Transcripts For SFGTV Mayors Press Availability 20240713

Reporter first question is from jamie harp, associated press. To date, how many people experiencing homelessness have tested positive for covid19 . Thank you for that question. Im only aware of individuals who have tested positive at sites in the homelessness response system. Its a large system of care where people experiencing homelessness touch many different aspects. In the homeless responses to date, there are only three who have tested positive for covid. Those are the individuals that i discussed earlier. Reporter a followup to that where are they now . Those three individuals are in Good Condition and are either receiving medical care or at an isolation quarantine site operated by Human Services agency and staffed by the department of Public Health. Reporter thank you. Question from john king of the San Francisco chronicle. What is the status of the Vehicle Triage Center on geneva . Right. For those who are unfamiliar, we have a Pilot Project that allows people who live in their vehicles to come inside and receive access to our system as they work to end their homelessness. As of late last week, there were 25 vehicles on site, which is essentially full for us, and we have pivoted, as we pivoted our entire homelessness response system to be addressing that in the system of covid. People are receiving the education they need to follow all of the social distancing guidance. Reporter and a followup to that. How many r. V. S are in place and is the ramping up on schedule for the r. V. Sites . For future sites . John, i will assume that you mean your future question. So its on its on schedule for the pilot. Its working really, really well and we learn add tremendous amount and i was very pleased to speak at a hearing about it coordinated by supervisor safais office, feels like a long time ago now, honestly, and i think we need to look at everything Going Forward in the context of what the coronavirus will do to the citys response system to the citys budget as the mayor has discussed and so we have looked at every aspect of our system and what is planned for expansion and were continuing to evaluate that on a casebycase basis. Reporter final question from brian howie of San Francisco public press. Does the city plan to place into hotel rooms unhoused people who do not fwlong vulnerable populations or have not been exposed or tested positive coronavirus . That is a great question, brian. Thank you. For all of you who care so much about our unhoused and particularly our unsheltered and sheltered neighbors living in public settings, as i said, the priority for city is to move people out of hospitals and also out of congregate settings and people who are vulnerable to covid19 that are living on our streets. That is a significant portion of our unsheltered population and well be working to include them in hotel rooms first and then continue to evaluate the situation. Reporter and followup to that. Where will those currently in musconi, who are not post covid or tested negative, be moved . Those who are thank you for that question. I understand now. Those who are currently at musconi west who moved there as part of early shelter thinning as opposed to the adjustments that weve been making over the last couple of days, those individuals are being relocated to hotel rooms operated by the Human Services agency and staffed by the department of homelessness and Supportive Housing and our partners. Reporter thank you. Concludes our press conference. Hi everybody, we down here at the ep is a center which is our pop up space down here in San Francisco where we operate a store front to educate the policy from the home owner who has center which is our pop up space down here in San Francisco where we operate a store front to educate the policy from the home owner who has never done anything in the house to the most advanced structure engineers we have working around here. We were going to here from kelly to talk a little bit about San Francisco. How are you doing kelly . Very well, thank you for having us here. In front of us, we have a typical soft story building. When i see this, i think this is some of the most beautiful architecture our city has. A lot of people dont know these are problematic buildings. Why dont you tell us about some of the risks he we have in these buildings . Soft stories are vulnerable in past earthquakes and the northridge earthquake to this type of building and character of building. When we talk about the soft story, what were talking about is generally a ground story that has less wall or other pwraeugs to resist the lateral forces that might be imposed by the earthquake. So were looking for something that is particularly weak or soft in this ground story. Now, this is a wonderful example of what some of the residential buildings that are soft stories in San Francisco look like. And the 1 thing that i would point out here is that the upper force of this building have residential units. They have not only a fair amount of wall around the exterior of the building but they also have very extensive walls in the interior and bathrooms and bedrooms and corridors and everything that has a certificate amount of brazing yea its significantly less country srabl in those stories. Now very often, we get even a garage or storage or sometimes commercial occupancy in this ground story. That very often not only has a whole lot less perimeter wall but it often has little or no wall on the interior. That wall is the earthquake bracing and so he see very significant bracing in the top floor and very little on the bottom. When the earthquake comes and hits, it tries to push that ground floor over and theres very little that keeps it from moving and degrading and eventually paoerblly keeping it from a collapse occurring. So we know theyre vulnerable because of this ground story collapsing is this only a problem we see in sentence france . San francisco . No, this is certainly a national problem. More acute in western but more up to california, washington, moving out into other states. This kind of building exist and this kind of building is vulnerable. When youre involved with the community safety, this is a different way of thinking about these types of things. We had a Community Group of over 100 people involved and upper 1 of them. Tell us about how that conversation went. Why did we decide as a city or a community to start fixing these types of buildings . There were a lot of aspects that were considered well beyond just the engineering answer that these are vulnerable. And that effort brought in a lot of people from different aspects of the community that looked at the importance of these buildings to the Housing Stock and the possible ramifications of losing this houbgs in the case of an earthquake. The financial implications, the historic preserve vacation s implication as you mentioned, these are very handsome looking buildings that are importance to the tourist city ask which make San Francisco something that people are interested from outside in coming and visiting. Its such animation story when you think about the 10 years that the community spent talking about this seurb but we actually did something about it. Now we have an order unanimouses put in place to protect 100,000 residents in San Francisco and retrospective in 2020. So on behalf of residents and employees in San Francisco, we want to