Million cases of coronavirus and 63,000 people have died from covid19. Also, six bay area counties announced they have shelter in place orders extending through the end of this month. And Public Health officials are focused on ntt tracing as a second vital phase to contain the virus. Joining us is dr. Rutherford, a ucsf epidemiologist, advisor ton san scos department of Public Health, who is leading the program that started this week in san francisco. Think you fojoining us again. Thank you for having me. We will get to contact talk about breaking news today. The fda has authorized the emergency use of to reduce the mortality and duration of covid 19. It has been proven to do this and some studies although one study was negative. How quickly can be utilized . I think it is a great step forward. The fact that there was a negative study from china does not really bother me very much. A lot of power for people and it to really get the effects or understand exactly what the effects are. The effects of this dr are relatively modest i would say. This does not reduce mortality from 11 down to ze or anything but it is a start. K thout how the aids drugs started, first we had azt and th added other drugs and added other drugs and all of a least treatable disease. So i am quite encouraged by this and i think we are going to use it as fast as we can get our hands it. Ucsf have been using it a lot in Clinical Trials and it is a fairly straightforward switchover to start giving pait to tients for whom it is indicated. There was encouraging news out of oxford thweek saying that they are about to Start Testing a vaccine for the ro conavirus. Of course. For optimism . The more vaccines we have the better. But, understand we have to get through human trials and show that it works in humans, and we have to be able to know or be able to know that is safe to use in humans. So, i think Animal Studies are great. It is a striving forward. But, it is still a way off. Lets talk about our e perspect the bay area where it seems we have been flattening the curv if we are doing such a great job, why is it that a stayat home orders have been extended for anototr month when r parts of the United States are starting to open up again . We know something dont, which is that this is a deadly virus, and we have managed to avoid massive mortality in the area and we are going totake a measured approach to coming away from shelter in place, and i think that the governor and the boards and the mayors have done the right thing by extending it, and by slowly backing down from it. As you know, the new order tha lows for construction to ay start back up again. I think we will see incremental changes over time. And other things will get going again. And that is the right way to do it. Rather than flipping a switch and ying everybody can go do whatever they want. We moved into Contact Tracing. Tell me about the work being done right now in partnership between ucsf and the city of san francisco. The department of Public Health is a terrific Contact Tracing program that we have been able to supplement and adpe le to. We have been able to create training materials, a supervisory structure, so that we can bring in lots and lots of extra people to do Contact Tracing which is what you need to have to do it properly. The city has disease investigators who are highly skilled and trained, but it is a finite number of people. We have been able to augment it with people from ucsf and then from other city departkents he Assessors Office and the librarians. And then with a bunch of other volunteers, our own medic nursing students as well as retired nurses and physicians from around the city. So, that is a big core. We are running about 150 pele to dthis, which is what you need to do to make this, to rely give it the degree and level of attention it needs to haveo be successful. There has been limited Contact Tracing already. What is different about this program . Is it the first nd its in california . This has been going on for a couple of weeks and it is the most comprehensive one going on in california. I think other counties initialldid Contact Tracing as the first cases came in, but ours ithe one that is pushing the envelope here as we get deeper into the epidemic and as we start to come down on the curve. You ve to realize that life tracing in isolation in tact quarantine case findings will be the majotools that Public Health is going to use to control transmission and by controlling transmission, to keep tality low. When you say pushing the envelope, what does that me are the more people doing e testing . People from various backgrounds are being trained to do this work. It is great and we have had an out organ of support from across the city. We have ucsf emplees and City Employees from the non healthcare, and on social Service Agencies like the libraries in the city Assessors Office it we ha volunteers retired physicians and nurses from the medical and nursudents, all who are trying to pitch in and make this go. It is a lot of people. We ha trained a couple hundred people and we have 150 working on this. Are taking shifts to work on Contact Tracing. Is so this a huge effort. And in a comparable county they might have two or three people doing this. E the the numbers you need to successfully control this after we come