David Campos: Good morning and welcome to Live with
the County of Santa Clara.
My name is David Campos. I'm a deputy County Executive and I'm also serving as
Co-Lead Public Information Officer for
the Emergency Operations Center for the county.
We are here today with James Williams, who is the County Counsel for the County of Santa Clara.
But before we begin our discussion, I want to provide
first an update of COVID-19 cases in the county. 
We have 2179 cases of infections
that have been reported and 113 deaths.
And again our hearts go out to the
families of those who have passed. 
I also want to note that today is May 1st.
In many parts of the world, they celebrate
workers and today we want to send a big
shout out to all of the essential
workers of the County of Santa Clara who
are out there keeping you know things
going in the county, so thank you for what you do.
And then before I begin, I want to note
 that I'm wearing my pin, my census pin
and the reason that I have
this is that even though we're going
through this crisis we're still trying
to complete the census.
Santa Clara County right now has the highest response rate of any county in the state of California.
We want to keep it that way and 
those of you who haven't
responded to the census, please make sure you do so. 
So I'm here with James Williams.
James, you're the County Counsel.
You run the legal department in the
affairs of the county and one of the
things that you do is to to represent
the health officer and in this case put
the thoughts and the guidance of the
health officer into a document which is
this revised order that went out and so
as the person who helped draft that what
do you want people to know about this revised order?
James William: Sure, thank you David.
You know as an attorney we can often get
kind of caught up in details and
technicalities but one of my first
principles as a lawyer is to first apply, try to apply, as much as possible common sense and judgment.
And I think that's really true when you 
think about what's going on here.
Why do we have a shelter-in-place order?
We have it because this is the tool that 
we have available to deal with the spread of COVID-19
given that there isn't widespread
immunity, given that there isn't a vaccine
and given that there
isn't a pharmaceutical treatment.
And so, if you think about that first basic
principle about shelter-in-place, I think
it answers a lot of the more detailed
questions which is that really as much
as possible, folks should be trying to
minimize contacts with others and when
you have to have contacts and when you
have to go out and about as we all do
need to do for things like to obtain
groceries or to obtain other things that
we do so maintaining social distancing,
maintaining good hygiene, maintaining
good practices to minimize the spread. 
So, if you start with that first principle I
think a lot of the rest comes together.
So, we do have a new order.
It takes effect on Monday, it extends through 
May 31st, and it largely continues the same framework
that we have although there are a few modifications.
DC: One thing that I forgot to mention that 
I want to note is that we actually were using face
coverings before we started this
Facebook live but we of course to
conduct the Facebook life to make sure
that the American Sign Language
interpreter could interpret. 
We're not wearing them right now.
In terms of the big changes in the order, what are the
highlights for folks who are wondering
what is different today? 
JW: You know the the this order does begin some
gradual easing of the shelter-in-place and
the two major areas for that our
construction, also all construction
activities allowed to resume, and outdoor business.
And those areas were chosen by the
Health Officers, with respect to
construction because they're very
detailed, careful, safety protocols that
are outlined one set for large
construction projects and another set
for small construction projects and that
industry is used to having adherence to
very strict and significant safety standards.
Also, many of those activities occur outdoors. 
With respect to outdoor businesses,
it is believed that there is
less risk in that context with out
having air circulating kind of a closed
environment and so that is the place
to begin some easing gradually. 
They are closely going to monitor indicators.
So one of the announcements was that
there would be five indicators that
they'll be looking at and closely
tracking as things progress but those
are the two main categories that are
opening up on Monday.
DC: And my understanding is that even if they're 
allowed to operate they have to follow
certain protocols and of course social
distancing is still a requirement.
JW: Yes so social distancing requirements remain
and that's been true for some time even
for essential businesses and the basic
principles are to maintain at least six
feet between persons, to use face
coverings, to have outstanding hand
hygiene and cleanliness. 
Those are kind of the core principles but each
business that is open does have to have
a protocol that they post outlining how
they are implementing these critical best practices. 
DC: We will be spending some
time in the near future speaking about
some of those protocols and some of the
tips you know for making sure that these
workers are safe but I want to ask you
about a couple of key questions that we
have been receiving in the last couple
of days and one of them, tennis.
Can you talk about tennis?
Is that allowed? How does that work? 
JW: Yeah, so there is some opening up of outdoor
recreational activities. 