say thank you for the work youve done in pushing this forward and making people more aware of these issues. And it was a fantastic community effort. So in an earth quake, what happens in these kinds of buildings . What happens when an earthquake comes along is it moves the ground both horizontally and vertically. Its mostly the horizontal that were worried about. It starts moving the Building Back and forth and pushing on it. When you see im pushing on it, the upper stiff of the wall stay straight up but the lower floors, they actually collapse just like i did there. Luckily, we can put this building right back up where it came from so its a lot easier. Now kelly, obviously these arent real frame walls here but when you talk about buildings, what makes the property for stiff . The easiest and most costeffective type of bracing you can put in is either put in a brand new wall or to potentially go in and strengthen a wall thats already there where you dont need to have an opening is where you maybe have a garage door or access to commercial space, you might go to a steel frame or other types of bracing systems that provides the strength and stiff if necessary but at the same time, allows continued use of that area. But some combination of walls or frames or other tools that are in the tool kit that can bring the building up to the strength thats required in order to remove the vulnerability from the building so that when ground shaking comes, it in fact is a whole lot more resistant and less vulnerable. Ideally, this story down here would be made as strong and stiff as the floors above. If im a Property Owner, what is the first thing i should do . The first thing you should do is find professional that can come in and help you evaluate your building in order to, 1, figure out that indeed it does need to be retro fitted and 2, give you some idea of what that retro fit might look like. And third, evaluation and design to help you determine the retro fit requirement. Well kelly, i cant thank you enough for being here today. Thank you so much for your wealth of information on how we can take care of our soft story problem in San Francisco. And you the viewer, if you have any questions, please feel free to visit our website all right. Good afternoon, everyone. Im london breed, im mayor of San Francisco. And today we are joined by the department of Emergency Management, director carol as well as the department of Public Health director, dr. Grant coal fashion. Colfax. We are joined by police chief scott as well as our sheriff and the director of homelessness and housing services, abigail kahn. Today we want to provide a few updates of where we are and and some very serious challenges that we face. So far as of today, we have confirmed 797 cases and sadly 13 people have lost their lives due to the virus. The covid19 virus. And we had said all along that this would be very challenging, and in fact, in the past week or so, dr. Colfax and i continued to make it clear that it is of course important to stay at home as much as possible. Because the fact is the worst is yet to come. And today, unfortunately, we have a situation that we knew could potentially happen in one of our congregate living settings. An outbreak occurred at msc south, one of our shelters. And the real challenging situation that we know could have been worse will be a little bit better because of the work that we were preparing to do in order to make sure that we were able to respond quickly. Today we want to announce that we have identified 70 people, 68 members of the shelter as well as two Staff Members who tested positive for covid19. This is one of the larger shelters in San Francisco with on any given night, over 340 people that are located in that shelter. Part of acquiring hotel rooms and vending out our shelters has truly helped in this particular case because there were only 100 residents in the shelter last night which provided us the flexibility to turn this from a shelter to a medical facility. So dr. Colfax will talk more about what that means but the fact is we were on top of it. We know that there are a number of people who tested positive. And we are going to reroute our medical Health Experts and people, our nurses and other Health Support to this facility to help manage and maintain and support the people who tested positive. The reason why we are able to act fast is number one, we had hotel rooms available. And we had plans to staff up hotel rooms as rapidly as we possibly can in case an outbreak occurs. But number two, because so many of you are staying at home, our hospitals are not as overwhelmed as they could be, giving us the flexibility to handle an outbreak of this nature. We know that from the very, very beginning, congregate living settings like our shelters, like laguna hospital, like our single room occupancy hotels, we knew those had the potential of being hot spots. And so we have been preparing for that. We have been preparing for that by acquiring a number of hotel rooms, making sure that we have the Supportive Service necessary, making sure that we can keep the people that we are asking to work at these hotels safe, making sure that we can see people, that we can clean the rooms, that we can do the laundry, that we can do all that it takes to manage the situation in any place that we acquire under the new orders that weve put forward to obtain as many hotel rooms as possible. So although the news of this outbreak was definitely very troubling, the fact is i am so grateful and proud of this hardworking city workforce, the department of Public Health to the department of Human Services to the department of housing and home homeless services, the folks who work for these departments who are showing up, putting their lives on the line and working every single day with the nonprofit providers who help to manage these hotel rooms, they are the ones who are on the front lines, trying to make sure that they not only protect themselves, but they want to make sure that they protect others. And so we were prepared for this. We are managing the situation. And dr. Colfax will provide more information as to what is happening at this particular facility and where we go from here. I want to also talk a little bit about another very troubling situation that we know exists and because so many people are being asked to shelter at home, we know that, sadly, some people who are sheltering at home may not be in safe environments. We know that Domestic Violence doesnt stop because of a pandemic. And it is important that we continue to provide support, we continue to provide services, so that we can help the people who we know need it the most. And i know that so many Domestic Violence survivors out there are probably thinking about what we are doing as a city to protect others who have not been able to escape those very challenging situations. And i am grateful to ending Domestic Abuse and so many of the folks who work tirelessly on helping to end Domestic Violence and the work they have continued to do. They have sadly seen an uptick in the calls that they receive for help, for assistance, for their shelters. And as a result, we teamed up with the District Attorney and veritas, a Property Owner in San Francisco, to provide 20 new units that are fully furnished so that when we need to get people out of a situation, we can move quickly. So i want to thank veritas, and i want to thank our