away from shelter in place. I do want to ask you about testing. When you are on lastyou are talking about how the bay area is ramping up testing and you hope that we would be alfurther g than we are. Can you tell us where we are and how many more tests we need to get a place where you would feel comfortable . In san francisco, we are in good shape and wete have orary shortages of swabs, transport media, and reagents and ings, but we really have capaci here due tothe generosity of the bio hub and our graduate students from ucsf, where we are staffing a clinical laboratory. Boratory into a clinical search laboratory. We have extended that capacity to the other Health Departments in california if they needto use it. So, that is good. There are still, i think, a part of providto use cy on the testing. There is a kind of siege what we are trying to bust through now. You can tell people yeah, you can come get tested come down. We can accommodate you if you want to screen people at a nursing home for instance, whatever you would like you know, if you wa to scre people in a homeless shelter, we have the capacity. Dr. Rutherford, six months from now, how well our lives have changed in the bay ea from the coronavirus . Facemasks . Ll be were i think so, unless a vaccine comes along very quickly. That is only november. I think ifyou ask where will we be 12 mohs from now,i think we would be in the middle of a massive vaccination campaign. Right now, if i were to lish my crystal ball and look forward, i think what we may be worried about in the fall is a second wave of transmission as kids come back to school. E dynamics of that and i know a number of groups, not including hours and stanfords are going be lookinat that as well. Trying to really get a feel for whether schools are a good amplification factor for influencing. Thank yo much for being with us again. Thanks again, it was a pleasure. This week, the Small Business administrati accepting applications once again for the paycheck te ction program. Intended as a lifeline for non businesses and nonprofits struggling to survive. Congress approved 310 billion for the program after demand outstripped available e ney in first round of funding. Joining us now this owner of a tour company that received Company Funds through the program. And a Community Lender that has help more than 900 applicants get ppp loans. Thank you for joining us thank you. Rental, Beneficial State Bank tell us about the type of nk. Client you serve and about the type oppp client u see now, the average loan ask. Sure. So come Beneficial State Bank, we are a financial atstitution ocuses on the underserved. So, we have done this a long time. The ppp program is ve different though. We have seen over 2000 inquiries over the last few weeks for this program. You mentioned, we ve proved over 900 loans today. About one fourth of those are two women owned businesses or persons of color. Nonprofits, and about 87 of them are mission aligned. Typically these are Small Businesses and micro businesses. So, over two thir of them are two businesses with less than 20 employees. You have ted that the government guidance on this program has been piecemeal and ambiguous. Te us more about that experience. It has bent wellinned to be able to implement these policies and programs quickly because of the urge and dire need in our communities, but with any massivscale program there are challenges. Go so, i am g into the opening day. We did not have all the information to be able to actually set up pra loan ram that you would expect. Very fundamental questions were unanswered, such ld what sh the loan documents look like . How does this forgiveness process work . So, there are a number of factors that they had to update us every day and sometimes multiple times per day just to be able to give us the rection of how the program was intended to work and then while that is happening, we had tobeuild systems to able to handle this tidal wave of loan applications that were coming at us. The clock i understand for the last several weeks. You have run your business for nine years. You started. Tell us about your tour company and how it has been impacted by thcoronavirus . We were one of the First Companies to see the effects of coronavirus being at the intersection of both corporate events, travel, and food. So, my company is a Food Tour Company and we were doing corporate teambuilding and people entertaining clients. When Tech Companies started having work from home or were no longer flying employees in the for in weperson events, started to see the affects and our revenue dropped to zero. You applied for a ppp loan and got the amount you asked for. What does at money mefor your business . It is a lifeline. It isabsolutely you know, it can mean the difference between life or a death for business especially Small Businesses like ours so, it is 2. 