow of information and data and a cornerstone of infectious disease response and pandemic response is that case investigation, outbreak tracing close contact. I got a call from a contact tracer who was telling me I had been a close contact of a positive case, and I needed a quarantine and I did quarantine. Um, but the ability to have the cooperation and the data and to have it timed, uh, know this is an area where we're not doing very well right now, our number of case investigations that are being completed in the first 24 hours is love. And so last week alone, we brought on 97 additional case investigators. We're in the process of hiring 212 more. We're going to more than double the number. Uh, and so we have to keep responding rapidly to the changing circumstances we face. And I think the ability to quickly identify through testing, we had a challenge of test not getting turned around fast enough. We took action to try and fix that. And so we're constantly striving to keep up or stay ahead of what's happening, but the ability to rapidly identify positives to link them together when, when the possible, uh, and then you take corrective action and notify people who are close contacts is a piece of what will help us hopefully slow the spread, moving forward, Speaker 1: 06:44 Supervisor Fletcher, the state legislature reconvened today. What are the top COVID related issues you want to see them tackle? Speaker 2: 06:53 Um, you know, I, I really think issues around the accessibility of unemployment insurance, uh, and the speed at which people can get into there. I know our folks in our, in our unemployment systems are working really hard entirely, uh, to try and make that work. Um, but I think that that is a, is a vital component of what we need is helping provide that debt assistance and relief to folks who are struggling. You know, there, there was nothing worse than, you know, those of us who were on the much lower side of reopening. I was the lone, no vote against a series of four, one expedited reopening plants. What we feared was the danger of having to reimpose restrictions, which is economically more devastating than opening more slowly. Um, nonetheless, this is where we are today. And so I think the state can really focus on how they're helping provide economic relief and assistance, uh, along with continuing to support counties. I mean, we, we continue to have needs for health system support for, for, uh, personal protective equipment. Uh, and so I just think remaining focused on the public health crisis and the economic crisis, uh, at the County level, we are very dependent upon that state state help and assistance. Speaker 1: 07:58 You know, there were gatherings over the weekend on the beach in Cardiff and elsewhere where social distancing and masks were basically ignored. People see that, and they ask why isn't law enforcement cracking down on gatherings like that. So I'm asking you why don't we see law enforcement cracking down on that kind of stuff. Speaker 2: 08:18 I'm not trying to pass the buck here, but you really have to ask them, uh, in terms of law enforcement agencies, you know, I know they have a lot on their plate and I know that they, no one probably went to the police Academy to say, I want to enforce public health orders, but, you know, we, we, we could use, we could use additional help and assistance there, uh, in terms of stepping that up and, you know, there, there's no number of kind of public health code compliance folks we're going to get that are going to help provide that widespread, uh, enforcement to, to that level. You know, we, I think we can focus in on agregious violators, willful disdain for businesses that are open that shouldn't, um, but you know, some level of broader support, uh, and enforcement there would, would certainly be helpful, uh, to the overall effort and, you know, create the sense that, again, you know, these are things that we're all in this together and we're doing it. And I think folks who go through the extra step of being cautious and being careful and physical distancing and utilizing their face covering, uh, I understand that frustration when you see blatant examples of folks not doing it, and they're appearing to be no consequences for it. Speaker 1: 09:20 Do you do anything to encourage enforcement to encourage that kind of core up cooperation with cities? Speaker 2: 09:26 Well, we have been, and we continue to do that. Um, and we will continue to do everything that is within our power, uh, but you know, look law enforcement agencies that the sheriff sets his own policies and he gets to, uh, set his own posture as it relates to enforcement, uh, as does the individual police departments in each of the jurisdictions. Uh, you know, look, I know over the weekend I had several conversations with chief Nisley at San Diego PD, uh, around us serving an order and a letter. And he was very helpful. And I certainly appreciate that. Um, but it is, it is simply a fact that we have not seen a wider spread enforcement of the general aspects of the public health orders. Speaker 1: 10:02 Now, as you say, we're still exceeding several of the state trigger points, like cases per 100,000 residents, contact tracing percentages, and that's led to the reclosing of indoor restaurants and businesses and prevented the opening of in-person schools in San Diego. So my question is realistically, how soon do you think we could get off the state watch list? Speaker 2: 10:25 Well, I've long avoided speculating on, on what may or may not happen in the future. It is a dangerous business to be in. Um, what I will tell you is that the one trigger that is tied to the state, we have 13 metrics. We monitor here in the County, that's a combination of federal state and our own. They give us insight into what's happening. The state only monitor six of those that put us on the monitoring list. And so what has this on the state monitoring list right now is the number of cases. And we are over that threshold by a fair amount. What we need to do is reduce our percentage of positive. Our daily percentage of positive was hovering down around two, between two and three. We then went to almost seven and a half percent. We've now kind of stabilized and are trending down just a bit around six. Speaker 2: 11:08 Uh, we need that to continue to come down and I believe it is possible for us to get that case count off the state monitoring list. The challenge is, is getting it off and then staying off. And in order to do that, we've got to go back to what we really talked about in April. April was a month of adapting. We needed to adapt our behaviors. We start reopening. And so the recognition that regardless of what the number is, if the number's low, we tend to lose our focus. If it's high, we tend to regain our focus and we don't want to Seesaw back and forth. We want to get in a place where we can go about our lives with as much of our economy, our schools, our childcare, our recreation open while maintaining that lower number. And that requires a great deal of vigilance that requires folks making the decision to not have 30 people at their house for a private party. Speaker 2: 11:57 It requires us not going into bars or large studies of requires us to utilize face covering and wash our hands. And so my hope would be, you know, we had tremendous initial success. We lost our way and focus a little bit. Now we're tightening it up, that we can tighten it up, lower those numbers, and then stay in that posture and be daily aware and mindful of what we're doing a while we get through this, this will end, we are at some point going to get a therapeutic treatment or a vaccine, or probably a combination of a partially effective vaccine and a partially effective therapeutic treatment. But for the foreseeable future, we've got to really commit ourselves every day to adapting what we do every day. Uh, and we do that not only to protect life, we do that to protect our economy, to protect our children's education. Uh, and we do it for one another. Speaker 1: 12:45 I've been speaking with San Diego County supervisor, Nathan Fletcher. And thank you so much for your, Speaker 2: 12:50 Thank you very much for having me [inaudible].