District Attorney for working with us to recognize this very serious issue and reacting quickly to provide resources in addition to the shelters and the other support that we have been able to work with nonprofit providers to provide to families who are experiencing Domestic Violence. But we know its not just about making sure we have places for people to stay. If you are in a situation at home, and you cant pick up the phone and call 911, what do you do . Its hard enough feeling like you are trapped and you cant escape. And what we have been able to do here in San Francisco, and i am so, again, grateful to the department of Emergency Management and dedicated people who work for the city who have been able to have our system and our city so if you text 911 and say help or if you are able to say what the situation is and you are in trouble or what have you, you will receive a response. And i think this is an incredible tool, because, again, we know that if theres an attack or if there is something going on, and you cant necessarily talk out loud or what have you, it is definitely difficult in order to reach out for help. So to anyone who might be hearingimpaired or others in our communities who are struggling and may be attacked or may need 911, now here in San Francisco, the option to text 911 is available. And so especially at such a really challenging time for all of us, we know that having access to support to safety is critical to being able to survive this pandemic. And so, again, thank you so much to carol and the department of Emergency Management. I also want to say to those who are looking for help and support, we are here for you, you are not alone. And we will do everything we can to support and protect you during this pandemic. If you need help or you need assistance, please call or text 911. If you need someone to talk to or you are looking for resources, you can call 311 and we can direct you to some Services Including the national Domestic Violence hotline as well as la casa, amazing organizations that continue to uplift and help those who are not only in Domestic Violence situations but also survivors. So thank you so much for your work on helping those who are struggling during this pandemic. We also want to talk a little bit about whats happening with our restaurants here in the city. Some of you during, when we werent in the pandemic, many people, including myself, used a lot of apps to get food delivered. And after we had to unfortunately close restaurants, and basically not allow them to have inhouse dining, we still allowed pickup and delivery and some restaurants chose to close because sadly, it was too expensive to even have that level of service. And others who are struggling even now with their delivery and pickup service, theyre still in business, but the fees in some cases very outrageous fees that are charged to them, basically in some cases may not allow for them to continue with their Delivery Services because they are not even breaking even in some cases. And so unfortunately with the Delivery Services there is a fee thats assessed. Sometimes theres free delivery as you see on the apps but the restaurant is still charged a specific fee as it relates to the Delivery Service which usually happens with a third party. And we have seen those fees basically go up and down. The restaurants have experienced it. And it has been hard. They want to remain open for all of you. They want to be available for all of you but they are struggling because the delivery costs are making it unsustainable. So thats why after working with the Golden Gate Restaurant Association and carefully evaluating the situation, ive decided to execute an emergency ordinance to cap the amount of fees that a third party can charge to restaurants for Delivery Services at 15 . And what this will do is to make sure that our restaurants are protected, because we know during this pandemic, which we are not certain as to how long it will last, there are going to be a lot of restaurants who may not come back from this. And we want to make sure that when we identify a situation thats problematic, we address the situation and the goal here is to address the situation with putting a cap on the amount of the percentage of which the Third Party Delivery entities could charge restaurants for Delivery Service. And i want to thank the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, and i also want to thank supervisors ahsha safai and aaron peskin for working with my office oncoming up with something that would be fair and more helpful to our restaurant community. So i also want to take this opportunity to talk about just, again, the importance of staying at home. Now, i know, having these conversations here every time theres a press conference, it reminds me of my grandmother and oftentimes because, you know, sometimes i was a difficult kid to discipline, and my grandmother would say to me over and over again, no, you cant have that, no, you cant have that or no, you cant go outside, no, you cant go outside. And i would say please, mama, please can i go outside . And my grandmother would just say no, no, no, for whatever reason. And she had to tell me that over and over again sometimes. And eventually i gave up or she gave up, who knows. But the fact is youre hearing this beating drum from me, from so many other people. Were asking you to stay inside, to stay inside, to stay inside. And i know that its hard. I know that so many of you are getting restless and getting frustrated and wondering when it would come to an end. And really what difference it does make. And let me just go back to what i said earlier about our shelter system. The fact is because so many of you are social socially distancing yourself from one another, whats happening is you are not getting infected, you are not showing up at our hospitals. We have seen a slight reduction in the number of people who are occupying our beds. And even though we know the numbers will continue to go up, even though we know this outbreak at one of our shelters has been challenging, the fact is because of what you are doing, we are able to move quickly to address an outbreak. Because of what you are doing, we are able to redeploy medical Health Professionals to one of our Shelter Systems in order to provide the resources necessary to take care of those 70 people that have been infected, because you are staying at home, you are making a difference. And when you look at other places all over the world, im sure youve seen some of the videos of the hospitals in new york, youve seen the videos of some of the hospitals in italy. Youve seen some of the videos of people who cant bury their family members. To think about it. Because you are following the order, you are making a difference for others in this city. So i just want to ask you, again, because we know that the weather is going to be really nice this weekend. We know that its so tempting, especially because its also easter, today is good friday, its easter, its its a very spiritual time for so many people who are religious. And folks are probably thinking just this one time, i miss my friends, i miss my family members. I want to have dinner together. I just want to sit down and enjoy their company. And as hard as it is to be isolated in your home, im going to ask just one more time that you dont tempt yourself, you dont do it this one time. Because that one time could be