Transcripts For SFGTV SFDPH Health Commission 20240712

Great. Well, i have the privilege of welcoming you all to the september 1, 2020 meeting of the Public Health commission. Welcome to the staff as well as members of the public, and i also have the pleasure of telling you im chairing the meeting today because it was commissioner bernals his 50th birthday, and i cant imagine why anyone would want to take their 50th birthday off. However, hes decided to do so, and so im sure youll join me in wishing him the very best for his birthday. So i guess the next agenda item is the minutes. Yes. Thank you, commissioner. Item 2 is the approval of the minutes of august 18, 2020, and i can check to see if anyone thats in Public Comment, please press star, three to raise your hands. I have a change to the minutes. The minutes show me as present, and i dont believe i was present at that meeting. Thank you. Commissioner, and i apologize for that mistake. That was me. And there was actually somebody with their hand raised, so im going to let me get my timer. Caller, im going to unmute you, and youve got, then, two minutes. All right. Caller, youve got two minutes on the clock. Hi. Im a little mixed up. Is this the time for general comment . Hi, dr. Palmer. No, this is not. This is the general comment on the minutes. Okay. I want to get back in line for general comment. Okay. No problem. I will take your hand down. I will explain to everyone, heres the deal. When youre making comment, when the item is called that youre making Public Comment on, you put your hand up, and you do that by pressing star, three, and you can do that for every item on the agenda, and youve got two minutes to talk. Commissioners, any other corrections on the minutes. With the exception of the correction that commissioner guillermo brought up, is there a motion to approve the minutes. Approved. Second. Clerk i will do the roll call. [roll call] clerk great. Item 3 is the directors report. Good afternoon, commissioners. Grant colfax, director of Public Health. In my report, i have a number of covid items, and we will be going over those in more detail in the covid update. But we have some important issues, and perhaps the most important issues, the d. P. H. Budget. After a number of rounds of conversations with the commission and the board of supervisors, the board and Budget Committee amended and passed the budget for the Health Department, and im pleased to say that our for the most part, our budget was was passed consistent with what you saw and very much consistent with the mayors priorities. Our budget remains at 2. 8 billion for 2021 and 2. 9 billion for 2122, with very mine i dont remembor cha budget itself. Id like to thank everyone who worked so hard on the budget in this unprecedented year in general, but it was an unprecedented year with many challenges. In addition to the pandemic response, weve had to deal with inclement weather and air quality, and we are taking appropriate action with the department of Emergency Management and other partners to ensure that people remain as informed about the air quality and take steps to mitigate potential impacts from the air. You will see a number of highlights with regard to the d. P. H. Work, and unless you have questions on the two items i just highlighted, we can cover the covid19 updates in the next item. We have updates even from just about two hours ago, so were very much on the cutting edge here. Myself, dr. Aragon are here to answer questions about that. And then, we do have a presentation specifically on some of the educational activity reopenings were doing. Clerk and commissioners, if i may, before we move to any other comments or questions, i see a hand up. Any member of the public, if you would like to make comment, press star, three. All right. Commissioners, it looks like theres no Public Comment, and with your help, commissioner green, ill help you with your Public Comment. Commissioner chow, it looks like your hand is up. Go ahead. Thank you. This is in reference to the air quality issue, and it is appropriate that the Health Department has put out advisories, and even on your website had marked out, if you go into the covid website right away, theres the whole issue of the air quality. However, im just wondering if we could make it easier for people because this air quality issue may certainly surface again over the next several weeks, if not months, that rather than having it would appear that in the first page, it references going to sf72. Org, but it doesnt work. It doesnt get you there. You have to hit the air quality reference in order to get to the air quality. But im wondering if we could actually show that more easily so you dont have to go point too many places to find out that that air quality for that day is such so that people would be able to understand that. But im not sure what the technical issues are, but certainly know that sf72. Org, ive tried it on two or three different computers, and it does not work, and thats what youve got to reference to get to the air quality. The air quality reference does, and its a very good website, but if we could make things easier where you dont have to have an additional click, it might make things easier for the public. But thats just my suggestion. Clerk so noted, commissioner, and well fix any of those noted issues. Thank you. Commissioners, i dont see anyone elses hand up. With your permission, commissioner green, can i move to the next item . Okay. So next item, number 4, is the covid19 update. Thank you. Grant colfax, director of health. We actually have three buckets of updates for you with regard to our covid19 response, and i know theres a full agenda, so i want to be respectful of your time. But i would i was going to review a few slides that that the standard slides that youre, at this point, familiar with seeing where we stand just in the epidemiology, and give you an update with reference to the state announcement on friday, and we do have an update, i believe, per the commissions request with regard to reopenings and our thinking around that. And [inaudible] is available to provide that information. So ill just go through these slides relatively quickly. Could we have the next slide, please. So were up to over 9300 cases of covid19 diagnosed in the city. You can see that our case count does continue to increase. Our deaths are unfortunately at 83 total deaths from covid19 in San Francisco. In terms of our testing, we continue to far exceed our testing goal which we set at 1800 tests a day. Our rolling tests a day are 3300 tests, and our sevenday rolling average is 2. 6 . You can see we continue to have the inequities in the covid19 response, particularly for the Latino Community who continue to account for over half of cases. And i just want to emphasize that we are strategically evaluating our efforts specifically in the Latino Community. Im happy to come back to the commission to report back on those efforts. Weve done a lot, and its clear that we need to continue to do more. This inequity has been with us since the beginning of the pandemic. We are focusing more testing and more testing resources and working more with the Latino Community providing lowbarrier testing. Our Contact Tracing and Case Investigation teams have expanded dramatically, and including providing culturally appropriate services and also providing Wraparound Services in Broader Health care needs and Behavioral Health needs, and youll be happy to know that we continue to offer isolation and quarantine options for people who are not able to safely quarantine at home. But theres certainly more to invest there, and im happy to return to the commission to report specifically on our efforts in the Latino Community going forward. Next slide, please. In terms of age distribution, you can see that we have a relatively young our cases are concentrated in a cohort of basically young adults, with nearly half of our cases between the ages of 18 and 40, and you can see that is very different in terms of mortality, where nearly threequarters of our cases are in people who have been diagnosed with covid19 over 70, and over half have been 81 years or older age. Next slide. So these are data compared to the other jurisdictions. Again, youre familiar with this information, but thankfully, our death per 1,000 is much lower compared to other jurisdictions, and weve been fortunate in that regard. Our testing rate is quite high, exceeded only by a few other jurisdictions across the county across the country, excuse me, and our case rate is also relatively low compared to other jurisdictions. And again, i think this is in a city that is seven by seven i believe that San Francisco is the second densest city in the country, after new york city. And we know that in denser settings and more crowded, where theres more opportunity for more crowded conditions, unfortunately, covid19 does spread more easily. Next slide. So this is our hospitalization rate, and we have been in a surgery since july, where we started to see that increase in hospitalizations. Were down to 26 total cases in the hospital. At the end of june, we started to see that incline. Were now down to a slight decline, down to 72 total hospitalizations in San Francisco. You can see the i. C. U. Bed the people in i. C. U. Beds, the white lines represent the patients in the medical surgery beds. So in this slide, it shows that things are moving in a more positive direction i believe than the last time i reported back to the commission. So in terms of our key Health Indicators, this is the these are the indicators where were assessing the status of covid19 across the city. Our hospitalization our Health Care System indicators, which are really indicators of our hospitals, are in the green zone. Growth of covid19 cases are in the negative zone, so thats good. You can see here that acute hospital bed capacity and our i. C. U. Bed capacity here across San Francisco remains in relatively good shape with 27 and 35 respectively. Whats been up for sometime now and is concerning is our case rate. The running sevenday average at this time is 8. 5. That has come down substantially over the past few weeks, but we are still at the high rate, indicating a relatively high burden of disease in the city. Our testing numbers i referred to, over 3500 a day. Progress has been made on Case Investigation and Contact Tracing, these numbers became particularly concerns as there was a lag in our testing and followup time. Just want to acknowledge the Contact Tracing and Case Investigation team expanding capacity, doing this work every day in a culturally appropriate manner, meeting people where they are. Were now at 87 of cases reached, and making progress. Mean goal, in yellow, and moving toward our goal of 89 . And p. P. E. , 30 , 100day supply for our health care staff. We require next slide. [inaudible] every one person infected new person infected is less than one. For every new person, less than one gets infected. Greater than one, more than one person gets infected at baseline. Youll recall that in july, we started to see an increase in june, we started to see an increase, and we our reproductive rate got up to as high as 1. 35, as you can see by that solid blue line, after being about. 85 in the spring. Im happy to say thanks to the great efforts of San Francisco, we are down to 0. 