BACKGROUND:
The Health Services Department has established a website dedicated to COVID-19, including daily updates. The site is located at: https://www.coronavirus.cchealth.org/
CLERK'S ADDENDUM
Public commentary was received from: Stephanie; Marc Joffe; Andy (attached).
Health Services
The Shelter in Place order has done what it is intended to do. California was the first to have known community spread. Though cases are still rising in the Bay Area and southern California, northern California has been able to flatten the curve.
In the 45 days since the shelter in place, the county has issued nine separate health orders addressing everything from sheltering in place to face coverings, with a tenth order to come out tomorrow. The County has supported media interviews and publication of orders with an entirely new website launched for information and a series of FAQ’s (frequently asked questions) available to the public, covering such areas as nursing, schools, sports, recreational activities, business activities and government operations.
Contra Costa has about 1,100 hospital beds and doubled the number of beds within the hospitals or buildings adjacent to the Contra Costa Regional Medical Center, increasing hospital capacity by 60 %. Ventilator capacity is increased by five-fold. Three floors of the hospital provide negative pressure rooms.
In the jail, all incoming detainees are isolated and monitored for 14 day. Training is ongoing for healthcare providers to use point of care ultrasound for Covid-19 diagnosis. The behavioral health clinics have remained open as well as remote delivery of services provided by over 250 clinical staff. Behavioral health staff have been making home delivery of medications and doing food checks to check on clients sheltered in place. Staff has been working on providing a 60 to 90 supply medication and working with manufacturers to ensure on hand supplies of some atypical medications. Telehealth has been used extensively. The mobile health vans are in action, offering mobile testing as some sites. Alternative care sites have been opened. The Emergency Operations Center has fulfilled 1600 requests for resources such as PPE, ventilators, tents.
An upcoming screening program and dashboard means progress. To date over 11,500 tests have been completed, with a goal of increasing the number to almost 2400 per day. Several area hospitals have been able to begin on-site testing, and the standards for testing has been loosened, in the health centers in San Pablo, Pittsburg, Antioch, Concord. Three more sites will be opened by the state for appointment-only testing. A strike team has been formed to test at skilled nursing facilities and congregate living faciites are being monitored.
Yesterday the county received emergency use authorization from the FDA for antibody testing kits and a machine is available within the public health lab. A strategy is being developed to use those. The number of testers and tracers has increased from 14 to 79. Detailed contact tracing has been conducted on 720 cases of the virus, with plans to get to 100 testers.
The Emergency Operations Center has been serving as the command center for Covid-19 response, with a 1-800 number that has fielded nearly 7000 calls. Public Information Officers have provided media interviews and managed a Covid-19 website to disseminate information for the public as well as pushing out notifications on social media platforms. The telehealth system has managed around 26,000 outpatient appointments.
Charitable foundations such as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which provided $500,00 have been of great help in providing grant support to local non-profits across the county, mostly focused on food distribution and desperate need financial support. Community donation sites for the public to support healthcare needs with the donation of PPE’s have been set up.
Ms. Roth thanked the thousands of individuals working on hundreds of activities to support the community safety, health and wellness. The Fire Chief, the Director of Health and Human Services, Department of Conservation and Development, law enforcement and community based organizations are all working together to promote a whole community strategy toward a goal of all residents living safely, living healthy and living well.
County Administrator
Last week at the state legislature there was a meeting and one of the speakers for that committee was from the UCLA Anderson forecast group. Their forecast was that statewide by the end of this year, the unemployment rate will be 16.5%, which is a number we are in the seen since the great recession back in 2008 through 2011. They also forecasted that it will take about 18 months before we would be able to return to the 2019 employment levels. And finally, they expressed real concerns that the pandemic could return either this fall or subsequently in 2021, depending upon what steps we take.
The six Bay Area County Administrators, the same administrators associated with the six health officers that we talked about, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Marin, Alameda and us as well as San Francisco were on a conference call yesterday. One thing being considered is hiring one firm to examine how best for the cunty to respond and recover county operations and contemplate how does the county continue to operate under the new environment we will be in. There will be a need within county offices to provide for social distancing and protect both the employees and the public they serve.
The county has deployed about 1500 laptops to employees to facilitate working from home and is considering how to continue that going forward. For people returning to work the county has ordered and received 20,000 masks, that will be distributed with the assistance of the labor partners
The Governor issued a new order dealing with a meal delivery program called Restaurants Delivered Home Meals for Seniors. Staff was informed of this late Friday afternoon (April 24th). The program proposes to deliver three meals a day, the maximum cost associated with it, which will be reimbursed about 75% by FEMA, 19% by the state and 6% by the county, is $66 per day per person. Puzzling about this program is that the FEMA grant says it will only run through May 10th, and the County is just getting to set up this week. At 6% county cost there would be an expenditure of a few thousand dollars by the County, expected to be covered by CARE Act funding. How precisely the program will function is not yet clear, a group is meeting today to work on that. The framework provided by the state requires that a background check be completed on anyone making the meal deliveries to ensure the safety of the participants as well as other critieria in regard to identification of recipients and their income being at or less than 400 % of the poverty level. The County hopes to have a number of factors set up and managed by the end of the week, while waiting for further descriptions from the state. It is awkward that it is not known if the state intends to extend the program past the May 10 2020 date.
In-Home Support Service workers, 9,000 providers, are entitled to are entitled to a prorated share of the 80 hours of sick leave that is provided by the Federal Government under the Families First Act. That again is also an area that could be partially covered by our CARE Act funding, the County share of cost is about about $7.2 million.
As authorized by the Board last week, advance funding for the month of May has been provided to the community based organizations (CBO) that contract with the County, and an number of contracts were amended to address new billing rates and authorizing advance payment to direct service providers.
A test run has been performed determining the best solution to have citizens call in to the Board of Supervisors virtual meetings rather than having the clerk read the public comment emails. The solution would be through AT&T services which would provide a toll free number for people to call. The program can manage a queue of a thousand incoming calls. AT&T would act as gatekeeper for the calls and a transcript will be made of all the call activity. The number and code would be added to the agenda starting with the May 12 agenda. The emails sent by the public will still be included into the record just not read aloud.