problematic. I saw on the news this past week a family that got together for Birthday Party for one of their family members and now every one of them are infected. They dont know how, they dont know where it came from, but the fact is they are all infected. We all heard about the choir in washington state. They practiced social distancing at choir rehearsal. The order was already in place there, 45 members were infected and two died. And so as hard as it is to stay at home, to continue life in a world thats not normal for us, its necessary. It does make a difference. It does save lives. And some of the things that you can continue to do is call people, you can zoom call with folks if you have that level of technology. And you can just reach out and check on folks. I also talked about the note i got from a neighbor with their email and their phone number, asking if i needed any errands to be run or just someone to talk to. Thats going to be critical to getting through this is how and social distancing is probably not the best term developed to talk about this. Its really about physically distancing ourselves of my its important that we physically distance ourselves but we continue to engage with one another. We continue to reach out to one another for help, for support, or what have you. So as we go into the weekend, we are going to be watching closely and monitoring our parks. We are going to be monitoring various locations where we know large groups of people gather. And i hope that we wont be forced to close any parks or make any adjustments because people are not following the order. We want you to get fresh air, we want you to get outdoor exercise in whatever way you feel is appropriate. We want you to walk your dog. We want you to be able to do some of the basic things of Grocery Shopping and what have you. But as you do those errands, make sure that you keep your distance from others that are not a part of your household. Make sure that after you are done, you go home. Make sure that youre not driving to locations that arent near where you live because that creates a bigger problem than what we want to happen in our city. And then it forces us to make adjustments in order to keep you safe. And i want people to have the ability to just go outside and get some fresh air and because so many of you have cooperated with this order, we are here. And as i said, as we go into easter sunday, i want to again thank folks from the interfaith counsel, michael was here on wednesday, and i continue to be grateful for your prayers and your support during this difficult time. So many people who are spiritual are really not only struggling themselves but so many are reaching out and praying for others and this is definitely a time to just remind us of how challenging it has been with so many folks who are part of our community, but also the acts of kindness, the acts of love, the things that people in the city have continued to do to just really amaze me and others has been truly tremendous. And we want to thank you all again for just being good neighbors, being good citizens of the city, continuing to put out positive messages and hope and inspirations. We need it now more than ever. And yes, we are in this together. Which is why we will get through this together. And with that, i would like to take this opportunity to introduce the director of the department of Public Health, dr. Good afternoon. Im dr. Grant colfax, director of health for the city of San Francisco. Thank you, mayor breed. I would like to start by thanking everyone in San Francisco for your cooperation, your sacrifices, and your community spirit. As we join together, we are helping fight the spread of the coronavirus. When you stay home, when you keep 6 feet apart, when you wash your hands and when you cover your nose and mouth when you cough, you are literally saving lives every day. Today i would like to update san franciscans on a few developments in our ongoing work to respond to the coronavirus and to protect our community. Todays data tracker shows there are 797 San Francisco residents with confirmed cases of coronavirus. Sadly, 13 san franciscans have died of the disease. My condolences to their families and loved ones. There are 88 patients reported in the hospitals across San Francisco with coronavirus and approximately onethird of those are in the intensive care unit. Our hospitalization numbers had been holding relatively steady over the past few days, which is positive and good news. But, and i emphasize, but, that number could change at any time. Please stay at home and do your part to keep these numbers steady. At this time, our San Francisco Hospital System has enough beds to care for all of our current coronavirus patients as well as patients who are hospitalized for other reasons. We continue to make progress expanding hospital bed capacity for an expected surge of coronavirus patients. The worst is still yet to come. And sadly, as the mayor mentioned, we have troubling news to report with regard to an outbreak. Tomorrows case of coronavirus, case numbers of coronavirus, will be significantly higher once we factor in new test results from the msc south shelter. On sunday, we confirmed that two guests at msc south, San Franciscos largest homeless shelter, had tested positive for covid19 and were moved into Isolation Hotels where they are in Good Condition. Those first steps, my Department Took immediate action to contact investigations and test people who were close contacts showing symptoms or atrisk exposure. As the test results started to come back and we saw these t extent of the spread, we moved on wednesday to test all guests and staff at the shelter. On wednesday, there were five positive cases at msc south. Today, there are 70. There are currently 71 test results that are negative and 3 results are still pending. We have always known that from the data that this virus can take off quickly. And we are prepared to provide aggressive responses, especially in congress regatt settings in congregate settings. From the beginning, a prioritized population. Unfortunately, the moment is now upon us. I would like to assure san franciscans that this outbreak does not mean there is significantly greater risk to the general public. However, it is a very serious matter. Though not expected, we are very concerned about the health of the people at msc south. Many of them have Chronic Health conditions and are vulnerable to getting very sick or even dying from coronavirus. We are doing everything we can for them and to reduce the size of the outbreak. We have taken and will continue to take aggressive action to prevent health and safety. Every step of the way, the department of Public Health has been working closely with the department of homelessness and Supportive Housing and with the operator of msc south to follow our congress congregate setting protocols and identify the contacts of the people who tested positive. These efforts continue and are intensifying as the situation changes. Currently, my department is conducting a mass testing strategy at msc south, testing all guests and staff for covid19, whether they are showing symptoms or not. Again, as of this morning, dph tested 144 guests and staff. Of these, 68 guests and 2 staff have tested positive for covid19. At this point, none of these people are seriously ill. One former guest of the shelter is in the hospital. We are now converting