Transcripts For CSPAN3 National Association Of County City

Good morning. I am like friedman, the 113th president of the National Press club. I am journalist in residence at university of maryland global conference campus and the executive producer of the public broadcasting series the dekalb report. The spread of coronavirus is now affecting everything from travel and major events to the stock market, in addition to the human toll. Government, community, faithbased and corporate organizations across the country and around the world are meeting, monitoring and urging people to take precautionary measures, including washing your hands frequently, using hand sanitizer, social distancing on site, and staying home if you are not feeling well. We are here this morning to learn more about how our local cities and counties are preparing for possible outbreaks. Do local Health Officials have enough protective equipment, including masks, respirators and gloves on hand . Are Hospital Personnel and First Responders trained up to deal with coronavirus patients . Are tests for the virus readily available . What is being done to educate the public in our local communities . To help answer these and other questions, we welcome to the National Press club George Roberts jr. , president of the National Association of county and city Health Officials. Considered the voice of the nations nearly 3,000 local Health Departments. Mr. Roberts has served as the chief executive officer of the northeast Texas Public Health district since november 2006. Services provided by his home Health District including include community outreach, disease surveillance, environmental health, immunization, tuberculosis control, and Public Health Emergency Preparedness. Mr. Roberts has more than 35 years of health care experience, the majority of which was spent in hospital administration. He previously served at the Baylor University Medical Center in dallas, mother Francis Hospital in tyler, texas, and Henderson Memorial Hospital in henderson, texas. He received his bachelor of Business Administration from Southern Methodist university in dallas and a masters degree in Health Administration from the Washington University school of medicine in st. Louis. Mr. Roberts, the National Press club podium is yours. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Thank you, mike. Good morning, everybody. Its a pleasure to be here. I thank you for the invitation to be here today. I want to start off by saying the importance of you, the media. We in local Public Health, in Public Health in general, are counting on you to communicate with the American Public about the daytoday steps that they can take to prepare for the coronavirus. A few words about mike mentioned it briefly. Cho or theiterate, nac National Association of county and city Health Officials is the voice of local Health Departments through 3,000 departments across the country. We have the theme that i have shared with naccho this year is my year is transformational leadership. My partner with the state territorial officials is dr. Smith out of arkansas, Arkansas Health commissioner. Mine is transformational leadership. And his is community resiliency. I think both of those just pair together so well as we deal with this particular situation that we have on our hands that we are facing. Again my organization our , mission is to prevent illness in the northeast Public Health district, protect our community. A little bit more about my organization. We have programs and services in east texas, in 21 counties. We serve as the w. I. C. Provider in 20 counties in east texas. We also do Emergency Preparedness in seven counties in east texas along with community outreach, immunizations, t. B. Control, environmental health, and we are fortunate to have many many , great partnerships and working relationships which include the c. D. C. And in texas, the Texas Department of state health services. Local Health Departments are, to use a phrase, your boots on the ground. We are the ones that are here to interact with the community. Our work is often referred to as invisible. I look at you and the audience right now how many of you think , daily about your local Health Departments . The answer is you probably really dont. A lot of times our work is invisible while we are out there every day doing such things as making sure you have clean water, have safe food to eat, have vaccinations provided. Those things that help you to lead an active, productive life. As a matter of fact, the back of my business card, i gave out a couple of business cards it says , Public Health, your invisible guardian. A lot of times the work we do is invisible. But you know until when , things are going well, our communities and citizens are working, living their lives and being productive members of society. However, in situations like today, our work is much more visible. All responses to the coronavirus or other reportable diseases are indeed local, via surveillance, contract taking and information to the public for one of three things, either selfmonitoring their symptoms isolating , themselves, meaning to separate themselves from the public, these people separate ill people from those that have communicable to those that are healthy and then quarantine, more of a restrictive type thing, to restrict their movement in the community. Now, i want to spend just a minute i know all of you have heard about coronavirus, but what i found in situations like that is just sometimes repeating the message is repetition is something that we must do at this particular point in time. Let me just kind of go back to the genesis of this whole thing