5 months that allows tous have the cash flow to be creative and be able think about new Business Models as we continue. We have already pivoted to vulture oh culinary experiences offering virtual mytholy and king our bartenders and chefs online to offer experiences, but in the next phase we are gotog to need be creative in terms of reinventing our company and continuously finding ways to stay relevant. You did ve to lego some of the employees earlier. With the money are you bringing people back . Yes. Absolutely. It is absolutely intended to be able to rehire those employees and now that we have received e the funds we actively trying to bring more people back onto help the business and it has been incredible actually, our virtual business is going well. We need those employees to come back in order serve the ie ele that we now have. Randall, do you expect the money that has been allocated for small bunesses to go the intended recients . In the second round, we do hope that it does. There are challenges with the size of the program and the amount of reach it has. In our view there is not enough money to. Go arou so we are pushing. Today we expect to hit about 1000 applicants where we abwere to approve the loans. But, we had over 2000 inquiries. So, we are not done. We think that is representative of what we see with other banks. So, but what we are seeing is businesses. O e smaller the loans we had funded so far reflects paychecks for about 16,000 employees. We are a small bank, that is a big number. But, not big enough. So, where we are right now is you know, it is basically, looks like you are, there are not enough life observers, righ so, there has been an initial panic d rush for people to get their applications inproved he first round and we see that continuing. That is one of the interesting things about the program is that it has been a race to get your application in before the money runs out. What haskethat been for you . It is like sprinting a marathon. It was absolutely a lot of siness, with incredibly ll limited resources it up at applications into three different banks, and was able to receive it through one of them. Randall, i know you h done as much business in the last few weeks as the previous four years. Despite the wrinkles in the program, the ppp program, do you think this is the best way to get money into the hands of you say thershould have been ld a different way of doing this . I think itis a very effective way, but again, it is not enough. I dont think that the size the loan is enough. It is enough r businesses to have an option to restart, but not oucessarily have to get them to be able to get back on their feet and stay there. What should the amount be . I think 612 times their payroll for example. Maybe not all of that is forgivable. They have a chance to pay it ck over 10 years or something. But, really this is a very small window of forgiveness. So, sewhat we is that you go back to the life preserver analogy, folks are panicked and rushing to it. We give it to them and they eks of payroll that this will cover. I may not be able to hire my employees back. They may not be willing or able to come back. I might not have my clients come back. If this is all i get how am i going to restart my business . There holding on for dear life right now and terrified to jump into the water because know it might not be enough. They might not make it to the other side. Absolutely need more tools. Im ing to githe last word to you here, what advice would you have for policymakers who are looking to help ustruggling to survive . Inesses meamore resources. We are entering a new phase and i think that unemployment is loved to sethis come before i e even had to lay off employees. I think there uld have been more resources upfront, but now that we are in the position we are, lets try smto help l businesses who are the cultural blood of cities. Small businesses, not big businesses are the ones inwho will the arts and culture back into society. So, lets makesure they have the resources to still be creative. Randall leach with Beneficial State Bank, thank you for joining me. Fo thank you having us. We should te that kqed is among the local businesses and media organizations that have received a paycheck detection alone. In a few months the fight against the pandemic has re aled an alarming trut there are not enough masks, gowns, and goggles for Health Workers trying to save lives while avoiding infection. A sostanford bio engineer is engineering novel, quickly Scalable Solutions to this global problem. F in his lab, the shelf snorkel masks are transformed with an air filter to keep out virus particles. Unlike traditional respirors the protypes can be reused for up to 28 days and are easily disinfected. They also found inspiration in a cotton candy machine. Hacking and retooling it spto the facemask material quickly and cheaply. Joining me now is an associate professor of bioengineering at genius grant percipient. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for joining us lets talk about the facemask. It is an adaptati a snorkel mask. Tell us how styou got ted on the design. I was returning from a trip to france around march 10. Some of the work that i do is in Marine Biology and i was rope and thinking that we in would be hit with the same situation right here. And around that same time, in g arantine, actually sitt this room itself, i started realizing you are quarantined. That is correct. St i had returned from france and then also i ins not fe that great for some time and ellipse excuse me, but did you end up being did you end up having the coronavirus . Or, whatwas there another health iue . I had all the classic symptoms. I did get tested and negative. I spent the day at the hospital but it passed