msc south into a medical facility to care for people who are living with coronavirus. This new Recovery Center will be staffed by the department of Public Health, nurses and doctors, experts, who will provide care, monitor patients and arrange transport to hospitals if their conditions worsen. The solution has been part of our Emergency Planning scenarios from the beginning. And its the best one to preserve the health and safety of the shelter community. It will reduce transports and patients with a dedicated stuff of Healthcare Professionals staff of Healthcare Professionals who are attend their needs. Staff members who have tested positive are being offered places in Isolation Hotels if they do not have a safe alternative in their own homes. This offering of hotel rooms will continue for staff who test positive at this and other shelters across the city. Other guests are being moved out to hotels as well. On a case by case basis, depending on the guest condition and exposure, we are working with our Partner Agencies to place each person in an appropriate setting, whether its in isolation or quarantine site or a shelter in place hotel. This is a 24hour round the clock operation and the situation and numbers are changing. Department of homelessness and Supportive Housing and the Human Service agency are leading the effort to move guests out of msc south while the department of Public Health will continue to focus on providing excellence, experts, medical care, testing and Contact Tracing. Now i would like to take a few minutes to talk about equity, specifically Health Equity and how it relates to the coronavirus pandemic. As we prepare our hospitals and our City Healthcare system to care for former patients, we are closely examining neighborhoods and Community Members that may need more access to care in this rapidlychanging and evolving situation. That is one of the reasons why we opened our first field care clinic this week in the bayview. We have also opened screening and testing sites in the Castro Mission neighborhood and the zuckerberg General Hospital in the heart of the mission and potrero hill. We know we know that the Health Disparities and economic inequalities in our community are only made worse, unfortunately, only made worse by this pandemic. Global and National Data are already showing the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus on communities of color. In San Francisco, we are seeing and expect to continue to see these inequities as well. Although our current case data doesnt reflect major disparities yet, that data are also incomplete. We do not receive ethnic or race information for about a third of the test results that are reported to us. However, we have seen situations in the Latinx Community where people who live in multifamily or multigenerational homes are unable to self isolate. We have seen people in those households who must leave home to work and who have to make several trips a week for other essential supplies in small amounts due to their income stream. People in such circumstances are going to be more at risk. And we are being responsive to those needs to help mitigate those risks. We have been working with leaders in the Latinx Community to ensure that people have the information they need, that they are aware of the available resources that San Francisco is a sanctuary city where everyone will receive the best care possible regardless of immigration status. And that people continue to receive outreach in their own language in a culturallyappropriate way. Meeting our citys equity efforts, director davis of the San Francisco human rights commission, has established Community Roundtable weekly meetings. The roundtable is a Dynamic Group of Community Stakeholders who elevate concerns about the citys response and communication with communities of color, lowincome people and the lgbtqi community, specifically around covid19. We would like to thank director davis for her leadership. With this corroboration, we can and are taking action on issues based on Community Input and practices. Some of these issues include food insecurity, discrimination, appropriate culturallyfocused outreach, Financial Resources and improved communication and support. San francisco is also one of the few counties in the country that has an equity officer embedded in its Emergency Operations centerrer. The goal of this team is to mitigate inequity it is in the citywide response to coronavirus for our communities of concern including latinx, black africanamerican, asianpacific islander and lgbtqi communities. We will continue to listen to community partners, improve our response and continue to use data to guide decisions. We, i, am committed to the health and wellbeing of San Franciscos and doing everything we can to support health and full recovery for all communities in our city during and after this pandemic. Now i would like to provide a brief update on the outbreak at laguna honda hospital and the steps we are taking to protect the health of residents and staff. We have 17 confirmed cases of coronavirus at honda hospital, 13 of the confirmed cases are among staff and four are among residents. Of the staff, ten have been in patient care positions and three have not. All four positive resident cases are in the south five neighborhood. Testing of that neighborhood is currently complete. We have also completed testing for south residents, and im happy to say at this time we have not detected an additional case. Overall, to date, 301 honda hospital staff have been tested, either by the Health Department or by their own provider and 208 residents have been tested. As part of our ongoing response, we continue to test staff and patients throughout the hospital that had been identified as being exposed to contact investigation or have other risk factors, including showing symptoms of the virus. Unfortunately, we do expect more positive cases. But it is crucial that we know the facts so that we can continue to take evidencebased informed action to preserve the health and mitigate the spread of the virus in the institution. We continue to work with the cdc experts on the ground to reinforce and inform our aggressive response. As we continue to fight the coronavirus pandemic, i would like to remind you that our Top Priorities continue to be reducing the spread of the virus in the community, flattening the curve through the physical distancing that we are continuing to enforce and ask you to do, protecting vulnerable populations, healthcare workers and First Responders, preparing our Healthcare System for the expected surge of hospital patients and expanding testing capabilities. In all of this work, we seek to continually do better as we incorporate the latest science, data and facts into actions and recommendations. We are working quickly to integrate new information all the time and adjust our recommendations accordingly so that we are providing the very best most up to date advice to you to the community that we can. Thank you. And director of homelessness and Supportive Housing will now provide remarks. Hello. The city and our nonprofit partners are battling two simultaneous health emergencies. The ongoing crisis with homelessness and the compounding issue of covid19 pandemic. This has taught us time and time again that everyones health is intertwined, the homeless and the housed. Protecting the health of people experiencing homelessness