KPBS News Coronavirus Special

Speaker 1: 00:07 [inaudible]. Speaker 2: 00:09 Thank you for watching this special edition of KPBS news. I'm Maya trouble sand. Over the next half hour, we will showcase some of the reporting done by KPBS on the COBIT 19 pandemic. First, some of the key developments this week we've seen a steady increase in cases with a 68% rise over the past week as a Friday. 40 deaths were reported in San Diego County. The San Diego unified school district conducted a soft launch of its virtual learning program and some good news for 800 city of San Diego workers. The city rescinded, therefore our Los and we'll assign them other roles. This was also the week we saw more people wearing masks around San Diego workers in grocery stores, restaurants, banks and transportation are required to wear one. The rest of us are encouraged to KPBS reporter Matt Hoffman shows us the right way to wear one. Speaker 3: 01:09 The goal of it is to basically be able to cover your nose and your chin. Speaker 4: 01:13 Dr Joelle Frio. [inaudible] is an assistant professor of clinical medicine at UC San Diego, an ER doctor and the associate medical director for the city of San Diego. And we're a mask in public. She says, a proper face covering should first be comfortable. Speaker 3: 01:26 You want something that's breathable. So you know when you fold it over and you put it in front of your mouth and your nose. Think, can I wear this while I'm grocery shopping? Speaker 4: 01:34 A variety of different materials will work, but it should be able to pass a light test. Speaker 3: 01:38 So if you hold it up to a light, can you see through? And if it's one of those materials, it's very see-through and you're seeing a lot of light through it, it's not going to work because if light is getting through it, a lot of virus particles and droplets can also make its way through it. Speaker 4: 01:52 There's a shortage of medical masks for healthcare workers and officials say the public should not be wearing [inaudible] or surgical masks. Speaker 3: 01:59 Sewing grocery shopping is not doing patient care. Speaker 4: 02:01 Well, it might be hard. People also need to remember not to touch their face coverings. Speaker 3: 02:05 You accidentally touched something that had the virus and then you touch the front of your mask that is now decontaminated so you have to be very careful on how you're handling your mask. It's not a, I'm going to wear it out into public and I get all germ to contaminate it. I'm a throat and a purse loophole back out and put it back on my face. That is how you inappropriately use it. Speaker 4: 02:22 That includes avoiding touching the mask while putting it on and taking it off Speaker 3: 02:25 and then using the straps, I'm going to remove it without touching any part of my mask and then that will go into laundry hamper. Speaker 4: 02:33 If you're wearing a reusable mask like a cloth one, you'll need to keep it clean, Speaker 3: 02:37 hot, soapy water in the washing machine should work and you can continue to wear it. Speaker 4: 02:42 If you're worried about the mask ripping or breaking in the washing machine, try putting it in a pillowcase first or you can make a base covering out of an old tee shirt. Speaker 3: 02:49 If you have a spare t-shirt, there is a recipe online for you on how to make a mask. Speaker 4: 02:53 So there really is no excuse not to have one. Speaker 3: 02:56 This is for everyone. It's for the over 65 Speaker 5: 03:00 year olds. Immunocompromise the kids, the just the overall population that we're working together to save lives. Donofrio Oatman says public health is everyone's responsibility watching your family and others cause it's going to take a little bit of time, I think to get used to how to properly wear a mask. For more information about face covering, storing the coronavirus outbreak, go to kpbs.org Matt Hoffman, K PBS news Speaker 2: 03:26 and experimental coven. 19 vaccine developed here in San Diego is now in the human testing phase. And Novio pharmaceuticals is testing two doses of its vaccine in 40 healthy volunteers at labs in Missouri and Pennsylvania, researchers put a section of the viruses genetic code inside a piece of synthetic DNA, which is injected to produce harmless copies. The immune system makes antibodies, so it's ready if the real virus should ever come along. Speaker 5: 03:58 Think of DNI medicines a little bit like, uh, the FBI wanted posters. So what we're doing is introducing a map pulled up on a picture to the body of the Vidas in this case and as the enemy, Speaker 2: 04:17 it will likely be a year to 18 months before a vaccine is ready to be rolled out to the general population. San Diego has a strong reputation for its biotech community. This week, the county's chief medical officer, dr [inaudible], talked about the public private partnership during the pandemic Speaker 6: 04:38 when it comes to this kind of coordination with regard to a new innovation and opportunity like a vaccine. We are blessed to live in a part of a country where we are fortunate to have a lot of very cutting edge progressive tip of the spear biotech companies. There, uh, opportunities for that collaboration and those clinical trials to happen between those