91 and trending down. We are have been moving in the right direction for a number of weeks now, and hopefully with the em if a seu emphasizing, social distancing, limiting crowds and interactions with large numbers of people, we will, as a city, will continue our success in slowing the spread of covid19. So im going to stop there and turn it over to dr. Tomas aragon who will now talk a little bit around the states announcement of reopening and the steps that we are taking to gradually reopen lowrisk activities over the next couple of weeks. Dr. Aragon . Good afternoon. So last friday, the state came out with a new framework for how theyre going to both measure the disease and also to categorize different counties. Prior, they used to have what was called the watch list, and it was basically two categories. And theres several ways you can get on the watch list. Case rates, hospitalization, as well as some other metrics, and if you got on the watch list, you were on it for a period of time. You had to close down activities and thats what happened to us in late june, where we had to close down nonessential offices, malls, and we had to postpone our openings of personal services. So the new framework now is only using two metrics. Theyre using the case rate, and then, theyre using the test person positivity. And based on those two metrics, theyre classifying people into counties into four tiers. Tier one, or the purple the purple tier, is is the highest, and whatever whatever number is worse, you end up in that you end up in that category. The second tier is called red, and the word theyre using to describe that is substantial. The third tier is orange, and the last tier is yellow, minimal. So if youre in purple, its very similar to have been on the old watch list. If you end up in one of the lower tiers, as you move into the different tiers, you can open up more. One of the things the other things they did was they wanted to discourage counties from undertesting, and so counties that were doing more testing had their case rate downweighted. So for San Francisco, because we do a significant amount of testing, they downweighted our case rate, and so we were classified into the red category. And so basically, that means that we had more things available for us to open, and that was really the basis of a of the plan that was announced today by the mayor and dr. Colfax. And there was between friday and today, there was a tremendous amount of work. People really working like crazy to get all of this in time to be able to move forward. And ill give you just the general themes. Im not going to go into the details or specifics unless you have some questions. And basically, what were doing we sort of approaches it this way. We looked at our Health Indicators. Can we move forward . Are hospitalizations flat or moving down . Are our case rates flot or going down, and is our testing in the appropriate range . And dr. Colfax indicated that were moving in the right direction. And the next question is what does the state permit us to do, and then, we apply a riskbased framework, and we move forward in those areas that we feel is going to be safe. And the other thing thats right around the corner, youre going to be hearing about them, and thats going to be schools. So the first body of activity really focuses on allowing activities to happen outdoors. So personal Services Like hair salons, outdoor gyms. Other Recreational Activities to happen outdoors, one, thats safer, but it also allows a business to adapt to serving outdoors. Just to give you an example, so today, my wife, the first thing she did was she washed her hair, and she went and got her haircut outdoors. She was very happy that she got her first haircut since the pandemic started. She did it outdoors not too far from our house, and the person who cut it was very excited to cut her hair, so that was outdoors. Just a couple of things that were going to be addressing. Outdoor worshipping, increasing the amount of outdoor worship and some other categories. The other big area is this next body of activity which is really schools and education. Its very big. Anas going to talk to you shortly about it. Shell give you an update in this area and how important it is that we succeed in this area. And the other area is lowerrisk indoor activities, and thats looking at those activities that really involve oneonone services, where if somebody were to be infected, the risk of a lot of people being infected were much lower. These services are going to be primarily personal services, and well be looking at other areas, but thatll be the primary focus. So im going to go ahead and stop there because youre going to get a lot from ana, because youre going to get schools, which is going to be a big category. That said, do you have any questions . Are there any questions from commissioners or should we continue . It looks like commissioner dorado has a question. I do have one question. When you had mentioned noncontact outside activities, i thought you were referring to sports activities. Can you maybe explain that. Does that mean that the kids cant have practices, no competitive games . Ive been asked this question multiple times. Yeah. They they yeah. Theres two ways of thinking about it. What can be asked it how can be done with is what can be done with schools opening up, and then no contact. When you think of activities that we dont want people to do, you can just think theres close physical contact between people is what we dont want. If theres nonphysical contact, shared equipment, thats okay, as well as people really are careful, but we kept that category nonspecific because theres activities such as pickle ball i did not know about pickle ball but adults let us know about all these activities, so theres guidance for all these activities, i should say. Welthank you. Its just that i get soccer practice, can we have, you know, hockey . Its just these sort of things, and thats where we need eventually probably clear guidelines so that we dont have, you know, confused people would be yeah. It is a little complex. Ill tell you, so soccer is a contact sport, and it really depends on how its designed. So and ana will go into this. One of the ways we try to minimize risks is to have cohorts. So if you have kids that stay in that cohort for an extended period of time, then, we allow riskier activities because theyre in the cohort. But what we dont want is people from all parts of the city coming together to play Something Like soccer because they can get it and bring it back to the households and affect Community Transmission. Thats part of the challenge, and thats part of the complexity. When you get to the schools, its going to be highly regulated to the extent we can because we can design it to lower the risk. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions, commissioners . Yes. I had two questions about the presentation and also about the information that the Mayors Office released. One was in regards to the outdoor activities, playgrounds were not listed, and the second question is theres no mention about [inaudible]. Im sorry, what . [inaudible] in other words maybe im missing it. Indoor dining or Outdoor Dining well, Outdoor Dining is permitted now. Correct. But theres no mention of your goals here of Indoor Dining in restaurants. And i guess my other question, which is much more broad, as were declining numbers of people that can get around into any of these, whether they be in pods or at schools or churches, are we then using the states guidelines or each county seems to decide whether or not at the moment up to this point can be [inaudible] and i think thats whats confusing to people, too, is whats the science of a pod being 10, 12, or 15 . Whos writing these numbers that we abide by . Yeah, let me take them in order. The first one is Indoor Dining. And we know so much more now about how the virus is transmitted than we knew even a few weeks ago. And a big issue with this coronavirus is going to be the aerosolization of the virus. Just raising your voice or singing raises the a aerosolization of the virus. In terms of our trace rate, we are in we have whats called widespread transmission, so we have quite a bit of Community Transmissions, as dr. Colfax pointed out. So the probability of somebody walking into your dining, into your restaurant, is incredibly high. Its probably youre going to have an infected person eating in that restaurant, its going to be a high possibility. If you sort of multiply that probability in the city. So highrisk activity is something were going to look at as the numbers of infection go down. The other thing you mentioned is pod size, and the general rule is the smaller the pod size, the better. Its a general rule, and its like a household. This is one of the challenges that we have in the latino household, the number of people that will live in a household can get very large, so when the infection gets into their household, a good proportion of them become infected. So the smaller is better. The state has given us guidelines. Theyre only allowing 14, so thats the number that were focusing on around the children activities. And then playgrounds, playgrounds is always a tough one. The problem is you can have multiple households, younger households, multiple kids, and then, they can transmit to each other. Kids in general have mild symptoms or no symptoms, but then, they can go back and infect their entire household. So were trying to mitigate that risk while the Community Transmission rate is high, especially at the time were trying to open up schools. So were focusing on how do we keep transmission rates low when were trying to open up schools . So were keeping an eye on certain things, and playgrounds is one of the things that were keeping close. Dr. Aragon, i know its tremendous effort, as you see, for you and the city to have put out a whole list within two or three days after the new state guidelines i think is tremendous. And i appreciate personally, and i think the public does, the explanation that youve given in order for us to understand why certain things dont open yet. I think its an explanation that we continue to try to get out there so that its not just the rule but the rationale behind it for these controversial subjects, and i really appreciate your response today. It was really very helpful. Thank you. Thank you so much. I would echo that. Any other comments or questions from the commissioners . I guess i have just one, dr. Aragon. Is there a place on our website where members of the public can find the information youve articulated, especially as youre updating these things. I know we can find it in the news media, but is there a website thats easy to read that details some of the what youve presented but also some of the details of the Health Orders because sometimes it can be so complex, and i wonder if you can make a reference for people that they can check from time to time. Yeah. So youre bringing up a gap area thats been identified, and i know the city is going to be focusing on improving their communication strategy. So including updating the website. The website is out of daofdad we need to make it more friendly, in addition to the air quality update, as was mentioned, to make it more friendly. So thats an update that we can hopefully bring back to you in the near future. Well, youve informed us greatly. I guess we still just have another part of the presentation. Yes. If i can introduce ana [inaudible], she is going to update our approach on the schools and education, and i just want to say, while we while the departments been working incredibly hard for so many months now, but one of the things that i think is a positive for the department is were working more collaboratively than i think ever before, and there are key leaders who have emerged in this covid19 pandemic, and ana has been one of them. Shes been leading the team just with regard to education and schools, and just collecting information [inaudible] as part of our covid19 response. Thank you so much, and thank you for the opportunity to present all the work that were moving forward in the Education Field and in schools, and i must admit, i am having a bit of a hard timesharing my slides, so mark, if you could talk me through how im able to do that. Sure. And i also want to let everyone know those on the Public Comment line, i see you, and when this is over, well get to you. Ana, at the bottom of the screen, take your cursor down, and theres seven buttons. Two buttons from the left, theres a scroll and an arrow. I do not see any buttons at all. Do you see any buttons . No. Taking your cursor down to the bottom of the screen . No. [inaudible]. You have to click first on the screen and then you see the buttons. Oh, thank you. Oh, thats helpful. Thank you. And then i see so sorry to put everybody through this. I i see i have the screen view, where i see everybody, and i have the tool bar, but i do not see any buttons per se in order to share my slides. Okay. Let me see if i can give me one second. I can talk through them if thats necessary. Ill try to share on my end so we can get this going. Give me one second. Sorry. Okay. I wasnt prepared, so give me mark . Yes. Can you make me host, and ill share my screen . Oh, that would be fantastic. Thank you, michaela. Thank you, michaela. See, we are a team, and these are things that we have to Work Together with during covid. So there we go. There we go. Thank you, michaela, thank you, everyone. So again, my name is ana [inaudible], and i have been working with this amazing team to prepare for school safer reopening while and prevention and mitigation for covid19 for the coal year 2021. If we can move onto the next slide, please. For the school year 2021. If we can move onto the next slide. So i will admit there are some things that are outdated since i submitted these slides to mark on friday, and i will talk through them as we get to those slides. But of course we want to meet minimum standards of safety when we are reopening schools as safely as possible. We want to be grounded in science and make sure that we open schools when there are lower rates of Community Transmission. For school criteria, we need evidence of low Community Transmission, and up until last friday, that was the state watch list status, which has now changed, and certain key Health Indicators. I we received a question from one of the commissioners about how things have changed with the with respect to the state, and i think i can answer that now. But since we have switched from the watch list to the tiered system, as dr. Aragon had referenced earlier. Now that we are in the red tier, any county that is in the red tier or below for at least 14 consecutive days can consider reopening schools, and we are placed