is essential to safeguard their health and all of our health. Therefore we must focus not only on improving the health and safety of our shelters and programs but also moving people to safety as quickly as possible. When people do not have homes to reside in and reside instead in Public Places and congress congregate shelters, they have less access to healthcare. People who are homeless and unsheltered are far more likely to have Underlying Health conditions. The city has taken many proactive steps to improve the health and safety of people experiencing homelessness. Today i want to focus as dr. Colfax did on msc south. Thank you to our staff at hsh provider st. Vincent depaul and all our City Partners who under the mayors leadership have wrapped their arms around this site its guests and its staff. For the last many days, we have been working on this, both preventively and since we had our first positive test. This is a large shelter, with 340bed capacity and a 70person dropin center. Due to our early and Rapid Actions to limit the spread of covid by pausing shelter intakes, we reduced the census to approximately 175 people. Before and since our first positive test at this site, we have moved over 70 people out and now have a census of approximately 100. Our partner staff are focused on the site 24 7. As you have heard it is now a medical shelter. We are also moving Vulnerable People from other sites rapidly and have been for the past several days and ahead of positive tests. We are deploying the plan we have created, and while this virus is dangerous, we are working urgently and taking all the necessary steps. I also want to provide you an update on our first covid positive test family shelter. This one is operated by hamilton families. The same plan that has been in place for Division Circle and for msc south is in effect with this site. The individual who has the positive test is in Good Condition and is off site already. Our thoughts are with Division Circle msc south and hamilton and our gratitude is with every san franciscan today. Thank you. Good afternoon. I want to start by first thanking mayor breed, her team, the team of our District Attorney bodine and Mary Ellen Carol and her team at the Department Department of Emergency Management for allowing us to have the resources to help our Domestic Violence victims. We think the text 911 will be a game changer and will enhance Public Safety in our city. So i want to thank and and applaud the mayor and director carol and our District Attorney for making that happen. To be able to provide the lifeline for those who are distressed but cant call 911. Often people who arent in a safe place cant call 911 so this resource is a game changer. Our citys Public Safety dispatcher at the department of Emergency Management do a fantastic job every day. And they do the dispatch of our Police Officers to particularly Domestic Violence calls are critical. Those situations can be time is of the essence. So we are very thankful for them and for the partnership. We also want to thank the people who made this come together, the text 911 service will provide an important way for people to reach out for help. And it will help us to effectively respond to those calls for help. So whether you use text 911 or call directly, we want you to know our city Emergency Responders will be there for you and be ready to respond. I want to emphasize, though, that calling 911 is always the best course of action if it is safe for you to do so. If you cant, you can use the new text 911 feature. Next i want to talk about enforcement over the easter weekend and resen forcement, let me resident enforcement. Let me frame that in the context of compliance. As the mayor and doctor said that by and large, san franciscans are complying with our Public Health orders and thats really good news but we need to keep going. We need to keep in. We are not out of the woods yet. Please listen to the Public Health officials. We need to keep this going. So what you can expect to see from the San Francisco police department, you will see us out. You will see us in the parks with park rangers. You will see us in the business corridors and your residential communities. And we are going to continue to spread the message of social distancing. And as i said in other conferences, news conferences, for those that have been warned, we are making a record so we will not warn you twice. Today we have had notifications and a number of those have been nonessential businesses that have been, we make sure those businesses stay closed when they are supposed to be closed. We have not had an issue with businesses reopening. We are still issuing citations we have not issued any citations since the first two. I want to reemphasize what mayor breed said, please, this is going to be an easter weekend where we are used to family gatherings, attending religious services, being around people, going to restaurants and really socializing. We know its hard. And this is a change for all of us, believe me. But we need to adhere to the Public Health orders. This is a matter of life and death. So please comply and lets all make San Francisco safe. As the mayor said a number of our religious organizations supported this effort. Michael pompas from the interfaith counsel is very supportive. I know this weekend is a holiday, and thats difficult for people, but again, the religious organizations are asking that everybody comply. Shelter in place throughout this weekend. We are still seeing a downward trend. We have had some burglaries and we are going to be in those areas to make sure that our Business Owners are safe. We ask you to all 911 if you see crimes occurring, particularly violent crimes. You can also call or utilize our website to file police reports. We are taking reports. We have a call center. Do not let people of this nature into your homes. Somebody asks to come into your home to inspect or give away masks, they are not legitimate, we are not doing residential inspections to peoples houses. You will see our Disaster Service workers passing out fliers and information pamphlets but they are not going to anybodys home so if you see that happen, please call 911 because it probably is a scam. Information is key and we want to make sure that the public is informed. That distribution of information does not include us asking to come into your home. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. So for those people that are offering something that sounds too good to be true, please get a second opinion, investigate it before you act. Dont carry large sums of money. We have seen a couple of Home Invasion robberies. Please dont have large sums of money in your house. We ask that you use your Financial Institutions for that. And dont open your doors to people that you dont know. Its as simple as that. Use simple, basic safety precautions to keep yourself safe. The last thing we need is for people with all the anxiety of this Public Health pandemic to be worried about their safety. So use good, sound Safety Practices and good common sense and lock your doors for people you dont know and keep your doors locked. With that i ask that you please help us this weekend, help yourselves, keep your family safe by complying with the stay at home orders and social distancing requirements and have a happy and great easter weekend. Thank you. Dr. Grant colfax. Good afternoon. The city considered closing some residential streets off to traffic in order to provide more safety and social distancing for residents who like to go out to walk, jog and bike. Its very important that we keep physically distancing from each other. And while we understand, and i wont encourage people to get out and exercise i will encourage people to get out and exercise and get fresh rare, we want to make sure that crowds do not congregate those areas. As the mayor said, over the weekend, its very important that people respect and have no plans but to stay in quarantine. Question from tan with nbc bay area. Can the bay area afford to send resources such as doctors to other areas such as new york to help . How quickly could we get resources back if we have a surge of cases . I cant speak for the institutions that are sending aid there. As a provider myself, i respect the need for them to do that. And i certainly would also respect if the situation worsens here that we would be able to respond to the cases we have here and keep the resources in San Francisco. We have an ongoing need for testing supplies in order to increase our testing capacity. We have a great need for personal protective equipment to protect our Health Workers and First Responders. Those are dire shortages in San Francisco across the country. So we need to ensure that we are meeting our local needs as well as when we have the ability to help our colleagues who are struggling with the pandemic in certain regions across the country. Another question from nby bay area. N nbc bay area. Are the rest of the staff and guests there being [off mic] is the department of Public Health tracking the cases in hotels. The cases we know about are really through contract investigations. So that person either tested positive or we find a case that was tested as a result of a contact of another case. So we will be recording those data and ensuring the data if and when they are accurate. A followup to that, how is department of Public Health handling any positive cases at sros in terms of Contact Tracing and isolating vulnerable residents . We are aggressively Contact Tracing residents in sros and we are ensuring that if necessary they are providing with hotel rooms to self isolate and protect themselves and their families and the rest of the members in that sro. A question from janey at associated press. Are the 70 people who tested positive at msc south connected to the two people who tested positive on sunday . Tested positive on sunday i need a clarification, what two people . I believe what shes trying to ask is we announced at some point last week that the original two cases at msc south are these cases related . Yeah, i think its i really i certainly cant say affirmatively that those two cases are directly related to all the remaining cases that we detected. The point is from a Public Health perspective when we assess the situation, when we look at the patterns of engagement and interaction at the shelter, and as we tested more people, it became clear that the outbreak was widespread, and thats why we are testing everybody in the shelter and made the decision to test everybody in the shelter at the time as well as staff to ensure that the people knew their status, that we can monitor them appropriately, house them and ensure that they get the best medical care possible as well as taking aggressive steps to protect other people from potential infection. A followup to that question, which i hope im clarifying correctly. The two we previously talked about, we understand those folks were moved out of shelter. The remaining 68 guests, where are they now . So, again, its a rapidlyevolving situation and as we talked about, the msc shelter is now going to become a covid19 Recovery Center. So many of the people who are of the guests who tested positive at south will be in that shelter being taken care of by expert medical professionals, our excellent doctors, nurses, and social workers from the department of Public Health with support from the department of department of homelessness and Supportive Housing as well as the Human Service agency staff. Question from john king of the San Francisco chronicle. Will testing now be done on all of the residents in all shelters given the number s found at south . We are again looking at the evidence and Contact Tracing cases and shelters and will make a decision on how many people need to be tested depending specifically on the case and really using Christian Science monitor in terms of how best really using science in terms of how best to trace and when Contact Tracing is needed a followup question to that from mr. King. Given the turnover at shelters from night tonight, how are you finding people to test if they are no longer sleeping at the shelter . So, again, we are working with the experts on that shelter system. Our colleagues at the department of homelessness and Supportive Housing are colleagues at the Human Services agency, as you know, they run the shelters and the support systems for those shelter across the city along with our contact investigation teams. We are literally going through, case by case contact by contact to take sure that we are doing everything we can to find people who are at high risk to ensure people who are at high risk for bad outcomes are placed in hotels and to ensure people who had a high risk exposure for covid19 are receiving testing. The final question for you from Wilson Walker at kpix. With the outbreak in the shelter does that give you any added concern that you also have spread among the unsheltered population on the street as well . Well, i think really if you take if you think about where we started when we were when we started talking about this pandemic in february i always said that vulnerable populations were most potentially affected by coronavirus and would unfortunately suffer the greatest consequences based on data from interNational Data sources, china, italy. We have seen whats happened unfortunately in new york. Im very concerned when we talk about flattening the curve and when we talk about our current hospital capacity, i am very concerned about the spread of coronavirus in the population experiences homelessness. Unfortunately we know this population suffers from greatest Health Disparities without a pandemic, higher rates of chronic respiratory diseases, higher flu rates, higher rates of hospitalization. Unfortunately, this pandemic will only put those inequities, those disparities in greater relief which is why my department is working as hashed as we can with Key Community partners, other key departments to ensure that people are getting the testing they need, the care they need, and with hsa and with hsh, that people who are at greatest vulnerable from bad, bad outcomes from this business are placed in hotel rooms to protect them and our community. One final question from the San Francisco examiner. To we know how many of those 70 people testing positive at msc have had underlying conditions or in the age range to be more vulnerable . I do not have those numbers yet but certainly some of them have those chronic conditions and we are looking through those numbers right now. I want to emphasize that we are deploying our team of medical experts to ensure that people who have tested positive, whether or not they have a chronic condition, are getting the best care possible and certainly if need n need of greater levels of care they