entities and local healthcare systems is not something that we typically would have direct involvement with at the local level. But given these current circumstances and given the tables that we have talked about, uh, uh, constant collaboration, all inclusive tables with executive medical, nursing leadership. Um, if somebody wants to send information we will be more than happy to disseminate that accordingly. Speaker 1: 05:38 Yeah. Speaker 2: 05:38 More information from the County is available online@coronavirus-sd.com and you can get details on County health orders, the latest COBIT 19 case numbers and you can also sign up for County text alerts. Speaker 2: 05:54 More people are being tested in San Diego and some are results in as little as five minutes. Script's health says it's using the new ID now. Device made by Abbott labs. The machines received emergency FDA approval. They can produce a positive test for covert 19 in just five minutes. Negative tests take about 15 minutes. Scripts says it has the devices at all five of its hospitals in San Diego County. UC San Diego researchers have joined a nationwide effort to study whether a wearable device can help predict if a person is getting sick. KPBS science and technology reporter Shalina Chut Lani says the device could help healthcare workers stay safe during the Corona virus pandemic. Speaker 5: 06:44 When people go to the doctor, they get their vital signs checked like temperature and pulse to help determine whether they are sick. But what if a wearable device could track and record those signs? 24 seven that's the idea behind a nationwide study says you CSD bioengineer Benjamin smart. Speaker 7: 07:02 It's this whole thing go off on my finger. Okay. And it's using LEDs. Speaker 5: 07:07 Researchers across the country are studying data from this ring made by Finnish company called aura. It could measure biological factors like heart rate, respiration rate and temperature, which smar says is exciting. Speaker 7: 07:19 A lot of the systems in your body as they change. So you think about when you eat, Oh well your hormones having also through the day, that kind of thing turns out to affect your temperature. And so when we have continuous temperature, instead of just knowing I'm somewhere near 98 or half IGA, you can actually say, is that structure a nice stable lapping waves of a healthy body or is it starting to get roiled up and it looks like a storm is coming. Speaker 5: 07:46 Participants volunteered, aware the ring and record their symptoms already. It has been distributed to thousands of healthcare workers with hopes that it will help protect them as they treat patients with Corona virus. Marco Lee, a neurosurgeon at the Santa Clara Valley medical center near San Jose is participating along with some of his colleagues. Speaker 7: 08:04 Well, all of the symptoms in covert 19 has been reports we do very mild and you may have had a COBIT 19 infection without really knowing. Sometimes, uh, we worked long hours wearing the earring could actually spot some temperatures that you yourself might not be, um, noticing. And that kind of hopefully would prompt a, the person to maybe take their symptoms more seriously, Speaker 5: 08:30 but Lee says it's still too early to tell whether the ring works. Speaker 7: 08:33 At the end of the day. We don't know. We don't know how useful this ring is going to be. Uh, and we don't know. Um, how, um, useful it is to, um, develop an algorithm, uh, to spot the symptoms of covert 19. So that's why there's a study. And, uh, I hope that, you know, we're going to get lots of participants. Speaker 5: 08:53 Researchers say they're hoping collect enough data Speaker 3: 08:56 to know if the rain can become a safety and disease prevention tool for workers on the front lines fighting to keep people alive. Shelina Celani K PBS news Speaker 2: 09:08 and one of the crew members aboard a San Diego based medical ship tested positive for Kovac 19 the U S N S mercy was moved to Los Angeles last month. It's being used to care for people who are not coded 19 patients in an attempt to ease the demand on hospitals. The crew member was moved into isolation and the military positive test will not affect the Mercy's mission. Military families face some unique challenges right now. KPBS military reporter Steve Walsh says the virus has placed extra burdens on younger families who were all ready already struggling to make ends meet. Speaker 1: 09:51 [inaudible] Speaker 3: 09:51 so we're putting in our information, all these sleeves of diapers. So when they got on, they know who they came from and if we can help Speaker 8: 10:00 Laura White's group step councils, members of the military in financial trouble. In recent weeks, a lot of their effort has gone into providing care packages with basic necessities to families. Caught off guard by the Corona virus. Speaker 3: 10:12 What we're seeing is, um, definitely a little bit of panic, um, as we all are kind of feeling these days. Um, but uh, another level with our military families because they have some stricter stay at home rules. You know, when your spouse is deployed and you're still parent, we don't want that parent here to get sick. Speaker 8: 10:30 So they're delivering to single