in the red tier on friday, and that allows us to consider, in two weeks from last friday, to move forward with full School Reopening as long as we stay in the red tier. In the meantime, we have started our waiver process for elementary schools, and we received letters of interest from 53 schools and have sent out the full waiver Application Form to those who submitted letters of intent. We did that because we determined through criteria as our three Health Indicators as our evidence of races with low rates of Community Transmission, which we needed rates that were stable and declining, hospitalizations that are stable and declining, and community tracing rate was stable or low, and we have been doing that, so we are moving through that waiver process. We are going to be taking that waiver process and turn it into a full School Reopening process as we move forward, and if we remain on the red tier or below for 14 days. So as the mayor had announced earlier today, the tense the goal is to work with the schools that submitted waivers and have them reopen in september, work with middle schools to reopen in a safe manner in october, and a possibility of working with high schools to for a safer reopening in november. And there is a whole process that we are developing to ensure there is compliance with all of our presentation measures, which i will outline in the next slide, please. Thank you, michaela. So there are specific guidelines for k through 12 school to prevent and mitigate the spread of covid19, some of which are very specific to a School Setting, and some of which are universal to all sectors of the city. The ones that are specific to schools is the construct of a small, stable cohort. This is grouping students together so that they become, ineffect, their own households at a school, and the smaller the cohort, the better, and this will help reduce the opportunity for transmission and also enable any effort for Contact Tracing and Case Investigation. The other mitigation efforts are considering the movement within the school, including the entrance, the exits, moving around in the hallways, and making sure that is done as safely as possible and actually minimizing the amount of movement . So, for example, having teachers push into a classroom rather than having the students push out and go visit a classroom is an example of what we are suggesting. Also pretty rigorous symptoms screening for staff and students to make sure that we minimize the opportunity for illness to be introduced into the site and triggers that we would that the school needs to establish to switch to Distance Learning, and also specific trainings for staff and communication plans specific to school. Of course, some of the universal factors are things like cleaning and disinfecting, face coverings as much as possible, healthy hygiene habits, making sure theres enough hand washing stations and soap and water, hand sanitizers onsite, Contact Tracing, and, of course, physical distancing. This is a copy of our guidance that we released earlier this month or actually technically last month on specifically k through 12 schools. Next slide, please. We are recognizing that school is not open at this moment in time to accommodate for Distance Learning support. We produced a guidance for outofschool times, and this is impacting Community Learning hubs, both public and private. And to the commissioners earlier question, there is recommendations in this particular guidance related to youth sports, and its basically limited to small, stable cohorts of physical activity that is conducted only outside and with limited amount of sharing of equipment. And youre more than welcome i will share the website later, but this is the full guidance you can access the full guidance in order to help people answer their questions. We also maintain an active list of over 600 people and schools and providers that we send all of our updated guidance out to, and we push this out to all of the stakeholders that are interested not only this guide, but all of the things that we publish. And then moving onto the next slide, please, we also want to make sure that we include institutions of Higher Education and any Adult Education programs, so we have guidance and directives as permitted by the Health Officer, which permits outdoor classes, depending on the weather. If it requires specialized equipment that cannot be provided by Distance Learning, and there are very special recommendations related to athletics. For both the outofschool time and the institutions of higher ed, we actually just published updates today to both of the guidance and documents, including also the child care guidance and directives that we have issued. And of course, this was a recent update that was not reflected in this slide. The California State Department of Public Health updated their guidelines, standardizing the number of students in each cohort to 14 students per cohort, so we have updated our guidelines to reflect that respectfully, and that was published today. Next slide, please. So this is a list of all of our recent local guidance and information that we have published to support our partners in education. The website, all of this, can be found in that white box on the bottom of the slide, and im happy to share the link with you all later . But again, we have published guidance for institutions of Higher Education and issued a directive related to that. We also have issued a directive and guidance for outofschool time providers. We have issued a tip sheet for families that are organizing their own learning pods in their homes . We do recognize the challenges that Distance Learning provides, and even though having multiple households, multiple families in an indoor setting presents a higher risk, we know that these families are moving forward with these learning pods, and weve offered them safety tips for these families to do this as safe as possible. Again, weve also issued guidance related to reopening of schools. Weve also published Additional Guidance specific for youth settings, so what a health check for children would look like at a site, what any program serving youth, including schools, should screen for, any symptoms, whether a child or a Family Member thats in close contact, etc. , thats all in this health check guidance. And then, these last two pieces, we received some questions that these pieces of guidance can address specifically, so at the bottom here, there is an f. A. Q. That we published specific to Contact Tracing at schools, child cares, and any other programs. So that we provide specific instructions and also how to contact our schools and child care hubs . And also, just to note that our hub has been working with child care and summer camp settings since march and has had quite a bit of experience working with all these sites that serve youth and feel like we are ready to support a School Reopening as we move forward with Contact Tracing and Case Investigation. And lastly, we have a quick guide for schools and child cares and programs for youth where we run through all the scenarios of what to do, whether theres been someone that is exhibiting some symptoms versus someone who has been exposed versus someone who is a confirmed case, and what are the actions that a setting needs to do, and also some communication templates that we can provide to all of these settings, and its being translated, and all of this is available on this website listed below. Next slide, please. Questions related to testing, we are encouraging everyone to contact their primary care provider to get tested. Just as a note, the California Department of care has just passed emergency regulations that classifies teachers and staff as essential workers, and they are eligible to receive testing as frequently as they request and have the their Health Insurance cover this . So we are encouraging everyone to contact their primary care provider first to address this issue. And then but there are also testing Resources Available for in the city, which is available at this website. And we are also, of course, encouraging everyone to get their flu vaccinations and other vaccinations as we consider reopening schools as safely as possible to bring everyones immunization records up to date. Moving onto the next slide, please. And that is the that is the end of the presentation, and thank you for having me, and im, along with dr. Colfax and dr. Aragon, happy to answer any questions. Thank you for this comprehensive work. And it struck me, as i looked at your guidelines, how much work you have done in the month of august alone with all of the changing thinking and input and data, and its really remarkable that you and this team have been able to put this type of extensive advice and guidance together in such a short period of time with, really, such elaborate information, so its greatly appreciated. I believe its time for Public Comment, is that right, mark . Yes. I see five hands, so again, if youd like to make Public Comment, you can press star, three, and your hand will be raised. I have a timer set for two minutes for each of you, and ill unmute you one by one, and i will start the timer. I will start with the first person. You are unmuted, and youve got two minutes on the clock. Hi. This is dr. Teresa palmer. Can you hear me . Yes. Okay. One, i would like dr. Colfax and dr. Aragon to address the ongoing isolation of nursing home patients and why health order c1903 has not been revised. As you know, health order c1903 does not allow any visitation on the premises of nursing homes, even if theres a physical set up that would allow safe outdoor or distanced visitation. And in addition, the Nursing Home Administration is on power to refuse oneonone visitors that have that are essentially medically essential nurses homes have been refusing to allow Family Support people to visit unless people are literally within a day or two of dying, and this is the state has much more liberal guidelines, and the state actually guidelines say that there should be outdoor visitation. I got a call from dr. Aragon in early june, promising this would change. The City Attorney told my colleague at california advocates for nursing home reform the system would change a month ago. This is not happening. Nursing home cases have now been locked down, isolated from their families for over five months. It was never intended to last this long. Their quality of life is being impugned. People are having to unsafely take their parents home. Its a violation of human rights, and its an example of ageism and enablism, and when is this going to change . Thank you, dr. Palmer, for your comments. Next caller, youre unmuted, and you have two minutes on the clock. Caller, are you there . Hello . Hi there. Can you hear me okay . Yes, i will start the clock. Thank you. My name is Glen Thornton close. I am the owner of [inaudible]. Sir, if youre moving around, its hard to hear you. [inaudible] with almost minimal to no and how we can plan to come back from this closure. Thats despite the work of the San Francisco [inaudible] independent Coalition Work with the office of economic and Workforce Development to submit plans with no concerns submitted back to us. We it has been incredibly frustrating to not be able to plan to come back from a closure like this. We have put plans in place that have considered every possibly sna scenario that weve been able to glean. Reservation systems, the ability to contact trace, masks required at all times, social distancing or aerosolization concerns, and its awful. Whats amounted to my lifes work is now gone. We have no option but to close. The options that were given to us for outdoor operations, we dont have the ability to work on the sidewalk, we dont have a sidewalk at our business. Other [inaudible] the air quality is horrible, and the fact that sfpd gyms are allowed to open, and the fact that my business is not, and the fact that my family and i are forced to leave because we can no longer afford to live here is a travesty. You must do better. You cannot let an entire sector like this down. Thank you for your time. Thank you, sir, for your comments. Okay. Caller, im unmuting you. Can you hear me . Hello . Yes, you are on, and i will start the two minutes on the clock. My name is dean ericson, and im the owner of [inaudible] and im also a member of the San Francisco fitness coalition, and the first restaurants and bars were allowed to reopen amid the spike in the last reopening effort, and theaters and museums are given a higher priority than gyms and Fitness Centers. [inaudible] onsite schools, which is a mix [inaudible] basically another surge and halt reopening. There are a number of multiple safety and Health Issues related to outdoor fitness. Indoor fitness can be controlled and can be safe. For the last two months, the city has hidden behind the state watch list now that we are in the state red tier, rated in the 10 indoor occupancy for gyms and Fitness Centers, you are deviating from state guidelines with no indication that gyms or Fitness Centers are a danger as long as guidelines are in place minimizing contact. [inaudible] Small Business and the health of San Francisco residents who you serve are impacted. Start applying some common sense to these strategies. Please start looking at San Franciscos Small Businesses as being a priority. Things can be done safely. We have reached out to oewd, department of Public Health, the Mayors Office, our board of supervisors. We continue to run into ro roadblocks and walls with these efforts to bring you up to speed in how we can control this and how we can provide Health Solutions to the residents of San Francisco. Thank you. Thank you for your comments, caller. Next caller, ive unmuted you. Can you hear me . Yes, this is michael ryan. Im calling in support of the testimony of Teresa Palmer concerning nursing home visits and visiting nursing home patients. Senior disability action and [inaudible] are both very upset at properly equipped visitors are not being allowed to visit patients inside nursing homes, especially when the stay is possible. Nursing homes frequently have such problems with understaffing and not being able to take care of everything and take care of nursing precautions, so its offenten presence of visitors which which fills in for things that that the staff simply dont have the time to do because of understaffing. So family visits are extremely important, to say nothing about the morale of both distraught patients and families. So San Franciscos policy about no nursing home visits has to change. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. The next caller, ive unmuted you. Can you hear me . Hi, yes, i can hear you. Okay. Great. Youve got two minutes. Thank you. So my name is [inaudible]. My name is shala, and i am a parent and Fitness Studio owner of ubalance. I wanted to say thank you for letting us open. As a parent and business owner, its honestly, like, a really happy day. We got word that we can reopen, we can go back to school to some extent. What i wanted to say is i feel like the public really needs to hear from the mayor and supervisors and Health Officials that were not just reopening because theres been pressure from a federal level, from trump, from newsom or some protests at city hall. A lot of people think this is political, and theres a lot of internet trolls, saying the mayor is just giving into political pressure. I think we need to spread the word how much work youve put in, how much work Small Businesses have been in preparing for this, and that its safe to go back to work and Small Businesses, and theres a plan, that were not just going to shutdown immediately. If theres one outbreak in one institution, that were going to work with that one institution under the plan for every single museum and school and Small Business. The public really just needs to be educated on this right now. Theres just a lot of people are very skeptical still and find this to be political for a number of different reasons, so if all of our politicians can let people know that its safe to return and months of planning have been put into this, and its not just random, it would be really helpful to Small Businesses. Thank you. Thank you very much for your comments. All right. The next caller, can you hear me . Ive unmuted you, caller. Hello . Yes, youre on. Youve got hi, sorry. Okay. Im calling about personal services. San francisco county, its in the red, while all the surrounding counties are in the purple, yet us and Alameda County are the only ones not offering indoor personal services. Honestly, i really hope this is an oversight or were going to change this soon because there seems to be really bad reasons to allow botox and [inaudible] tucks indoors but not salon services. The only thing i can find, some of these professions that are allowed, they tend to demand a fouryear or longer degree, and salons, barber shops, and personal services do not. I have to question, is there an educational bias going on here . Add weather and smoke and pedestrians, and it is impossible for many businesses to open under the current guidelines. So many of these businesses are failing right now and are so close to closing there are doors, yet it sometimes feels like San Francisco doesnt care or has prioritized other things instead of Small Business. You say youre trying to limit risk during this as much as possible, yet with other county offering these services and us not doing so, youre offering you were suggesting youre allowing people to travel for these services and up the risk that people will be infected because theyre going and exposing themselves to more people. Its just sad to watch whats happening to Small Business right now, specifically, the salon industry, where you move the goal posts over and over and over again. Weve almost opened three times okay. Thank you very much for your comments. All right. Caller, ive unmuted you. Can you hear me . Yes, you there . Yes. Youve got two minutes. Hi. My name is evan, and my wife and i own custom fit personal training and marketing company. Two days ago, the c. D. C. Has said the u. S. Has been badly affected due to covid from a lack of Good Nutrition and personal fitness. So my question is why are we not prioritized . How have you never provided any information to the public on how to eat healthy and examiner advertise to combat covid . There has been zero Scientific Evidence that Fitness Studios spread covid any more than open Retail Stores such as 2kgucci. Why are gucci determined to be essential but not us . Why are you okay with people Standing Shoulder to shoulder on municipal o or sharing an um 20 feet away . You say that is scientific, but that is suspect. You have not presented one site that justifies keeping our entire industry closed, even to the end of the coming month, as the mayor disclosed. Its my understanding the mission of the Health Department is to advise, promote, and protect the health of the public. If that is true, i must ask again, why are we still closed . We should be essential, and you should be doing all you can to help us open immediately to help people in need. Further, we can mitigate any sanitation issues better than any businesses than currently open. We have fans, hvacs, we can clean everything, and we can double the social distancing recommendations. Please use a riskbased decision effort and stop playing favorites. Thank you, the end. Hello. Caller, youve been unmuted. Hello. Can you hear me . Yes. I will stop the clock now. Hi. My name is rianna, and i own a pilates studio. We focus on teaching pilates to underserved and poor communities. I feel like my business is a un unicorn . Unicorn in San Francisco. I hold a ph. D. In kinesiology, and i have a masters in public research. I heard the comments about the gap that workers in physical therapy can open, and Fitness Studios cannot. I have clients who exited the physical therapy space and are trying to get healthier, but now im seeing them back slide because i cant personally train them. I cant take a 100, 200 pound cadillac outside on the street. For me, thats not a good solution, nor can i train or work out in bad weather. I urge you to rethink the methodology in which youre using to determine who can reopen. I believe that private studios can see students oneonone. I can be in a different room while teaching someone and looking at them from cameras. Give resources to someone. As a black women, its heartbreaking to see my other African American Business Owners closing, and with no Financial Aid whatsoever, and its hard to [inaudible]. Thank you very much for your comments. Hi. The next caller, i unmuted you. Can you hear me . Yes. My name is dave care, and im a board member of the Castro Merchant Association and a member of [inaudible] fitness. Were definitely grateful that our first mention of any reopening date for indoor fitness since april. However, noticeably absent from that announcement was Group Fitness like yoga, pilates, boot camps, spin, and cross fit, a huge section of San Franciscos Small Business community. Dr. Colfax and dr. Aragon are so concerned about sterilization and household commingling, how is it okay for worship . Nowhere on the site is indoor fitness mentioned at all, leaving more questions than answers. Nowhere does it say what capacity we will be allowed to reopen or what guidelines we need to follow. We have guidelines for pickle ball but not for businesses that are dying. The mayor said they are working with the Fitness Industry in reopening plans. In fact, our last meeting with dr. Aragon was in may, so it has provided d. P. H. With reopening guidelines, and we have heard nothing back from d. P. H. But crickets. We need d. P. H. To work collaboratively longterm with us so Business Owners can decide to stick it out or pack it up and leave the state. San franciscos dying Fitness Industry cannot depend on Daily Press Conference announcements. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Caller, i just unmuted you. Can you hear me . Yes, i can. Thank you. Okay. Great. My name is deedee [inaudible] and im the owner of San Francisco institute of fitne fitness and cosmetology. We fall under the department of consumer affairs, and our main goal is to prevent the disease of spreading diseases or causing harm to our guests and also ourselves. So it is outlandish and really offensive, actually, that with our hundreds of hours of health and Safety Training which includes anatomy, physiology, disinfection measures, that you think we should be standing on the curb. Theres no way i could put my students in front of my school. Also, it doesnt make sense that you could go to the dentist, Plastic Surgeon and have your lipps plumped, but i can have no students in a School Setting practicing on a mannequin head. I appreciate the efforts, and that everyone is working so hard, but this solution for Adult Education and this solution for salons, bars, barber shops, is unacceptable. Were going to see maybe 20 people max in a day. Thats extreme if were doing 15minute haircuts. We can find more people walking into a starbucks, target, or Something Like that. We need to be considered low risk, we need better guidelines. We want to follow health and safety guidelines, and we want to protect ourselves, as well. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Commissioners, there have been a few more hands that have been raised, so give me a second to find them. Okay. So caller, youre unmuted. Hi. My name is tracey sylvester. I am the owner of e. H. S. Pilates in San Francisco. We are a legacy business and have been operating in the Mission District for 28 years. Many of our clients come to us for rehabilitative therapeutic conditions. We like many businesses want to reopen and under the safety of doing so in phases. We have been closed since march 13. Pilates is a form of low impact exercise that aim to see strengthen muscles while improving posture sand flexibility. The city has applied a onesizefitsall model to our operating sector. We now have clear understandings how to model our services to match physical therapy offices and request consideration to have our rablth tiff offices to fall within these d. P. H. Reopening rehabilitative offices to fall within these d. P. H. Reopening guidelines. Weve worked with Johns Hopkins Risk Mitigation protocols to make necessary changes to our facilities and operations to make our environment low risk. We have adopted a four pillar Stage Program to increase Public Awareness and internal operations. We have upgraded our facility with an updated ventilation systems, avoiding automatic stations to eliminate touch points and automatic fixtures in bathrooms and washing stations. Please do not [inaudible] shared space transmission your times up. Sorry. Thank you very much. Looks like weve got two more speakers. Hi. Can you hear me . Yes. Weve got you on the phone. Id like just to reiterate what ive heard so far. Gyms are local. Were neighborhood based, and we can run just as safe as the businesses that are currently open while at the same time we help people improve their health. The state has allowed us to reopen at 10 capacity, yet our city officials are choosing to destroy this essential industry along with the livelihoods of the fitness professionals who have dedicated their lives to the health of our members. Our citys Small Business is dying under your watch, and we havent received any assistance. Its time to correct this misstep immediately. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you for your comments. And i believe we have one more. Lets see. Where is it . Yes. All right. You are unmuted. Hello, sir. Hi. Yes, i can hear you. Please begin. Hi. My name is sean shaw, a resident of an apartment complex with hundreds of market units. Im calling to address Resident Safety during ongoing construction. Specifically, id like to state that department of building infections hasnt enforced any guidelines. The residents have been exposed to multiple safety risks. Weve had multiple renovations occurring without permits and without the watch of a department of building inspect officer. Id like to request that more attention be given to empowering the department of building enforce enforce covid safety compliance, and if thats not possible, create capacity for the department of Public Health to step in and enforce safety orders. Thank you. Thank you very much. That is all the Public Comment that i see. Thank you all for for your comments. Commissioner green, i think you might have yeah. I just want to thank the members of the public for your comments and remind you that were not able to respond at the moment, but that we truly appreciate your input and perspectives and certainly take them seriously. We certainly appreciate your time and your commitment. I believe its now time for the commissioners to make comments or ask questions. Yes. It looks like commissioner girado has a question. Yes, i do have a question now on this excellent School Reopening presentation, and i would like to echo commissioner greenes comments on the enormous amount of work and detail that you have so thoughtfully put into this. My question is with the waivers that you have put in i think it was 53 waivers, im assuming those are private or Charter Schools that are requesting the waivers. What is the your thought with the coordination of the San Francisco Unified School District for their reopening . Thank you for that question. Thats an excellent question. The letter of intent and the Application Form is for all schools, including San Francisco unified. The San Francisco Unified School District, which we meet with weekly and have open lines of communication with met frequently over the summer and had a series of town halls and then also presented at their own board of ed and has decided to do Distance Learning. Im not clear on their decisions on when that would change, and that really is a decision for the San Francisco Unified School District and their board of education, but we meet with them weekly and we are in frequent communication, and they know of all of the health and safety guidance that we have offered and are extremely appreciative of that and included it in all of the protocols that they have in place. They are still offering quite a few services, such as Distribution Sites for those in need. They have got Technology Pick up and dropoff, and so they do have enough interaction with the public where theyve had to employ a number of our health and safety protocols, and thats but its its really up to the board of ed to move forward with that decision. Okay. I appreciate it. So its basically out of your hands, what you can do in educating and partnering with the School District. Our prophecies are open to all schools, including San Francisco unified. Okay. Thank you. I just get the questions multiple times, and the concern, again, the haves and the have nots, and its an ongoing concern. I think again for all of your hard work. Thank you. Other questions or comments . It looks like [inaudible] had a comment or question, commissioners. I didnt mean to cut you off, commissioner green. No, i didnt see commissioner guillermos hand up. Oh, okay. Lets start with commissioner guillermo, since you saw her hand up first. I apologize. Thank you. I dont have a question, but i just wanted to reinforce the need for Community Information to the public and to all of the stakeholders that are affected, that all of those affected, as well. It seems as if we have not had an opportunity to focus on the kind of communication with the different stakeholders not just as to whats changed and whats studied, the rationale and the education thats requested to understand why guidelines are such as they are, why some guidelines affect some groups and not others. And i know things change very quickly, but language and communication is absolutely important for the public to be able to understand and to work with city leaders to keep San Francisco safe and San Franciscos residents safe from the impacts of covid19. I just want to enforce to the department that we have an ability to oversee and to really emphasize that the kin of communication panels and methods that need to be put in place as a priority. Thank you, commissioners. Other questions or comments . Al has his hand up. Who does . Commissioner chow. Okay. Thank you. Yes, thank you. I think all the comments made today have been very helpful, and i know staff and dr. Aragon particularly has also emphasized the fact that theyre aware that increasingly theres a need for improvement in the communications. Everyones been very busy putting this out, but the logic doesnt come out as clearly, as commissioner guillermo said. It gives thoughts and pause to people, and given the fact that were now moving towards opening things, and it would appear that even if we were talking about some of the indoor personal services, it would appear that that is really moving we can understand for making sure that the first block doesnt create another problem before moving into the next block because thats sort of a lesson that we learned earlier this year. I wanted to just change the topic just for a moment in terms of also theyre looking at and another aspect of our pandemic, and that is to be sure that were heard a report and have seen the reports on, of course, the latino population, and the offer that we hear all the work going on and the success if we are moving in that direction hopefully in order to try to assist the latino population to be able to control the endemic the pandemic. Weve heard earlier about how weve been working with the Homeless Populations and how weve gone there, and weve also been quite concerned about the nursing home problem. Were well aware that the success of laguna, for example, with its very large population, certainly, its a lesson about solitude on the Residents Health has been very positive, and i know that the Health Department is working on trying to find solutions that would not jeopardize what is currently a very high risk population. So i understand, and i think that its a matter of additional communication to try to work out how that can be done. I think another area that i would like to hear about and i was talking about before is how well we are doing with the s. R. O. S. I think that was a big achilles heel in singapore, and they had something similar to s. R. O. S, and they might be more congregate. That became sort of the undoing of the success in singapore. I wouldnt like to see that happening here with this population. It appears that we are having very appropriate protocols to work with it, and i think it would be very nice to be able to hear how well were doing in that other very high risk population as a presentation of some sort, so that would be a request that id like to make. Commissioner, ive noted that. Thank you very much. Commissioner green, youre muted. Im sorry. Yes, sorry about that. Any other comments or questions from the commission . So on director colfax, would you like to say a few words on what the commissioners had to say . Well, thank you, commissioner green. So thank you, commission, for your comments and very much appreciate the Public Comments, and just to reiterate, we are continuing to focus on slowing the spread of the virus while we balance the need for multiple reasons to gradually reopen San Francisco. We know that there are key Health Aspects to the pandemic that certainly go beyond the direct effects of covid19 itself, which is one reason we prioritized education as a component today. I also wanted to comment with regard to the information in this rapidly changing environment. I hear the need for clarity, and when it is available, we will do everything we can to communicate it as effectively as possible. Youll recall dr. Bennetts presentation at the last Health Department meeting, this work is being done at the Health Department, but theres a broader approach across covid commands, which is multiple departments working together, and we do have a joint Information Command Center there, and we will continue to coordinate and work with them to get as much information as youve asked for as quickly as possible, and then to address the concerns raised in commissioners comments, i can certainly work with the Commission President and Vice President and secretary to ensure that we bring back presentations per your request. Thank you. Thank you so much, director colfax, and again, thanks to everyone for your thoughtful and eloquent comments. Theyre very much appreciated. I think, mark, is the next item general Public Comment now . Yes. Is there any general Public Comment . So i im not seeing any, but folks, if youd like to make general Public Comment, you can press star, three to raise your hands. Theres a few. Were postponing item number 10. Were trying to make sure this meeting doesnt go too late, so i apologize for the inconvenience for that. Weve got one hand. Give me one second. Paul, ive unmuted you. Can you hear me . Yes, hello. Yes, please begin. Youve got two minutes. Yeah. Id just like to raise some concerns to the Health Commission about the importance of taking you know, not just focusing on covid19. While certainly, you know, covid19 is important, and it does need to be addressed, i think the General Health of san franciscans need to be taken into account, and so there are other issues that need to be considered, Like Mental Health and housing, and then a lot of these restrictions that are being imposed due to covid19 [inaudible] many people are difficulty for a long time accessing their physicians, and certainly now, in Mental Health is a major concern. So i would encourage the Health Commission to also take into account other factors that are important to the general San Francisco population, not just covid19 and address these other issues, too. Give me a second to unmute you. Hi, caller, you are unmuted. Hi. Can you hear me . Yes. Youve got two minutes. [inaudible]. Yes. Yes. So given that the facilities have not been open and wont be open [inaudible] until at least next year, the rent doesnt go down. Its not like it costs a lot of money to maintain the pools, the hot spas, the gyms. You dont spend any money to maintain these things, but the rent doesnt go down. Hi. I dont know if your Public Comment is over. Okay. That is the end of general Public Comment. General Public Comment . Yes, we are. So the next item is the finance and Planning Committee update. Just a quick update from commissioner chung on the updates. Yes. The finance and Planning Committee meet briefly, and we have three items that we are requesting the commission to approve. Actually, you mentioned that earlier already about the impact of covid on the latinx community, and one of caescontracts is when you see the consent one of the case contracts is when you see [inaudible] very timely. And in addition, we have a short discussion about, like, what what we like to see in terms of the finance and Planning Committee, and and we were saying that one of the things that, you know, we wonder sometimes is that whats whats do these investments what kind of, like, Health Outcomes do these investments need . And so we are going to try to also get, like, some of these moderations from staff so we can at least have a fuller story to tell, you know, about the work that were doing. And with that, thi move that w move onto the consent calendar for us to approve. Commissioners, this is item 7 on your calendar. [inaudible] you can discuss it individually, otherwise, you can approve the consent calendar all at once. Do we need to review everything right now or has everyone reviewed it in advance . Hopefully, theyve reviewed it in advance. Are there any comments or questions about the action item . So move to adopt the consent calendar. Is there a second . Ill second. [inaudible]. Okay. It looks like you should have it no garrett, maggie, were not hearing you if youre speaking now. It looks like youre muted. Ive unmuted you. Hopefully can you hear me now . Yes, we can hear you. Okay. Thank you. Maggie rykowski, and im here with our deputy director, garrett chadfield. Garrett served as the acting director on ocpa while i was on assignment at laguna honda, so hes with me here today, and hell be able to assist me with answering any questions that you may have. So our executive summary, want to start, you know, with also the privacy and affairs, we go by ocpa, had to adjust to [inaudible] while simultaneously addressing the covid19 emergency. In response, ocpa adopted the operations of d. P. H. While continuing to protect the integrity of the department. [inaudible] to cover all Service Areas and to establish an operating procedure. We established a dedicated [inaudible] in december 2019. This committee provides compliance activities to the d. P. H. Executive staff. The other two areas are revised audit protocol and increased privacy monitoring, well cover a little bit later in the presentation. Just want to show you our organizational chart, and as you can see where on the far right, that is where ocph fits on the organizational chart, and next, this is the ocph organizational chart. So im going to start with the compliance program. Compliance