will be transported to the appropriate medical facility. Thank you dr. Colfax. The next questions are for abigail stewartkahn. A twopart question and a followup from nbc bay area. Inside city shelters are Homeless People now being sheltered in a way that allows for safe social distancing . If shelters need to be thinned out to achieve that, when do you expect that to be complete . Days, weeks, months . Thank you. Just to clarify, so we are following guidance from the federal state and local authorities around creating six feet of distance, physical distancing in our shelters. And as the journalists notes, this is very difficult to accomplish. Our shelters are very close and compact, and they vary significantly from site to site. We just know that that puts these folks at more risk. We began implementing creative physical distancing at all of our sites several weeks ago. And i really want to thank our providers who found space where there was no space to make this possible, even before we were able to start moving people out of sites. We are well on our way to reaching what i am calling shelter equilibrium which involves moving the most vulnerable individuals out into hotels. And we should be able to accomplish that very shortly. A followup, what is the total amount the city has spent so far on hotel rooms for the homeless and what is the range of the daily Hotel Room Rates . Thank you. So i will take this question on behalf of director ror, the director of Human Services agency. As we have articulated at past press conferences, under an emergency, Human Services agency is responsible for mass care and shelter so im happy to provide this response on behalf of the Human Services agency. So the numbers that have been shared with me are that for the first three months of all of the hotels that have been brought online and under contract by the Human Services agency, is a total cost of approximately 35 million. Much of this is reimbursable by fema and other sources of information. And i think there was another question in there. I apologize. I think thats it. There is a related question from robert of nbc bay area about those hotel rooms. What is the current number of leased rooms for unsheltered people and how many have checked in . Thank you, robert. So ill give all the hotel numbers briefly because i think its important to understand the scale and magnitude of this challenge. Again, these are numbers from the Human Services agency not from my department. The hotel rooms for all priority populations that are under contract right now is 1,892. Approximately 880 are for First Responders and approximately 1,012 of these are for vulnerable populations as we have articulated in the past. Thank you. And another question from robert compos of nbc bay area. To date, how many Homeless People from tested positive with the coronavirus and what is their condition . Thank you for that question and for your care for our unhoused neighbors. The department of Public Health is not analyzing and separating their data in that way in particular. And so we may have other we likely have other individuals who are experiencing homelessness and are also covid positive but are at isolation and quarantine rooms. We know the majority of people are either from sros, semi congregate sites or shelters or the unsheltered population. What we know now is what we cant speak to is who is positive in our shelter sites and that is one at Division Circle, one at hamilton and the 70 that have been discussed today at msc south. Thank you. Question from kerry. Is there an effort to move unhoused residents off crowded sidewalks, especially in the tenderloin, into public open spaces that are currently underutilized . Yes. Thank you for that. So immediately at the beginning of this pandemic, and ill speak here on behalf of the department of Emergency Management, which oversees our unsheltered operations but we are in partnership with them. So immediately at the beginning of this epidemic we know our unhoused neighbors are vulnerable. So all removals of tents, what people refer to as encampment resolutions were paused and the operation went into a mode of educating and providing services. As things back to shut down, access to restrooms and food, it became the job of our outpreach providers to outreach providers to be the voice of education, knowledge and linkage for people who are unsheltered and experiencing homelessness. We know that more people have become unsheltered because of our need to pause shelter intakes. This is a significant and important population for us. What we want to do critically and urgently is to move the vulnerable individuals experiencing unsheltered homelessness into hotels and we will get to work on that and we are working on that as we speak and we are also working on continuing to remind people will social and physical distancing while unsheltered and looking at and starting to explore possibilities for safe places to be. More to sharon that in the coming days. Final question from kat of kcbs. You have talked about the group of unsheltered people who will be prioritized when it comes to moving to hotel rooms. Will that change now because of the news of the outbreak and will more people be moved quickly into hotel rooms . Thank you for that question. I said from the beginning that we are very concerned with individuals living in congregate living. We are talking about thousands of people. And if you include sros we are talking about tens of thousands of people. So this is a task, moving these individuals into shelters is a task that has never before faced our city in the scale and magnitude. So i want to use this opportunity to talk a little bit about what it takes to take on this massive undertaking. So first Human Services agency has secured sites and rooms, youve heard about the scale they have been able to reach there. For each site, the city and nonprofit staffing has to staff up immediately, visit the site, understand the site, staff enough people, everything from monitoring to security to medical to counselors to all of the supplies that need to be onsite, thinking about meals and hygiene, thinking about things like accessibility for people in wheelchairs and with other accessibility concerns. We have to do a screening for vulnerable vulnerability to understand who should be moving in when we arent sure. We have to do an assessment of ability to self care. What that looks like is if you cant self care, you are still going to come inside but we need more care wrapped around you. We have to work on transportation which has proven challenging because of the physical and social distancing required. So the buses have to be big with very few people in them. We have talked about meals and hygiene kits. We have to look at things like individuals with Substance Use issues and we have to look to support people with Mental Health concerns in a Harm Reduction environment. And then we have to think about what comes after this, where do people step down when they are able to step down to a lower level of care and what do we do after we move through this pandemic . All these things have to happen for every site to come online so its really a massive undertaking that has the citys entire focus now. Thank you. That concludes our press conference. Thank you. [please stand by] speaking are requested but not required to state their names. 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