parents who are often living far from their own extended families. I like to provide an update on DOD [inaudible] coronavirus efforts in late March, secretary of defense, Mark Esper imposed us 60 days stop movement order throughout the world. At least 90,000 service members were caught up in the restriction. People were frozen in place. Kathleen Martinez, his husband is a Marine officer at camp Pendleton. He was supposed to deploy overseas for the first time. Now that's on hold. Speaker 3: 10:59 We were planning to have me go live back in the Midwest while he's deployed to be near family because it is the first deployment. I'm a little nervous about it. Um, we don't have any family or support system out here, so we thought that would be a smart idea Speaker 8: 11:13 in San Diego where vacancy rates remain low or at least will run out at the end of the month. They can continue to lease month to month, but their landlord has already told her it will be significantly more expensive. Speaker 3: 11:25 Feel stuck, uncertain. Uh, everything is up in the air. I'm a planner and I can't plan right now, so that's a little nerve wracking, just not knowing what's next. The Speaker 8: 11:38 secretary's order came down so quickly. Some families were stuck mid move, some arrived in San Diego before their furniture, other sailors and Marines had set up their new places and were ready to move when the order came down. Blue star families, a military support group is asking families about the disruption caused by COBIT 19 in the militaries response. Jessica Strong is the senior researcher for the survey Speaker 9: 12:02 because this stop movement order, people are not able to move from one place to another. If you were caught in the middle of that right now, you may be paying two mortgage or to rent payments over the next few days or months, especially since we just started a new month. 21% of our respondents in our week one said that they will be paying two rents or mortgages in the next 60 days and after they've just lost a position or lost half their income, that that's not easy to do. Speaker 8: 12:27 By the second week of the survey, 37% of respondents say their spouse had lost their civilian job. About a third said they planned a dip into savings. Speaker 9: 12:36 There's a lot of financial repercussions. People are, um, without housing or unable to make rent or unable to afford food even, Speaker 8: 12:43 or a white with the group that helps. Military families says denial plays a big role in compounding financial problems. Jeez. Seen people's stack, unopened bills when they know they can pay. Speaker 3: 12:53 We want you to open those bills. We want you to take a deep breath and realize that the a big part of the world is just come to a hole so you're not in any different situation than a lot of other people. Get them in order and start making phone calls to each one of those people and talk about your situation. You're going to be able to put something on hold. You're going to be able to come up with some painted plans Speaker 8: 13:12 if a creditor won't work with you. The next step is to contact state or federal consumer protection offices. New laws have put temporary holds on some evictions. People in the military should also reach out to their command. Above all else, white says, try to stay calm. There are solutions for KPBS news. I'm Steve Walsh. Speaker 2: 13:35 California's curve is bending, but it's also stretching and that is according to governor Newsome who says, stay at home. Orders are starting to pay off, but more needs to be done. Dan Simon has more on the progress. California is making Speaker 10: 13:51 well as States across the country scrambled to increase their supply of [inaudible] masks. California. The world's fifth largest economy, made a striking move. Governor Newsome announcing the state, put together a deal to acquire 200 million masks a month. We're healthcare and frontline workers or dealing at a time where we need to go boldly and we need to meet this moment without playing small ball any longer. In Los Angeles County, authorities are lifting the restrictions on coronavirus testing and beginning Friday, the city will require residents to wear a mask or covering and supermarkets and other essential businesses. And if you're not covering your face by Friday morning, an essential business can refuse you service. It follows a series of aggressive moves throughout the state, beginning in mid-March that health experts say appear to show that California is bending the curve. Speaker 2: 14:45 These measures will be disruptive to day to day life, but there is no to Speaker 10: 14:52 panic. On March 16th San Francisco became the first city in the country to issue a stay at home order. Bustling neighborhoods quickly became ghost towns. We direct a statewide order for people to stay at home. Three days later on March 19th, Newsome issued a stay at home order for the entire state, California. Got it. Right. Medical experts say, as the results of these actions appear to be coming into focus, the state has not seen the sharp escalation and cases nor deaths that experts had predicted. Hospitals from both Northern to Southern California appear to have had little problem keeping up with the