program conducts operations and activities ethically and with the highest level of integrity. The goal of the program is to practice and promote good favor and avoid conduct that may cause financial or reputational harm to d. P. H. Our program deals with fraud, waste, and abuse, and it should not be confused with compliance from quality that deals with compliance from regulations or standards of care. Were dealing with fraud, waste, and abuse. We have not paid any compliance regulated fines to regulators in fiscal year 1920, however, we did have some paybacks, and these were due to complaints with errors. We have seen a year to year decline in the amount of money that d. P. H. Has returned to payers for disallowed complaints. We are hoping to continue this trend by our active monitoring of claims, documentation to prevent the submission of claims with errors, so we have gone down quite a bit in the last three years. At the beginning of the fiscal year, we do provide or conduct a Risk Assessment and then develop a work plan so we know what areas were going to focus on for the year. For fiscal year 1920, for the three main definitions, vsfq, laguna honda, and population health. These are the areas that we had m monitored and now that were into the second month of our new third month of our new fiscal year, we have completed the work assessments for 2021 and these are the areas that were currently monitoring for compliance. For Behavioral Health, our complains program is tasked with ensuring the Mental Health plan integrity with our contracted and Civil Service providers. We perform we perform scheduled provider audits to make sure they meet plan requirements related to documentation and claims. Im going to have garrett is going to tell a little bit about our revised audit protocol because we did have quite a bit in our disallowed public claims because we did revise our allowed protocol. As maggie said [inaudible] because we are the Mental Health plan, so our job is to make sure that our providers are entitled to the claims that they present and get paid for. So because there was somewhat of an increase or we saw that trending, were going to focus on the audit and fraud elements, and were working with the department of Public Health to move that over to the quality side. We hope to be able to do more audits that we had, although covid did interrupt us this year. Because of the streamlined tool, well be able to identifiidentify claims that are invalid or disallowed. We are providing a corrective measure based on a percentage basis to the providers who will then have to report their activities to the Compliance Committee and then well go back and rereview them in three or sixmonth with intervals, we sixmonth intervals, depending on how they did, which is a change. The idea is to have a closer eye on those providers to make sure that the claims they submit are theyre entitled. Right. And then just to note that the audits were suspended in march of 2020 through the end of the fiscal year due to Covid Health Emergency because these are audite audits that you do onsite, so these were suspended, but they have since resumed. For privacy, we work with all Service Lines to prevent any risks or hazard to security in the confirmation of personal data. In fiscal year 1920, we did not pay any fines or penalties related to privacy breaches. So this this slide shows our number of privacy incidents, our nonreportable breaches and recordable breaches. We take all public incidents very seriously but its still a privacy breach. So we take all of these very seriously. As you can look at the the location, it has brokendown to all our areas where the privacy breach has occurred, and these are report for those that are reported, its either going to be reported to the California Department of Public Health, the department of Health Care Services, and the office of civil rights. It depends where that breach occurred. This slide here shows you the type of breaches that we had, and the three top were the unauthorized verbal disclosure of Health Information, Health Information given to the another patient or wrong person, and then unauthorized photos and videos. The unauthorized photos and videos, that was due to the laguna honda incident. This is a yeartoyear comparison, and just show you this slide because the number of reportable breaches increased from fiscal year 1819 to 1920 while the number of total incidents remained approximately the same, so were taking a very close look at the what we can do to mitigate our privacy breaches. One of the areas that we monitor really closely is appropriate access to the medical record. We have deployed an epic tool called break the glass, which is is a record can be identified as confidential or sensitive. Once thats marked as such, employers who are not identified as part of the Health Care Team must break the glass by identifying who they are and the reason for accessing the record. As you can see, weve done an enormous amount of reviews, and im very happy to report from all of our reviews and investigations, there were no reportable breaches discovered on the break the glass reviews. Data sharing is another area of our privacy program. Our data shares agreements allow for d. Data sharing agreements allow d. P. H. To share information with data vendors and partners as well as relevant city agencies to coordinate care and services. We work very closely with contracts, i. T. Security, and the City Attorneys office to protect d. P. H. S interest and define the use and scope of our protected Health Information. And i do want to address or point out, for the if you look at the chart of the spec deviation, that is specification deviation request. We had 91, and that has to do with requests for maybe Certain Software or encryption bypass, thirdparty email, things of that nature. Were continuing to monitor our data sharing very, very closely. Our Whistleblower Program, o. C. D. Reviewed complaints from whistleblowers as well as received directly. We conduct investigation and provide a report that either substantiates the report with the corrective action or does not substantiate the allegation. Findings of both the complaint and the fiendings are confidential. We investigation all allegations, and we as you can have a complaint that has several allegations, so thats why the number of allegations are actually higher than the number of complaints that we received. I know there was a question as to how did does d. P. H. Compare to other city departments, and the you know, we do have more whistle blow blower complaints than any other city department, however, we are the largest city department, and we also have a very skilled workforce. Our workforce is very accustomed to looking at guidelines, policies, procedures, regulations, so they can identify when something just doesnt look right. Weve done a lot of outreach and training to tell staff, if you see something that looks different, tell someone, and that works. They do tell someone. The Controllers Office will be completing their annual report within the next couple weeks within and that will compare all city departments, so ill make sure that get a copy of that to mark so that can be distributed to the commissioners. And that slide shows the year yea yeartoyear comparisons of the allegations and the types of complaints that we received. And so educational outreach, we really try to be a resource for our staff. All of our staff and partners need to complete the annual training for their compliance and privacy. They complete their confidentiality statement on an annual basis, and they signed that they read and understand the code of conduct. During the fiscal year 1920, they revised our website and replaced it with a more friendly, user friendly site because this really is a staff and a resource and tool for staff. And our code of conduct. You know, our code of conduct, we have worked very hard on the code of conduct. I started as the director in 2017, and our code of conduct was two pages. Its now 21. Its a very comprehensive document and really a guide for employees on appropriate conduct. During the fiscal year, we worked with the office of health the office of Health Equity to add respectful behavior into the code of conduct. And since thats one of our core values, the code of conduct was a very appropriate document for that to be added. So we now have a very comprehensive document, and it includes respectful behavior. So looking ahead, since d. P. H. s inceptid. P. H. S inception in 2015, we have strived to be better every year. As we move to fiscal year 2021, well continue to work to assist d. P. H. As it responds to the unprecedented demands of covid19 Public Health emergency and to continue to reach all of d. P. H. Service areas. And with that, commissioners, that ends my presentation, and we can take any questions that you might have. Thank you for the report. Its really incredible progress in the five years since youve started, and we really appreciate the analysis and really the detailed work youve done. I believe there may be one Public Comment, is that right, mark . Yes. So i have unmuted you. Can you hear me . Yes. Okay. Youve got two minutes. Okay. Good afternoon, commissioners. My name is dr. Derek kerr, a whistleblower. Page 16 of the annual Compliance Report shows the number of whistleblower reports filed last year. There were 145 whistleblower complaints. Whats missing is the results of your investigations. How many were substantiated, partially substantiated or not substantiated . We dont know because outcomes are not disclosed. Providing outcomes shows that you are conducting legitimate and effective investigations and that you take whistleblower reports seriously. Withholding outcomes casts doubt on the integrity of your investigative processes, and that concealment discourages employees from reporting violations through you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Commissioners, comments, questions . I dont see any hands. Do you, mark . Looks like commissioner chow hayes his hand up. I so just had a quick comment, because i think i missed it on the Behavioral Health audits. Did you say that although you suspended it, you were going to complete them or you werent going to complete the audit because it looks like you stopped them partway through . So we did stop them in march when covid19 hit, and we decided that was appropriate given our response from our partners to the community. We restarted them this month, so we just restarted them as of the first of august. Okay. Thats good, because i and perhaps theres really ways to do it where oh, i guess you figured out how to do it safely because i noted even like with some of the other regulatory agencies, theyve now figured out how to ask for information ahead of time. Yeah, i answered that question sorry. But to answer that question for you, they are being done remotely. So we can go into avatar and pull the information we need remotely without having to risk exposure to people. Okay. And i do have a comment concerning the Whistleblower Program before dr. Kerr even made his comments, which is one that ive made in the past any way in terms of when we do see numbers and im glad you have the comparison of two different years. We dont have any different outcomes. What are the results of the findings, and then thats a way that we would be able to track it, and i think that that would actually enhance the report . Thank you. We will look into include that go in the report. Thank you. Commissioner guillermo. Okay. I also had a question about the health services. Were these primarily related to these are audits of of fraud. Are they audits related to fraud or other issues . Its a very significant increase, and even though you have indicated that youre going to increase the number of audits and implement corrective action, its unclear what those corrective actions are focused on, so just a little more detail would be helpful, given that significant increase from year to year. Sure. So in the audit range, we didnt find any indications of fraud. Forms were unsigned and stuff like that. The corrective action is going to depend on what we find in a specific claim of an individual. So lets say if we have an individual where 15 of their claims were disallowed, we would develop a plan of action focusing on the areas that were problems for them. And then, we htheyd monitor, report back to us, and wed go from there. And just another sort of followup question there. If it turns out that there is data that shows that there is more disallowances from providers that are widespread, would the corrective actions im just sort of wondering how you how you might determine what those corrective actions might be if this is something widespread versus limited to a few providers. And you dont have to answer now, but it is a question that, again, given the increase and then, sort of related to that, it may be that if its widespread that there is something sort of structurally at issue with how these providers report or the information or so on versus something that, you