California To Resume Scheduled Surgeries Amid Outbreak

Speaker 1: 00:00 Governor [inaudible] Speaker 2: 00:02 Gavin Newsome was able to make an announcement today about a modest loosening of the co-fund 19 restrictions in the healthcare sector. Newsome says hospitals in California can begin to resume scheduled surgeries if they are sure they have surge capacity available for [inaudible] patients. And the state's plans for testing are expanding from a 25,000 tests a day goal by the end of the month, up to 60 to 80,000 in the near future. And testing, tracking, tracing and quarantine. The first part of California's six step reopen and recovery model was the main focus of today's news conference. Joining us now is California Lieutenant governor Alleni [inaudible]. And among her duties, she is a member of the governor's new task force on business and jobs recovery. Lieutenant governor, welcome to the program. Speaker 1: 00:53 Hello Maureen. Thank you for having me. Speaker 2: 00:56 Now the governor says hospitals can resume scheduled surgeries. Is that because the number of Kovac patients is down and expected to stay down? Speaker 1: 01:06 So the number of co-fund patients in our hospitals has, has hit, um, a level where day to day there are only modest changes. So, for instance, we have about 1300 patients in ICU right now and that has been maybe up if you present down a few percent, um, over the course of the last week or so. So what that means is that it's evidence that we have flattened the curve that people in California who have really taken seriously the state stay at home order have done their job. And as a result, we have capacity in our hospitals and frankly Maureen that there are a lot of people out there who need that hip, hip replacement surgery, need those various surgeries that are, are absolutely essential for their wellbeing, um, but have been put off in order to create the capacity in our hospitals for the surge that we have done. Uh, really an, uh, a remarkable job in minimizing through our a stay at home, uh, activities. Speaker 2: 02:13 Now the governor talked at length at the beginning of today's news conference about how anxious people are to get out and get the state reopened. Here's governor Noosa, Speaker 3: 02:23 and I wish I could prescribe a specific date to say, well, we can turn out the light switch and go back to normalcy. We have tried to make it crystal clear, uh, that there is no light switch and there is no date in terms of our capacity, uh, to provide the kind of clarity that I know so many of you demand and deserve. Speaker 2: 02:46 Lieutenant governor, how would you characterize the amount of pressure state officials are getting to reopen? Speaker 1: 02:53 Well, Maureen, I think that we put ourselves under pressure because we understand the direct link between the stay at home, uh, which again has resulted in the saving of, you know, potentially tens of thousands of lives. Um, but the connection between the stay at home order and the fact that this is doing significant damage to our economy, we have lost over 3.1 million jobs, or at least that's the number of people who are on unemployment. Uh, and so how we look at the arc of our return to work, return to school, return to life, uh, as a way to get our economy moving again. It's really essential, but of course we have to do it in a way that's safe. And at this point, what epidemiologists and experts and scientists are saying is that until we have a vaccine, this won't be behind us. And so in the meantime, how we can bridge this gap through a combination of testing and tracking as well as looking at some of these new therapies, new medicines that are in trials in our state and elsewhere. Uh, in addition to imposing social distancing, say in the workplace or in our schools or in our restaurants and other other public places. All of this is going to create a lot of different components that need to come together in order to begin to do what the governor said. We just turn that light switch up more and more until, as I said, we get to that point in the future where this is behind us. Speaker 2: 04:31 Let's talk about testing. The state's guidelines have been expanded to include asymptomatic people in senior care facilities and in prisons. Now here in San Diego, some healthcare centers have told us they are not using all their testing capacity. So some hospitals have loosened those guidelines from themselves. They include testing, asymptomatic people, getting surgeries, and pregnant women in labor. Can individual counties and hospitals make their own guidelines for testing? Speaker 1: 05:03 Well, so the governor's numbers that he presented today are that we are at about 16,000 tests per day with the goal, uh, which we believe we're on track for of 25,000 tests per day. We're a state of 40 million people. So there's going to be prioritization of who gets those tests for quite some time. And so in the examples that you gave the, um, in our prison system, in our, um, senior centers, what you're looking for in that case in testing, people who are asymptomatic is looking for community spread within those environments. Because as we know, uh, people are in close quarters and if, and in our senior centers, of course people are very vulnerable. So what we want to do is prioritize the ability to use those tests, uh, to be able not to test people who are sick, to see if they have it, know how to be treated, but also look for hotspots so that we can contain those and address them as needed in order to minimize the number of people who get sick, uh, and minimize community spread in those environments. Speaker 2: 06:15 But if hospitals and counties want to loosen the guidelines for themselves and they have extra tests, are they allowed to do that? Speaker 1: 06:23 Um, you know, I, I couldn't specifically prescribed that. I think it depends, but the conversations and the work that is going on between the state government and the hospitals has been very close and ongoing. And, um, I believe that this is really a matter of, um, a case by case basis within those hospitals of how many tests they have, how many, uh, uh, they need to make sure they have in the future if our numbers do start to go up at compared with an B number of additional tests that we're going to be able to use. So the more tests we have and every day we're getting more and more capacity, the more tests we have, the more we're going to be able to use them for a broader variety of people. Speaker 2: 07:10 Lieutenant governor autopsies in Santa Clara County have revealed that the first known U S coven 19 deaths happened in California about three weeks before what we thought was the first U S Cova death up in Washington state. How does that change what we need to be looking for to understand how this virus has been spreading in California? Speaker 1: 07:31 You know, Maureen, there were a lot of anecdotal stories of people who had been in the hospital with respiratory issues that were undiagnosed. Um, so there was a pretty clear feeling that in fact, there may have been cases earlier than we had officially had, um, data for. Um, but California has always anticipated that we would be on the front lines of any kind of global pandemic down in San Diego. We know very well. You just go down to the port and you can see, uh, or talk to your neighbors and you see the amount of international engagement that exists in a town like San Diego, but it's all along our coast and inland as well. So we are connected to the world in our position on the Pacific rim. That is why the first evacuees out of China, back to the United States, the repatriation of a us citizens in China, um, where there were suspected that they might have been infected, they came to California military bases to go to undergo quarantine. Speaker 1: 08:37 So, uh, we know that we are more vulnerable and more likely to, uh, have cases first. In fact, um, this new information of these autopsies has validated that in fact, cases have happened first. But again, the real indicator that we are looking at is spread. How far has it spread within the community and how many people develop a level of symptoms that they need to be in ICU. Those are the numbers that we're really looking closely at in order to be able to be prepared and able to ensure that we have the tools to, to minimize spread and also to support those if they get sick. I know the governor has said there is no date for reopening the state, but could you quickly answer, there must be a working timeframe. Would you say we're talking weeks or months? Again, I think Maureen, that, you know, we, he's, he's being really candid about this and that is because there are a lot of factors in where he'd be able to determine how safe it is for people to be in close proximity to one another and under what circumstances, you know, we're still looking at how easily it spreads from person to person. Speaker 1: 09:55 We know it's primarily through droplets, but we also know that people who, uh, have the virus, even if they're not manifesting any symptoms at all, can still shed the virus. Lieutenant governor, I'm afraid that we're out of time. Oh, I'm probably, we're talking about months and months, but here's what I think people should know. It's going to be a phased approach and the more that we learn about the virus, the more that we're going to be able to get back to work at school and life in a way that is safe for all of us. Thank you so much. I've been speaking with California's Lieutenant governor [inaudible]. Thank you for your time.