Good afternoon today is Friday, May fifteenth 2020. My name is Michelle Schwarzman. Thank you for watching today's San Luis Obispo County Covid- 19 media briefing this afternoon. We have three speakers for you. We will begin today with the slow food banks CEO Garrett Olson. He will be followed by County administrative officer and emergency services Director Wade Horton and we will close today. County Health officer Doctor Penny Bernstein Thank you again to our American sign language interpreter, Robyn Babb and now Slow Food Banks CEO Garrett Olson. Good afternoon, the collaboration between the County of San Luis Obispo and the Slow Food Bank is a story that I'd like to share in response to the County and state shelter and orders the Slow Food Bank and the County of San Luis Obispo partnered to implement a program to deliver food to self isolating seniors and the medically vulnerable for those people who are in conditions where they did not have family friends, neighbors, caregivers or other community organizations. To bring them, food and medicine, this has been a spectacular success to date since commencing in mid March through our partnership we've made over 70 - 300 home deliveries and approximately 1000 of those each week. There are over 450 of them going on right now. Each delivery consists of two bags of food, one containing fresh produce and the other containing shelf stable food rich in protein. Nutrients, including, can tuna and chicken and vegetables and rice and beans and pasta. it is a healthy nutritious option for people that don't have other options. We also began delivering cat food and dog food to those who need it. thanks to a generous donation from the Limo's feed and pet supply company. We're also able to deliver prescription food or excuse me prescription medications to those who are not able to get to their pharmacies for new prescription. Refills To make this deliveries the County has provided employees that are currently serving as disaster service workers to assist the Slow Food Bank with increased operations in response to covid- 19. They have been invaluable to our team. This partnership is truly the gold standard relationship between local government and the nonprofit focused on meeting the needs of our community in the most effective and efficient manner in terms of. Sticks the pandemic has drastically impacted our operations over the past eight weeks. food provided to our 70 - seven agency partners throughout the entire County has more than tripled from approximately 70000 pounds per month prior to go to greater than 216000 pounds of food per month now through our direct services, providing food to clients in need through our food Bank distribution throughout the County, the number of households we are serving has also realized a greater than tripling effect. We were serving approximately 3000 households and now we are serving over 9200 households monthly. We are rapidly moving towards providing over one half million pounds of food to people in need throughout our community. We have been also touched by the incredible support of our community, particularly those who have donated to sustain our operations. Thank you so much and although many have given and we truly appreciate your generosity, The Food Bank's fundraising opportunities. Significantly impacted by the realities of this pandemic over 70 percent of our operating budget comes through local donations and less than 18 percent of that comes from federal grants Simply put our food Bank serves our community powered by the strength and generosity of our community. One of our major fundraising efforts. Hunger Awareness Day is scheduled for June fifth this year. Now, this is normally. A very social activity having celebrities and volunteers out on sidewalks sharing the story of investing in the food Bank and requesting donations from passers-by in communities all across the County this year, we are adjusting to take Hunger Awareness Day virtual and so we ask that you keep your eyes open for an opportunity to give through Hunger Awareness Day in closings. Our message for the community is as simple as it is genuine. If you need help the food Bank is here to help you to find a location for food nearest you go to our website. Slow Food Bank dot org slash Food finder if you need service from the covid- 19 Food delivery program, you can submit your request online at ready dot Org or by calling the County phone Assistant Center at eight zero 545324 if you can. Someone else to assist you, we ask that you do so that our precious resources can only go to can go to those who do not have other resources available to them and finally if you are in a position to help others at whatever level is comfortable to you, please visit us at Slow Food Bank dot org slash donate and consider becoming a monthly donor. We turn each dollar donated into $4 worth of purchasing power in this community for about the same cost as a monthly subscription to Netflix together, we can provide 45 nutritious meals to. Who are in need in our community? We guarantee that monthly subscription with a slow food Bank will fill your hearts with love just as much as it feels hungry bellies with food and we'll give you a genuine feeling of satisfaction far greater than binge watching all 11 seasons of cheers again, our sincere thanks to the County Board of Supervisors to our County administrative Officer Wade Horton to the entire County emergency operations Care and shelter team led by John Ddt to our disasters. Including Leon Taos and Jen Miller for their incredible partnership, This is truly a story of caring and compassionate governance that deserves to be told, and with that, it is my honor to turn it over to our County administrative officer and emergency services Director Wade Horton. Thank you. Garrett Wade Hortons County CEO of Emergency Services director I I do like I would like to appreciate what the partnership we've had with the food Bank and all the work that garret's done to provide for our community. So thank you. Today, I'd like to note that the County shelter at home order will lapse tomorrow. Our original intent was to renew our shelter at home order and align it with our local reopening plan to start guide, however, instead of providing