volume of patients. Is it fair to say that California right now is seeing a flattening of the curve? Speaker 11: 15:35 There's no question about it. The, uh, we've, we've been reluctant to say it because we didn't want to jinx ourselves and we worried that people would hear that and change their behavior. But at some point you have to look at reality. And the curve is remarkably flat. Speaker 10: 15:52 Dr. Robert Walker, chair of the department of medicine at UCLA credits the state's early call, but believes other factors, including many companies, early decision to have employees work from home, Speaker 11: 16:04 Apple and Google and Facebook. And Microsoft has a big presence here, uh, at order their people to work from home. Uh, 10 days to two weeks before even the politicians did that and I remember when it happened and it would be said, is that an overreaction? But it turned out it was a, it was pressured. Speaker 10: 16:20 It's one thing to call for drastic social distancing. It's another to actually see people comply headed to California in early March, the return of the grand princess cruise ship with an unknown number of sick passengers and crew experts speculate it made the crisis seem more imminent and real because of the quick action. Santa Clara County says the doubling time of cases has gone from three days to two weeks and perhaps even longer. But officials say now is no time to let up. Speaker 12: 16:49 That doesn't mean that we're not still seeing new cases and new hospitalizations. This incident is a marathon, maybe even an ultra marathon, Speaker 2: 17:00 and that was Dan Simon reporting. You can now keep track of the number of coven 19 cases in your neighborhood. The County is getting daily updates and as of Friday, zip codes and Hillcrest, OTI Mesa and El Cahone have the highest numbers, but health officials stress. Those are based on home addresses and not where the virus was transmitted. You can take a closer look@covennineteencasesbyzipcodeatkpbs.org schools may be closed, but teachers are still teaching and learning new ways to do it. KPBS education reporter Joe Hong takes a look at the new tasks when it comes to distance learning. Speaker 11: 17:45 One cannot think well, love well sleep well. If one has not dined well Speaker 13: 17:50 by Virginia Wolf, and then it says, what is your favorite meal? Who makes it and who eats it with you? Yvonne Dawson is a third grade teacher at a Royal Vista charter school in the Chula Vista elementary school district. She's using these conversations starters when her class meets on zoom. Hopefully everyone's not talking over each other at the same time, but it's a P. it's something that students are used to and I think it'll bring a sense of normalcy to the situation. The pandemic is wreaking havoc on the educational system, the here and now in ways that will not become clear for months. Yet Dawson and other San Diego County teachers are seeing a silver lining in the transition to distance learning. Speaker 14: 18:26 You might have distractions, Speaker 13: 18:28 uh, Speaker 14: 18:29 but you're in control of that. Gino Scala is an English and history teacher in the San Dieguito union high school district. We're skipping a lot of spring distractions like standardized testing and graduation practice and you know that trip to not very far, I'm in it. The last part of the school year is when there's all these kind of nonacademic things and teachers get very annoyed about the interruptions and routine and this year we're not gonna have any of those interruptions. Speaker 13: 18:58 Teachers also see this as an opportunity to learn new technology that they can take back to the classrooms. When schools reopened, they're getting to learn some cool, we'll stop at home. I think we really need to cheer on what families can teach, what communities can teach Maher. Even Torino is a science teacher and Marvis the Academy. She's also studying for her doctorate in educational technology and has been helping teachers learn new platforms. Right now especially the kids are going to be super forgiving when something doesn't work. They're going to say, Hey, I can help you fix it or Oh it's okay. Keep trying. But the most bittersweet lesson in all this venture Reno said has been realizing the importance of personal relationships to all the teachers out there. No, just keep doing. We're doing it cause we love, we love our kids. So just keep doing what you love and those technology skills. No, they'll come tons of resources out there too. Joe Hong K PBS news, Speaker 2: 19:55 cultural centers like our museums at Balboa park have also been forced to close KPBS arts reporter Beth hock Amando tells us how one is finding a new way to serve the public. During this time, Speaker 13: 20:08 San Diego museum of man has 60,000 square feet of space that its CEO, Micah Parson is willing to make available to any group or organization that might be able to make use of it during the current pandemic Speaker 9: 20:21 back in world war II, the a Navy actually took over the museum and several other institutions in the park and converted it into a hospital to care for the, the sick and the wounded. And part of our, I'm thinking in terms of putting out this, uh, proposal