for just a moment. So coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that are common in people and many species of animals including camels, cattle, cats and bats. Rarely, rarely, animal coronaviruses can infect people and spread between people such as we have such things as the normal coronaviruses that probably all of us have had called the common cold. Thats a coronavirus. Then we have more serious situations like mers. We remember that several years ago as well as sars. This one is now named the virus here is called sarscovid2. Many patients at the epicenter were in wuhan, hubei province, china, had some linkage to a large seafood and live animal market, suggesting animal to person spread. Getting back to the coronavirus issue, there are seven known coronaviruses that can infect people. Four of those seven are what we consider it has specific numbers here but basically thats the common cold. The other ones are mers, which we found in 2012, the middle eastern respiratory syndrome. In 2012, there were 2,500 cases of that and 858 people died as a result of mers. Then we had the sars back in 2002. There were 8,000plus cases of that, 775 deaths. Now we have the coronavirus. Uptodate reporting right now, i checked the c. D. C. Website this morning. The c. D. C. Said there are 99 cases of coronavirus in our country right now. There have been 10 deaths and 13 states reporting cases. That was the most recent information i had about two hours ago when i checked the c. D. C. Website which is what i am referring to at all times. As of march 4, the c. D. C. Said they had tested 1,526 cases patients for coronavirus. So how does it spread . One thing is mainly its person to person, so if i were to cough right now, i think you are roughly six feet away from me so we are probably in good shape. For a person within i may cough and i may get respiratory droplets or air droplets on you. Thats how it spreads when i either cough or i sneeze or Something Like that. Thats how we spread this. To a lesser extent, we talked about surfaces. So lesser extent you can get it from touching a surface. It lives on a surface from a few hours to nine days. I dont have the exact science on that, but just know that cleaning a surface is probably a good thing to do. So what can we do in situations like this . How do we address this when we have a new, novel virus out there . There is no vaccine yet and wont be a vaccine for a while. There are no antivirals to deal with. We have a flu vaccine. How do we handle this . Well, first thing we do is avoid contact when people are sick. I am not sick today. Thats good news. Avoid contact with people who are sick. Avoid touching your eyes, your nose and your mouth. How many of us routinely touch our nose . We dont even think about it. Try to avoid doing that. Stay home when you are sick. Thats one of the big things here. I tell people, sometimes i may get we need to stop that. If you are sick, please stay home. You dont want to its not you are not helping your fellow peers or coworkers if you dont stay home when you are sick. Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue. Throw the tissue into the trash or the toilet. Clean and disinfect frequently touched items and surfaces using a regular household cleaning spray or wipe. The next one i have seen i saw people in masks. At our Leadership Meeting last week we had a gentleman from the c. D. C. And i asked him several times to try to get something. I said, so is the regular mask that you wear does that provide you any protection . He said the c. D. C. Does not regular that the general public wear a mask. I said, what if i wear the c. D. C. Does not recommend the general public wear a mask. The c. D. C. Does not recommend that people who are well wear a face mask to protect themselves from respiratory diseases. Remember that. If you wear a mask, its not doing you any good unless you are sick. Leave the mask, ladies and gentlemen, for the Health Care Providers. When you go to the hospital, thats the time to probably put on a mask. Think about it yourself. I will look at the audience, raise your hand. How many had a test have a mask . If you put it on, it may not do any good. You have to have a fit test. Health care workers are tested. This is one right here. The biggest thing that i can recommend to you and probably the most instructive to me over the last week or so as we have dealt with that, wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. I have had to challenge myself to do that. You can sing the happy birthday song. I have resorted to the simple count to 20. If you do that, you are washing your hands longer than you are probably used to. That will make a huge difference. If you cant use that, use some type of alcohol based substance to clean your hands. We as americans, we like to shake hands with each other. We like to hug each other. Those are the types of things we like to do. Here is an interesting we did an interesting story in our organization a while back and it was around National Hand washing day. There was data that came out from i checked this morning. Data that said get this one. When people go to the restroom, how many people wash their hands . Well, the data shows that only 31 of men and only 65 of women wash their hands after they use the restroom. Ladies and gentlemen, if we can take a step in that, we may help protect ourselves from coronavirus or other diseases that are out there in our population. We did a local story, where my cpio is a male, the tv interns went to a local restaurant and tested it to see if these were unscientific studies. It really was pretty darn true. Please wash your hands, men and women, after you use the restroom. So what is the incubation period for this thing . I am sharing this with you for your information, for those of you in the audience and at home, but number two, when we go to local gatherings in our community, these are the types of things we are repeating. A lot of things for you, the media, can do to help us is repetition of the messaging is so, so important. So how deadly is this thing . Right now dr. Fauci, i saw a story, said the death rate from coronavirus is 3. 