know, any particular provider is doing wrong. I dont know it well enough and understand well enough how these audits are conducted. But it would be interesting to find out whether this is just an aberration or something more systemic or structural. Thank you. Any. Okay. Thank you. I see commissioner christians hand. Thank you, dr. Green. Im new to this, so i may not understand a little bit. Can you explain to me what the audit entails . Do they include the guidelines of the contract th of the services that theyre supposed to provide . Is there any quality or analysis outcome that the person who is conducting it knows how to do it . [inaudible] so primarily, the clients like, are the claims valid . The quality piece is assessed by quality or regulatory with throughout the department, really. Part of why we did readvise this tool is there were some quality elements that have sorted migrated into the compliance review that were not really qualified to assess. So im working with Behavioral Health to try to have that move back into a Quality Assessment for people who cant assess that appropriately. So the quality of care isnt really compliance focused, its more about the validity of the claims that were paying to the provider. So its kind of a dual universe; theres somebody on the same kind of schedule that youre working on, looking at the qualitative aspects . I cant answer for quality or what their schedule it, but that is handled separately. And my second question is in the Behavioral Services context, but it may be also apply to others. Do your audit results come into play explicitly when contracts are presented in future years or renewal or contracts by the same provider, and would we as the commission when were going over that, does that data get presented to us . Thats a good question. Im not involved with the contractual side of things, however, that information is available to whoever is considering the contract, and it certainly could be provided. So i cant really answer that question because i dont know. Well, we can find out for you. Thank you. And at thif i may, commissi christian, ill follow up with the office that deals with contracts, and on the finance side, before it comes to the committee, there is a portion that includes monitoring. My assumption i used to work in that arena, is they would review that as part of the package, so ill get that information to you, as well as the thing with garrett and maggie. Thank you, mark, and thank you to the presenters for this information. It was a very thorough and well done presentation from my perspective, so thank you. Great. Thank you. Any other questions or comments from the commission . I agree, this is really a welldone presentation. And i believe you also supplied us with some information. I guess i only had one question have a comment. My question is can you give us a sense with how many incidents in the fraud side of things, its really intricate and confusing coding. There was mention about modifiers, for example, that can be used in one situation but not others. Can you just give us an overall sense, like, if you had the perfect coding advice, and if you tend to remove that from the issue, whats really left behind . In other words, it seems like most of the time, if not nearly all of the time, the Services Rendered are really properly coated. Can you just give us a sense of this, how many is coding properly and how many you have to confront an audit work carefully . Yeah. With the coding side of things, its generally confusion or not understanding how to code. Most of the times, the providers themselves make an assignment code, and theyre not coders themselves, but theyre providing care, and the assignment code, there are some reviews that Health Information management may review the code, but not on all claims. So thats why were starting to work with a vendor to provide education on the coding piece because its usually just errors. Its not purposeful, its not they dont really understand that oh, medical necessity didnt really meet that criteria. So theyre focused on care, but with we do want to give them education so they can understand how to do that, as well. And then, my last question, wou do you understand how epic might clear up these prompts and problems with coding because i guess their options there. I guess my question is, would you break the glass i know every time you have to check a record at ucsf, i have to break the glass, and one of my 44,000 patients that have gone there for care, that might be part of it, and wonder if were able to understand how epic might or might not actually create incidents that really dont exist because its either Cross Services or you see people looking at a county record or Something Like that. I wonder if you could comment on the whole epic universe. Yeah. Thats the scene we have break the glass, its somewhat overused, we say, from our assessment. There are records that break the glass put on that dont necessarily need to have it. Like, yourself or another provider is constantly breaking the glass or a Billing Analyst needs to break the glass to go in. Now that we have this data, when it first was implemented, we wanted to just understand it, so thats why we started these reviews. Now that we have this data, we are going to try to work with epic to see if theres some kind of criteria when break the glass is applied. And more importantly, the accurate identification of the care team, which is Difficult People because move around. There theres a lot of moving pieces, so its hard to 100 identify who accesses the records, but we want to minimize that because 44,000 events is a lot, absolutely. This is clare horton, c. M. O. Network. Im sorry to butt in, but i wanted to let everyone know were starting the data and budget subcommittee of the epic leadership team, and i think thats going to really be able to work closely with you to look at these types of incidents and use epic platform as commissioner green is saying to help us without creating more work. So thank you so much for your presentation, and i look forward to working with you on that. Yes, thank you. Director colfax, did you have some final thoughts on the compliant report . Yes. I just really wanted to thank maggie and garrett for their work on this. This is historic compliance has not always been a strength of Health Departments, and its just such a key part of our system. Maggies really built and expanded the work, and dr. Hammer, our ambulatory care director, wanted to clarify some of the questions that commissioners had, commissioner green, if i could pass it over to dr. Hammer. Absolutely. Good afternoon, commissioners. Can you hear me . Yes. Good. I just wanted to add onto garretts response to commissioner christians question about compliance and looking at compliance. Behavioral health has a number there are a number of audit programs mostly through medical, and so we have an annual eqro. Its external quality review organization. Its a very expensive weeklong process with visitors, and they do a very involved audit looking at quality both of the Mental Health system and for our drug medical organized delivery system. And if you could like, we could put together a summary of the various audits that Behavioral Health and other sections of the Health Network participate in on a yearly or, in some cases, bi or triannual basis. Yes, that would be great. Thank you. And weve just completed our process, and our Behavioral Health teams really does an excellent job on that. So well pull together a summary for you, commissioner christian. Thank you very much. I think we would all love to see that, and mark, if you could distribute that to all commissioners, that would be welcome. Of course. Okay. Seeing no other commissioners comments or questions, well move onto item 9, d. P. H. Human resources update. Yes. Thank you for all the members of the public and staff that are still with us. Its a late meeting for us, so we appreciate that youre all still here. Mr. Brown, let me know if you need any help with sharing your screen. Yes, i do need help. Can you hear me . Yes. Hold on, hold on. Oh, there it is. All right. Can you see the slide now . Yes, sir. Ga good afternoon, commissioners. It seems like its been a long time. Ive only been here since november. I know we have a new commissioner on. Susan christian, thank you. Nice to meet you. I want to be brief today, because i think this needs to be a report where i would like to have all of my direct rep t reporters come and do a presentation directly to you in all areas. But this is that were going to give you a little bit information, if not update you all the way to today, i think some of the information that youre going to see today is only up to may or Something Like that. But i have some more answers to your specific questions. I think commissioners already have six questions that ill try to address. I am the chief Information Officer for the department of Public Health, and i started in november 2019, and in november 2019 its not advancing for me. Try using the arrows. Yeah, i was. Its not doing anything. I got it now. The page down is doing better than using the arrows. So in 2019, we had the option of adding Occupational Safety and health to Human Resources. I think its a good addition to h. R. It doesnt help us in terms of hiring, but it helps us in having a safe work environment, ergonomics that we have in terms of employees. This report that im presenting today is going to give you some update for 1920 regarding our merit and recruitment, options program, operations, a little bit about our payroll and our Occupational Safety and health and people inspection. And finally, i want to talk a little bit about our equity within h. R. And some of the plans that i have moving forward. So we know that in november, when i first came, we had a problem with hiring. But after i came in november, we had a problem with covid19, and we had an urgent need to do more hiring faster. What youre seeing now is as of may 2020. We had 149 nurses. Its now closer to 200 nurses that we hired, and were still hiring as we go forward. And i think as of the last report that i came before you, we said we had gotten it down to 20 vacancies in the nursing field. You took me at my word when i said that we would fill those 20 vacancies, but as the pandemic turned around, it went back up to 50. We are still hiring, so that number is not 50 anymore. Its more like 30, with you theyre in the but theyre in the hardertobill areas of specialty that are harder to bill. And we continue with our expedited hiring plan, but were not using the Moscone Center doing hiring events, were trying to incorporate it into the whole process as we go forward. Were using our eligible list, and we can do that because its a continuous posting, and we can update this list any time were hiring. Were looking at converting some of our p103s that are interested in going into permanent positions at the same time. So if we look at the nonnursing kinds of classifications during this covid response, there were like 28 classifications that we had to do fast recruitment at the same time were doing nurses, as well. I think there was an attachment i dont know if you have it. I dont have it right now, but it was an outline of what those classifications were, and there were a total of, like, 59 vacancies. And these positions were, i would say frontline, as well because we need them for patient care assistance or food service or additional port ares; things that we needed to help in response as we were moving forward with the covid response. There were a total number of applications at 6,821. Thats not the total for the whole fiscal year. If you look at the note there, the fiscal year was 16,256. For the previous year, it was higher for the total number of applications received, and the reason why the number is different is because when we got into covid19, we were able to use Emergency Declaration by the mayor to activate old eligible hires in important positions that we needed to hire and fill quickly. So we didnt put out new postings and take in a lot of applications, so its understandable that the total number of applications did go down. Were also looking to fill our director of Behavioral Health for Mental Health services, this 1166 of the classification. We are currently in recruitment right now. Were going to be working with the berkeley Search Consultants leading the search. They are now going to pick up the ball and keep going for us, shall we say. We have my understanding is the most current number is about 70 applicants that are deemed qualified, and we have more than 40 applicants that are qualified i think its 47 or Something Like that. The idea is to have this position filled or hopefully select the person by i think midoctober 2020. Thats ambitious, and i say that because we look at the calendar, and we are now real quickly coming up on november and december, which are the holidays. So even if we get a person in midoctober, im more hopeful that we will have the person on board before january 2021. If we get the