to serve community need was we've done it once before. Why can't we do something like that? Again, Speaker 13: 20:45 the museum is not to become a hospital Speaker 15: 20:48 site again, but there are plenty of other possibilities Speaker 9: 20:51 because we'd be at a testing site for covert 19. Could we be a food distribution site of some kind, all sorts of responses along those lines. Um, some other ones that, uh, we're uh, innovative and creative in their own right. Um, one said, you know, do what you do best, create an exhibit on pandemics over time and, and across cultures and, and the impact. Um, do it virtually. And then springboard that into a, um, a physical exhibit when you reopen. Speaker 15: 21:23 Carson is currently fielding ideas about how the museum could be of service, but nothing has yet been decided. Speaker 9: 21:29 The first step was to put the word out there. Um, it's sort of spread like wildfire. Um, if nothing else, it's, it's motivating others to sort of think a little differently, uh, about ways that they can serve that that aren't squarely in, in what they're, yeah. Accustomed to are the traditional ways, but they nonetheless are part of this effort of bringing us all together. Speaker 15: 21:51 And that goes towards the museum's mission statement of inspiring human connections by exploring the human experience that the commando KPBS news Speaker 5: 22:03 animal shelters are closed to visitors and that means shelter dogs aren't getting a whole lot of attention right now. KPBS reporter Claire triglyceride says many locals are stepping up to help by fostering dogs on a temporary basis. This is petunia. That's dude is my dog. [inaudible] just like most of us. Melanie Murnin is spending a lot of time at home these days, but she has some extra company and then my foster dog, Charlie is down below here. Charlie, can you say hi? He's looking for a home, but wait, there's one more. You went to come out and say hi. Her second foster dog. Third dog total baby girl pops out of her crate and goes straight from her name's gay. Straight out. Oh is nurturing. Giving me kissing Zack is, we'll find you a home. We Moraine has long worked with a dog rescue organization that takes dogs from local shelters and puts them temporarily in foster homes and then promote them on social media. Speaker 5: 23:10 Either find a home for them, find a longterm foster or, or if nothing is found, they go back to the shelter, but with all sorts of notes on how great they are in a home and whether they can live with a cat or a dog or children. Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, she's had a lot of company, lots of people are wanting to foster dogs. The San Diego humane society recently asked for foster volunteers and got more than 400 applications in the first few days. About half the animals in local shelters are now in homes. On March 11th before the stay at home orders 156 of the San Diego humane society animals were in foster homes. Now there are 342 and there was a dog that I had interacted with um, briefly when I was volunteering at the shelter and he was available. Mary Andrew is one of those new foster volunteers. Speaker 5: 24:08 He was just a perfect match for me to take home. She volunteers at an animal shelter but hadn't brought a foster dog home before. She says the new reality brought on by the Corona virus made it the right time to start. We're home anyway. Um, especially for seniors. I mean, they can't see the grandkids. They can't go to yoga classes. There's so many things that can't do, but just spending time with the dog is, it's just really, it's fun and it's stimulating. So Mick, Andrew and her husband fostered a German shepherd named Maverick. We've been out walking every day. We've explored parts of our neighborhood that we had never seen before. We've been greeting or neighbors that we'd never met before or out on the porch and from the can chat with them like distance. We're meeting other people's pets. Um, it's just been, it's gotten us not to think about what we can't do, but what we can do. Speaker 5: 25:07 Then Maverick was adopted, make. Andrew says she and her husband are already looking for another foster dog to bring home, even though you can't visit their shelters, you can adopt through rescue organizations or the San Diego humane society. Spokeswoman Mina Thompson says their shelters are doing virtual adoptions. You would have a really in depth consultation about the pet that you're interested in before you ever even come down. She says, although people can't browse animals at the shelters, adoptions haven't lagged significantly. We've had more animals going out than we've had coming in back at Melanie Marine's house. She's working to get foster dogs, Charlie boy and baby girl ready for forever homes. She's 85 pounds overweight by about at least 20 pounds. So we're taking her for a short box each day working on her weight loss. She says there are other dogs available for adoption too. Hi. Okay. Hi Nikki. A master chef named big Mac and a Husky named Houdini Claire Trigere, sir. Hey, PBS news, Speaker 2: 26:27 and that is all for this special edition of KPBS news for all of us here at KPBS. I'm Maya, treble C, thank you for joining us and stay safe.