4 . That was an article i saw in the last couple days. Now, do we think its more deadly than that . Do we think its less deadly . The vast majority well in excess of 90 of the cases around the world are in china. We dont know how many cases there really are out there. Why . Because this coronavirus, kinds kind of like the common cold, a lot of times we think maybe we have a headache that morning, we go about our business. A lot of people may have coronavirus or the covid19 and not really realize theyre sick. There is probably a lot of testing that went on in china that they didnt really understand. So how deadly is this thing . They basically and what is the spread rate . For coronavirus, the covid19, so if i have it, if i am diagnosed with it, i can infect two to four people. The seasonal flu is typically a one to one type of thing. You have more Infectious Diseases like measles. Going back to sars and ebola, the fatality rate was close to 60 . Sars, it was 10 . So the message there is that it appears that 3. 4 is higher than seasonal flu rates, but we dont know what the denominator is. It may be worse but it may be a lot better than we think. Symptoms, again, pounding the message here. Fever, cough, shortness of breath. How many of you in this audience and at home, how many have ever had fever, coughness, shortness of breath . I will raise my hand. Do we think we had coronavirus . So from the research of covid19 we know 80 of cases are mild with most people not needing hospitalization. However, older adults and people with Underlying Health conditions like heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, greater risk of complications. So for lets talk about china for a second. I have never been to china. Maybe some of you in the room have been to china. Its my understanding air quality there is not as good as ours. That is one issue they are dealing with. What is thei, smoking rate in china . I checked it yesterday. 14 of americans smoke. 31. 8 of people in china smoke. So therefore a respiratory illness, theyre already higher risk of having these issues. So how is this different from the flu . Well, we have similar symptoms and lung complications. Its spread through droplets. Its caused by different viruses. Just for perspective here, we have worldwide right now i didnt see the exact count this morning, the Johns Hopkins website which i found to be very instructive. Its just under 100,000. Worldwide deaths as of yesterday, 3,053. I will say though, look at the recovery rate. Most people are recovering from this. Now, lets talk about the flu this year in the United States. Go back to the c. D. C. Data. The c. D. C. Estimates just in the u. S. I said around 100,000 worldwide of coronavirus. Just in the United States this year, 32 Million People have had the flu in the United States. With 18,000 to 46,000 estimated deaths. So far this year from the seasonal flu. I wont ask for a raise of hands, how many of yall had a flu shot this year . Very good. Thank you for doing that. So we talked about our background and symptoms. We talked about steps you can do to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Now how do we address this in our community . The primary reason for me coming here today. One thing we have been doing how many of yall heard about the coronavirus back before christmas . There is a young lady in the back that heard about it. I think i had heard briefly about it but it started to ramp up in january. We celebrated the new year, didnt know a lot about coronavirus. So what have we been doing locally since that time . We have been assessing people who have risk of contracting the disease. We have been testing persons of interest who have been traveled to impacted country, china, italy, iran, south korea, japan, or on cruise ships that had traveled to ports of entry and exhibiting symptoms we talked about already. We have been working with our local Health Care Providers i am using this more a local basis but i will say this on a national basis, naccho members are working with Health Care Providers to make sure they know what to look for, answer questions and in some cases making sure they have the c. D. C. Test kits to test for the virus. The guidance for testing has really shifted this week. Like in our market, if we had a suspect case, we have had to talk with our department of Health State Services in texas as well as the c. D. C. And now its my understanding that that testing has gone more into providers hands. A provider can if they believe that this person needs to be tested for coronavirus, if there is a travel history or other types of way they may have contracted the disease, the provider has the ability to start doing that. Local media i am going to harp on this a lot. We are really counting on you to really get the message about this out to the public. The public is looking to you for information on this. So we have worked with our local media. We have worked with our radio stations, our television stations, our social media. We try to put out the information from the c. D. C. , what we have learned. We are trying to come up with new ways to communicate the message to people. Hope