eventually. But, on the other hand, i think what i thought around that time, and being at the hongital and watchow many number of times they through the ppe away while they were takingcare of me, every single time they entered, every request i had th had to come in with fresh ppe. I started thinking about d reusable ppe in the context of what is called elastic respirators and we had to come up with a solution that depends on sometng already in th supply chain, because the shortage is a supplychain problem. That is whenwe started building on the idea of using fullface snorkel sks that could be adapted to the challenge. Combining it with viral filters that are already accessible to hospitals and are in their medical supplies toenable fullface ppe solution which other ppe is available. No could you show uswhat this . Looks li so, i think many of you who have been out snorkeling have actually used these types of fullface masks. The history goes back to some of the onppe solu and respirators themselves and one of the interesting bits here is this is the original one of my own masks. There is little couplehere, a space to be able to attach different components to it. This was the starting point. We partnered with Boston Scientific and several other manufacturing partners to build injection molded couplers, and partnerewith filter manufacturers that make these filters for anesthesia machines and respiratory circuits whic a eady a eapproved product. A combination of these three components, a filter, a a couple a snorkel turns it ot into a tive layer for the healthcare workers. You have been able to get these out to the fiel where have you sent them and what is the feedback . We shipped out the first ts f components for feedback all across the country. At this point we ve roughly shipped around 1600 of these units across with another 1000 a leaving in a or two. We a focused quite lot on new york and miami, but one of the ways that we are starting to get these out to people is to think about an equitable way of distributing these so we have a clinical form that anybody can ll out on new mask. Org and we compare it to the number of cases in starting to see. That we if you go on this website you can see a global map of course, we have International Partners as well, but for the cudient ribution it is primarily focused on the u. S. And, you know, the joy in this work has been interacting with clinicians that have been passionate both engaged with us technically, so this is not just our work. We have been able to essentially a group of individuals that come together and many of these clinicians had been thinking about these ideas ted we have stto bring scientific rigor to these i feel likeit has been a big family trying to put the s solutit in front of people. Lets move now to another device that you have been working on. A you started withcotton candy machine, and you are using it to spin n95 grade sks. Tell me w this works. Everybody knows at this point now with the n95 masks, that look like these, that we ve a shortage of them because of the multiple on the polymer that is used inside of it. It already implies that there is a process usthat is at largescale things like 3m a many other manufacturers and renderers that would make these polypropylene materials, and th has been a bottleneck. We anstarted thinking about it from a perspective of not just right here, but places around the world where this pandemic has not yet ached but will eventually reach where there are no resources or thinking about getting access to n95 material. I was talking to a doctor friend of mine in bangladesh, many hospitals have never even heard of n95, because it is not accessible. And we started asking ourselves, rather than centralizing facilities that manufacture these, could we think about a smallscale distributed manufacturing for sting and quality l cont th locally. Imagine thousands of factories springing up that are producing 10,000 high ade masks. That would be equal to 10 million per day. And the context of cotton candy as a kid i have enjoyed eating cotton candy. But, if you think about it, what cotton candy ltis, it the sugar ands been suspends it scientifically to generate fibers. We have demonstrated technically in thpaper we just posted out not only can we generate a material that has the capacity in equal answer to what the n95 material is, but y the breathabiluld be the same, so it is still a work in progress but it has promises whichas me excited. It ems fascinating and we will keep up with you. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you, thu for k having me. To find out more about the project go to new mask. Org. Yondcan always more coverage at kqed. Org tran01 newsroom. Yocan reach me through my social media handle. Thank you for joining us to stay safe. Captiong sponsored by wnet mitchell on this edition for sunday, may 3 cautious optimism as the country bins to ease lockdowns. The trwnickle mpact of covid19 on iowas farme. And dancing to a beat of their own. Next on pbs newshour weekend. Pbs newshour weekend is made possible by be ard and irene schwartz. Sue and Edgar Wachenheim iii. The cheryl and Philip Milstein family. Rosalind p. Walter. Barbara hope zuckerberg. Charles rosenblum. Try to live in the moment, to n
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