County COVID cases down. Ditto For Some Scripps Health Services

Speaker 1: 00:00 In the last few days, San Diego has seen something it hasn't seen for a very long time. The number of new COVID-19 cases daily has fallen below 100. It's a milestone, but concern, lingers about, and apparently slowing rate of vaccinations in the county. And speaking of concern, scripts health is entering a fourth week of digital paralysis. After a suspected ransomware attack, Scripps has stayed largely silent on the issue referring only to a cyber security incident in a statement posted to its website. Joining me is San Diego union Tribune, medical reporter, Paul Sisson, and Paul, welcome. Thanks for having me now, first of all, the number of new COVID cases seems to be getting lower and lower. What have we seen lately? Speaker 2: 00:46 Gosh, you know, I just looked at the, uh, the chart this morning. Uh, five of the last seven days have been well under 100 new cases announced per day. Many of them actually probably gotten sick on previous days, but even when you look by the day that people actually got sick, uh, we've seen a nice decrease, uh, over the last week or two. Uh, so you know, that really indicates that the vaccines are working. Yeah. Our hospitalizations Speaker 1: 01:13 And deaths also decreasing. Speaker 2: 01:16 Yeah. Uh, definitely deaths have decreased. Uh, we've seen kind of a steady trickle of, it's been very sad to see it continue, uh, hospitalizations, you know, they have decreased, but, but are pretty stable. I mean, kind of in the, just over 100 range. I mean, we were, we were well over a thousand at the peak, so, so, so yes, uh, hospitalizations definitely have really turned a corner. What Speaker 1: 01:42 About the percentage of those vaccinated in the county? Is that still going up? Speaker 2: 01:48 It is. Uh, but just more slowly than it was, you know, at first everybody was clamoring and we were, we were seeing double digit percentage increases, uh, you know, pretty much every week, uh, that, that has slowed somewhat. Uh, though we are, uh, approaching 1.9 million people, uh, in San Diego county, uh, age 12 and older who have had at least one dose, uh, we're now up to 69 and a half percent, uh, of the target population who have had both of their doses. Uh, I'm included in that. And, uh, and my two, uh, teenage kids, uh, have both just gotten their first dose, uh, last week, if that's any, uh, any indication of how far this is getting out into the community. I mean, we're doing well. I, I don't think we should be, uh, to, uh, to concern that, that nobody's getting vaccinated here, but they say we need to get to 2.1 million people to hit what they call herd immunity. Meanwhile, Speaker 1: 02:44 The cyber attack at scripts, which is one of San Diego's largest healthcare networks is still affecting their operations, but there was some good news. What do we know about the return of scripts, website, scripts.org, Speaker 2: 02:59 Right. Uh, kind of late last week, scripps.org, uh, went back to something resembling it's it's normal, uh, service level. Uh, you can go on there and look for doctors and, and, and do other kinds of research. Um, one real key is that the, my scripts app that most of their patients use to communicate with doctors and to check appointments and prescriptions and, you know, manage their medical life remains offline. I just checked that this morning and it's still down. So that's something that patients really, really are missing at this point. Speaker 1: 03:33 So seems to be some access to digital medical records, those that were logged in before the attack began on May 1st, is that right? Speaker 2: 03:41 That's right. Uh, at first, when this attack happened on May 1st, uh, what we were told was that the medical record system, uh, was completely inaccessible and we continue to hear that, uh, all the way through a midweek last week, when suddenly we started hearing from sources that she, my doctor is now able to go in and look up my, uh, past test results, for example, uh, previous to May 1st, what we've heard is that all care delivered since May 1st, uh, continues to be documented on paper. And that, from what I understand continued through the weekend. So Speaker 1: 04:15 You told us that that crucial patient portal is still down. Can you give us a sense of what other systems still seem to be affected at scripts by this cyber attack? Speaker 2: 04:25 Uh, you know, I just, uh, I had a source check in with me over the weekend who worked two emergency shifts. It sounds like the emergency area is really slowed down quite a bit and not really even close to getting back up to full speed. Uh, it really sounds like a frontline, uh, hospital workers especially are really starting to feel the strain of having a document, everything by patient and still handle, you know, kind of, uh, a normal patient load, uh, that this, uh, this nurse whose identity I haven't independently verified, but who is remaining anonymous, uh, for fear of being fired, uh, said here in this email, if they just sent me, uh, we operate physically tired that standard, but now we are mentally exhausted just like driving when you're exhausted, it's dang dangerous. Someone will make a mistake and someone will get hurt. So there is a real concern that, uh, there is a lot of fatigue in the, in the healthcare workforce, as we're in our fourth week. Now with this now, Speaker 1: 05:22 Paul, do we know for sure this was a ransomware attack and attack where the hackers asked for money? Speaker 2: 05:30 Uh, you know, Scripps has still not confirmed that fact. Um, uh, the union Tribune obtained an internal memorandum on May 2nd, uh, that indicated that it was a ransomware attack. Uh, we had an independent source, uh, confirm that for us on May 2nd. Uh, and then the following week, California department of public health, uh, confirmed, it was ransomware in an email that they sent us. Uh, we don't know whether they've paid the ransom. We don't know what the ransom amount is. Uh, and we don't know if this is what they call a double extortion ransom attempt, where they take some patient records before they let the victim know, uh, that they're in their network and then threatened to put those, uh, records on the, uh, internet, if the ransom is not paid, uh, we've been checking, uh, various dark web websites where these ransomware companies tend to post those kinds of, uh, record disclosures. And so far we haven't seen anything out there. Do we have Speaker 1: 06:29 Any sense how long the situation could go on? Speaker 2: 06:33 Scripps has been totally silent on that matter. They really have never given any kind of guesstimate about when they might be fully up and running again. I think the fact that they have at least read only access to medical records previous to May 1st is pretty telling that would seem to suggest from the security consultants that I talked to, that they do have good backups that they're able to rebuild from and get certain systems back online. Uh, this, the source that I was talking to, uh, at, uh, you know, at one of the local hospitals, um, they said that they, they really, aren't getting very many direct communications from management. Uh, but they've heard some talk that it might be another two weeks. Uh, I would, I would caution it. That's significant speculation. I've been Speaker 1: 07:21 Speaking with San Diego union Tribune, medical reporter, Paul Sisson. And thank you so much. Thank you.