additional approval to move forward with our County plan, the governor chose to implement his statewide plan called the Resilience Road Map. Therefore, our County shelter homeowner is no longer needed. What's important to understand is that moving forward Slow County falls under the state's stay-at-home order, and we must follow the state's timeline and process for reopening. I'd like you to know that the County is taking all steps necessary to safely reopen under the governor's plan that said, with the coming Memorial Day weekend approaching and the summer tourism season. Our County still needs to take measures to make sure we're keep moving forward with the governor's plan and not backwards. I'll turn over to doctor Bernstein to provide additional details. Good afternoon so let me first start with telling you where we are case count wise. We've gone up by three cases since yesterday, and that puts us at 240 total number of covid- 19 cases for the County of San Luis Obispo. we only have now two individuals in the hospital they both are in intensive care but that is a 50 percent decrease and we continue to have stable levels and recovery at 80 percent now, so that continues to be good news for our community. so let me talk. More about this new order that you just heard mentioned are what we are looking at is a lodging order so as the state begins to open up and the weather warms, we know that many people are going to want to come to our County as they have year upon year and we unfortunately need to tell our regular visitors and new visitors that this is not the time to come to our County. so tourism is one of the areas that we are most. Concerned about with respect to spread this is how the disease got here from places in Asia. this is how we got you know spread to New York. This is how infectious germs move is from community to community Visa via travel so while we very much enjoy our tourism and we are very supportive of that industry, we continue to say that this is not the time to come so what we are doing with respect to that. To try to put controls to the extent that we can on inter County and into jurisdictional movement about our state and so with that I want to show you our side. This is the kind of information that we look at on a regular basis as we make decisions and as you can see San Luis Obispo County, along with a couple of other counties, enjoy a fairly low rate of disease. These numbers represent the number of individuals to date who. Been infected for 100000 population so our 240 cases with a you know two point eight 300000 puts us at 85 individuals who've been affected per 100000 individuals who are residents of our County. Monterey is doing slightly better than us Ventura in the same range as us, but you can see that we from all the areas from which we typically get our. Travel the residents who live in many of the surrounding and neighboring counties are in considerably worse shape in terms of the amount of disease that they are experiencing among their residents and in their counties so to just point out a few Kings County right to our Northeast has 234 cases nearly tripled our number per capita to larrys even higher at 278 Santa Barbara to our South, though that doesn't. Lompoc has considerably higher in Los Angeles is one of the areas from which we do get quite a bit of tourism and that they are continuing to experience very high rates of disease in that jurisdiction. So it's really with that in mind that we we decided that we need to do something as especially as we begin to open up, especially as we begin to anticipate with Memorial Day weekend coming summer travel some means. Of trying to protect our community in order to be able to move forward in the ways that we have been talking about we want to be able to take the next step and open our community and and keep at Bay at least for now, the additional risk that might be presented to our community from people coming from higher endemic areas in our surrounding counties. so with that with public health protection in mind, we are issuing this. Executive order to cap lodging occupancy at 50 percent, it will go into effect on Sunday, May seventeenth so with the evening of May seventeenth, we are asking our lodging facilities of all types hotels motels VRBO RV parks our own campgrounds, and I will mention that in a moment are all being asked to reduce their capacity to 50 percent. We think that this will. All of the essential workforce that needs to continue to come into our community be at health care personnel be at construction projects be at you know a number of areas in which that type of travel is still necessary and indicated but we're asking our visitors for the time being to stay away. We are also as I mentioned with campgrounds, we know that this continues to be a hardship for our lodging facilities. The That own those facilities and we're doing the same thing in our own County with our own County run campgrounds that we are limiting reservations to only County reservation. I'm in County residents. we're we're opening our campgrounds moving forward to only County residents so that's Lopez Lake, Santa Margarita Lake and Oceana Memorial Park beginning on Monday will only be accepting residents who. A valid ID from our County I think I use the word reservation, but let me clarify that that we will not be accepting reservations at this time for any of our campgrounds. so this will be on a walk-in basis or drive up basis and again for County residents so I want to say that we're not shutting down our hotels and motels. We we very much want to work with that industry. As you heard from Chuck Davison on Wednesday, we have a very important and meaningful partnership with them and we are working. In concert to keep an eye on how this progresses as more people may have essential reasons to come here, we're allowing that growth to happen, but we really do wanna keep Tampa down the the the amount of out of town visitors I will leave it at that I have with regard to the order. I did wanna circle back a bit on our reopening plan. I know on Wednesday I mentioned to businesses to go on our website and look for the guidance that they have so that they can begin to prepare as I know many have been but some businesses are probably