We all know the weather is gorgeous
and this is beautiful time of year.
Outdoor tennis courts will be opened but
only for play with folks in your
household or living unit.
And I know another question has come up related to
golf and one of the challenges a little
bit has been the interaction between the
local orders and the state order and
whichever is stricter controls.
Fortunately, yesterday the State put out
some more detailed guidance on outdoor
activities and golf is on that list and
golf is allowed under the new local
order so beginning Monday singles golf
is the guidance from the state will be allowed.
DC: So you said Monday. So the order the 
new order goes into effect when exactly James?
JW: On Monday, Monday, May 4th and 
runs through May 31st .
DC: So looking ahead to the weekend, 
for this weekend, for the remainder of
the weekend until Monday, the existing order remains? 
JW: That is correct.
So, through this weekend the existing order does remain. 
It was important to make
sure that there's a little time in part,
so that facilities can actually have
these social distancing protocols in
place and rigorously adopted that's why
there needed to be some time to stand that up. 
DC: Another question that's come up
is child care and recreation for kids.
Can you talk about those?
JW: Sure. So, under the State Order as well as the Local Orders, child care programs are available
for those workers who are working in
essential work under local or essential
businesses, governmental essential,
governmental functions, and the like.
The language was clarified to say that does include summer programs and educational
recreational programs for those children
and there's some important criteria one
of the most important of which is that
it has to be with a stable group of no
more than 12 children. 
And that's really important because there's still a lot
that is being learned about the extent
to which children can be vectors for the
spread and so keeping that stable group
of 12 ensures that
if there is the COVID infection that it's
not spreading to many, many, many
cascading sets of families. 
It's something that can actually be contained.
And so that's one of the very critical
key factors with with childcare and summer programs.
DC: Now one thing that I think 
often perhaps, you know, people
don't focus enough on is the idea that
even though there are some, there's some
easing that there's still the general
rule is you shelter in place.
So can you talk a little bit about that?
JW: Yeah you know we're really trying to learn the
lessons from history and if you look at
the 1918 pandemic which is I think the
closest analogy that we have to this
unprecedented situation, when people kind
of declared victory prematurely and said
well we only need face coverings and
nothing else and this even happened in
San Francisco in 1918, there was a huge
second spike of cases and that a huge
number of fatalities and other illnesses.
The other thing that we're learning as
the science is getting better and better
about what this disease does is that
there are a lot of other risks that
we're learning about including to
younger folks who otherwise seem healthy.
And so it's really important that we
remain true to the basic principles as I
mentioned at the beginning and that is
that we are still in a mode of
shelter-in-place it's difficult for all
of our families it's difficult for my
kids and my family too. 
But this is the tool that we have and it's been
extraordinarily successful and we don't
want to lose that progress that we made
through our collective extraordinary sacrifices. 
And and so that's the
goal and together we can achieve it and
together we will continue to be able to move forward.
This community is so resilient, so outstanding. 
We have great
leadership from Dr. Cody, our Public
Health Officer but we also have absolute
leadership really from the daily action
that people take, the choices that all of
us make to exercise good judgment and follow the guidance that we're getting.
DC: One final question that I have.
You talked about the indicators and in a
way they provide a road map for moving
forward, just briefly how does that work?
Is there one that's more important than another? 
How is that analyzed?
And I know that we're going to provide information
going forward about each one of them in
our progress but how does that work?
JW: Yeah you know it's a totality right.
Each of these things represents something
that's important that the Health
Officers in the Bay Area believed was a
critical metric to look at.
But there are other things too. 
So it's also not an exclusive set of things.
You know, like I mentioned, the science continues to
evolve but these are some core things
that we know we need. 
We know that our health care workers and other first
responders need PPE. We know that we need to keep careful track of hospitalizations.
We know that we need robust testing. 
We know that we need
robust case and contact investigation.
These are kind of core touchstone
factors that together we need to have
in place in order to keep everyone safe.
DC:James thank you very much for joining us today and there's a lot more information
on our website about the Order. 
There's a FAQ that answer many of the
questions that people are asking. 
We also have information in multiple languages
and feel free to contact us. We have a
team of people in the public information
office that are ready to respond to your questions. 
Santa Clara County thank you
for your sacrifice, for all we are
collectively doing. Stay safe out there
and thank you very much for joining us.
JW: Thank you.