waiting for additional guidance and so we've talked about going and finding the guidance there's a number of specific things that our businesses can doing right now in preparation for opening. So first what will be part of the reopening plan for every business is that they have a site-specific protection plan and a checklist for that business. those documents are available on ready Slow dot Org website business should be going through them. In many cases, they are several pages long and give the business an understanding of what things they need to be looking for checking for having in place both in terms of. And policies and making those sites specific certification plans available to their employees along with having that information available to employees. one of the things that businesses need to be looking at is how are they gonna train their employees on how to limit the spread of disease? This includes self screening for symptoms and messaging about staying home when sick. we continue to ask of our businesses to use liberal. Policies when possible so that we discourage people who feel that they must come to work to get a paycheck even if they are sick, That is the worst outcome for our community so performing the detailed risk assessment training employees creating hand washing and disinfection protocols will help will help the business owners the employees and the public who will take advantage of those retail business. And dining opportunities, and then lastly, as we've been talking about our longest physical distancing so build in if some visuals is the best way to do it as many of the markets and pharmacies that have been open all through this have you know that there's lots of opportunity now to purchase floor markers six foot distancing strips on the floor and looking at how in within. A business they can spread out their material dining opportunities how they're gonna arrange their tables So all of these kinds of things are things that we look to our businesses to go online to get the guidance for their particular industry and begin to actually have these things in place so that they will be prepared to open up as soon as they're able under the state's order and with that, I will turn it over for questions. Thanks. Doctor Bernstein so could you explain, he said 50 percent reduction for hotels, Airbnb and campgrounds. I'm assuming that's 50 percent for each hotel seems like that would be very straightforward for hotels cuz you just say you know you only can Reserve half of their rooms. But for some with the Airbnb, a lot of people only have like one room or one guest House. how that works. Yeah. So I'm just my understanding for those short-term rentals in homes or b's or or VRBO is there a allowed a certain number of tendencies over the course of a month. So if you're allowed to have six in the course of a month, that's the number of guests turnovers then it would be three for that period of time, just as an example, and then also how do you guys plan to enforce this and what are the penalties? Yeah. So, as with everything during this pandemic we ask for partnership with the business owners, we feel that we have a we've had many of very productive conversation. there are always going to be out. Liars toward that end, we do plan on doing code enforcement checks of businesses we will ask for rosters. We will you know as I said, I think I'm the other day that you know, we're not gonna slam someone if they're at 51 percent for one night in a week but we really are looking for compliance if if we're not getting compliance or someone's just absolutely flooding the law, then we do have the opportunity to finds and other you know implementation. Of penalties and how will you make sure people coming to campgrounds are from Slo County? I mean checking IDs or yeah, so absolutely check driver's licenses or other IDs for to indicate that is a local resident for camp ground usage. Bernstein an update on the an, he said days not weeks. that's only been two days since Wednesday, but what kind of day can you provide on that? I don't have anything specific on attestation. I do know that there's a phone conversation that's gonna happen with counties tonight and leadership of C D P H, and I'm hoping to get more information at that time and those restrictions on the hotels motels campgrounds. What's the timeline on those is that in indefinite or what's how long will it be in place? So our approach with this lodging Orin order is that we've left it open. We intend to review it on every two week basis and see where we're at with respect to the disease with respect to compliance with respect to what we're seeing on the ground and you know we'll react accordingly, we may have to you know squeeze down a little bit. We may be able to loosen up, but we'll be reviewing it on a regular basis. we don't have an end date per SE, but at any point that. Seems appropriate well we can modify or withdraw and he's also engage in some I guess Advertising messaging to some of our neighboring counties as well so that you can elaborate on that. we we have undertaken marketing or anti marketing effort to those areas from which we know many of our most common the areas from which we get the largest number of tourists and we're trying to continue to put out. Same message, which is we really love having you but not at this moment in time and we'll keep you posted when the situation changes. Thank you. Thank you all again for coming today and tuning in online and on TV, just a few reminders that all of the information related to the county's response to Covid- 19 is available on our website at ready dot Org. Our phone Center remains open this weekend and our recorded public health information line also remains available and our briefings are available live on our Caan. Luis Obispo County Facebook page as well as our County. Page. Those can also be viewed on the live streams of KCLY and KSBY, and finally if you miss any of the briefings, you can view them on public access. 20 - one Channel 20 - one at midnight eight am and five PM until the next regularly scheduled briefing occurs. so that's it for us for this week. Thank you for staying engaged. be safe, Be kind and have a great weekend and we will be back here again on Monday.