person on board before then, with all the hoops they have to go through, the medical and maybe they have to give notice to their current job before they come on board, its going to be somewhere before that january 2021 date. In this particular slide, when we start looking at our rates ethnicity active employees, this is data that weve been collecting for the years in the past, and were looking at what happened in 2020. Whats important to me is the needle really isnt changing too much, but whats important to me, if you look at the two sections, that particular gray section is talking about people who did not want to disclose what their ethnicity was. So we dont know if its going to be equally distributed amongst all of the areas or not. But what i want to see in terms of works that we want to do, in terms of diversity and inclusion and, you know, what we have to do in terms of keeping our true north objectives, is see these numbers actually change and be reflective. And i think one of the questions the commissioners had is what is the actual work with the ethnicity of San Francisco, and what are we doing to hire them . Thats important, and ill get to that later, but if we want to change the hiring process and have a fair representation in the hiring process, these numbers are going to need to change, and they still havent. Weve still been doing the same type of hiring process where we do the hiring process and on and on and on, but theres many other ways that we can look at filling the vacancies faster, and ill talk more about that later. So when we look at hires by location its understandable. I already know theres going to be a Higher Turnover at zuckerberg, and its going to be lower at laguna honda. Im anticipating more hires in the Mental Health programs as we go forward, especially with our new hire, with the director, that will maybe give us a push in terms of getting those new hires done more quickly. When we look at retention, this and i know that this is one of your questions. When we looked at this, when i first saw this slide, i had a problem. But i was able to find out more data. You know, data is just as good as what you put in, and what i found out on the ambulatory care, if youre looking at the first section, it looks like there were 76 hires last year, and there were 41 people that we lost, but thats not accurate data. Based on the most recent information, actually, 63 are still employed. Three resigned, and one never joined, but nine are on boarding, so they actually have a 94 retention rate, so thats excellent for ambulatory care. Its just the data was faulty, but that is great numbers. But then, you look at zuckerberg, and this is where we still have a challenge in terms of the medicalsurgical area or in spsychiatry, a litte bit in emergencycritical care, ambulatory care at the hospital itself, and just a little bit im not too worried about laguna honda hospital because its usually a stable population. Theres a small turnover rate, but theres a small retention problem there. Im going to talk more about my plans on retention and what we can do moving forward, as well. When we move into our hreeo realm, there were a consistent number of claims filed, 84 total for last fiscal year and the fiscal year before that, but it was up from the third year prior, from 58. From my e. E. O. Officer, the actual composition in terms of the locations was very similar. It didnt vary in terms of numbers, in terms of location, so it wasnt fruitful for me to put another slide to show the difference. Its almost the same. I think that one of the questions from the commissioners was do we have more data, and ill get to those questions, and ill have some more answers for you. But let me keep going with the slides. I know its the end of the day, and were running long for everyone. In terms of the affidavit d. A. Requests, its not surprising that the majority of the a. D. A. Requests are coming from San Francisco general zuckerberg memorial hospital. But when you look at the fiscal year prior and the year prior to that, were not doing that bad. I was expecting to see a higher number, especially as we went into the covid response, and the number of people that may have said i need an accommodation based on either a Serious Health condition or whatever it is. This is not a seriously high number, but this is still a manageable number in terms of a. D. A. Requests. Im not upset about the 308. I think its still a relatively good number, and i think were still doing aok with that so far. This is where i have a problem. If you look at, across the board, the total percentage of discipline outweighs the total percent of population for both black and hispanic. Its just the opposite for everyone else, and this is what weve been talking about before the board of supervisors about, you know, people treated like theyre disciplined more, and the numbers actually show that. Were working to make those bars actually reverse. And as i go through this presentation, i do have some words that i would like to leave for you to think about, things that we can do in the future that we can look at in maybe trying to make a change in make a difference in this. We can look at the next slide, the key personnel actions. Were talking about, just looking at protectionary period probationary period. Youre looking at even if the numbers are low, the highest bar at zuckerberg is showing that its blacks. When you see written warnings, it seems to be asians, blacks, and whites that are in written warnings. But when you go all the way to dismissal, dismissal at zuckerberg, theres only blacks and asians that were dismissed. Laguna seems to be kind of consistent. You see three for filipino, but we also know last year there was a patient abuse scandal, and it did affect a number of people who were filipino. That may be why that number seems to be higher than the others. But i think that we still need to do more work in terms of where the disparity is in terms of blacks, asians not so much asians, but dispanics. It goes back to the other slide in terms of theres an offset bases on the amount of people that are in the workforce and the amount of discipline that goes along with that. So in terms of disciplinary, i have some suggestions that go along with that. What im heard from my chair perso person, rhonda simmons, the disciplines are for coming to work late and those kinds of issues. But releasing in probationary period, and i have some suggestions where we can talk more about that where we and im not saying h. R. Where we as a department need to think a different way, when we have a new person coming in, how do we make them feel successful in the workforce, other than plunking them down, sitting them down and saying, okay, let me give you the tools because your failure in probation is not only a reflection on you as a person but as me as a supervisor. Its not something that h. R. Can just put a program on paper and say you just do this, so well talk more on that. This particular next slide, when we talk about payroll, i had a problem of understanding the quarters, the first, second, and third quarters and why the numbers were going down, and so this didnt make any sense to me because the First Quarter would have been, lets see, july to september. So when we get to the last quarter, why is it going down . Well, when you talk about the july to september, i understand from payroll that when people are retiring, which they retire in june, that theres the lumpsum payments that go out in the First Quarter of the fiscal year. Thats why the numbers start going up there. When you get to the last quarter, this is now where am i . April to june it just so happened in the last fiscal year from april to june, we were hiring a lot more not entry level, but new nurses. They werent hired at the top of the range, they were hired at the lower of the range, so that explains why that number went down. It may have some other implications, as well, but today, that was the best explanation i got from payroll that made sense. When we look at employee compensation, this is a new one for h. R. I have little Historical Data that i can share with you, and im going to try to enforce that when we do the next report, i would like to have all my managers come and do a report and have a more thorough explanation about some of the problems that theyre having, some of the plans that theyre anticipating implementing, but in this particular case, we know that for Workers Compensation, there were 875 claims filed and 468 were defensible. And heres the amount we paid out in claims, but it was an increase of 6. 3 . Why . I have no data from osha at this point because they said they were just at the beginning of getting their data. They didnt have more information to actually give a more thorough report to you. So im hoping in december, if im coming back in december to report before you, that we would have more information to provide, especially for the Workers Compensation and such. 34 claims, 10 accepted, 17 documentation, and five denied and two under evaluations. Theyre talking about some of their accomplishments. Theyre redoing o. S. H. I know theyre reviewing documentation and going to different sites to make sure theyre in compliance in terms of social distancing, making sure that if they had open spaces, that there were some kind of way that we would mitigate that. But each site for instance, this is not to be confused with the Occupational Health and safety. Theres another function which is specific to, for instance, zuckerberg or laguna, which is not o. S. H. , its occupational i always get it confused. Occupational health and safety, they have a health and Safety Officer, which is different than Occupational Safety and health. Many people are asking o. S. H. To do something when it should be the Safety Officer coming out. One of the challenges that theyre having right now is their chaff seems to be leaving and taking other assignments. I dont know if thats because of burnout or if thats because of other reasons, so were still trying to research that and also trying to give them support in terms of filling their vacancies. I know of two people that are out right now, and one not working at the moment. So now, we go to our Workforce Development. They have done an excellent job in creating Training Programs last fiscal year, and were still working on doing some new. For instance, a training on managing remote teams during Uncertain Times or Effective Communications or diverse teams, advancing diversity, inclusion, and equity at d. P. H. , and theyve trained over 500 managers and staff last fiscal year, and theyre still continuing with that training and developing training. We will be also this is not on here, but we will also be working on our pulse survey. I know i had asked to delay it because we were in the middle of covid19, but i think its important to get that information to know where we were even in the midst of where we are. So i think that is going to be going out in october, the health survey, and we will be reporting on that. We have developed an h. R. Resource center. We have a website where people can go and get information on things coming up with department of Human Resources and Public Health department. If they dont see the email that came from d. P. H. , if they dont see the email that came out from me or grant, it should be on the website for them to access, and the phone center is taking phone calls from people, helping them access that stuff in the world of covid19. We have a biweekly news letter that goes out, as well. So heres where i get to be creative, and i welcome comments from you, as well. So some of the things that ive been working on to find ways that have a fair and equitable hiring process, its strange to me where we are using the same type of hiring process for every hire, and i think we could be more creative on that in terms of what we need. Some of the things that i things ive been talking about with the diverse Health Commission. If were using the data and the metrics to drive that, that would be a clear reason why we would use a promotion only exam process. I want to pmake sure that peope understand how to use it as a tool to start making the next level diverse and so on as we go forward. I want to talk about language that we put on announcements. For instance, if were looking for people that are going to be serving in a community lets say its the Latin Community latinx community, and we want to know this person in Behavioral Health, what is your Life Experience in working in this population, you dont have to be hispanic, but whats your Life Experience . Life experience means not only your work experience, but your Life Experience. What are you volunteering to do in this community . How do you relate to this population . When i think about this as the hiring manager, i need to think about different things. Not just because they did the best on the interview questions, im also thinking about how im going to diversefy my workforce, and whos the best person to put in the situation. When we do the exam, everybody thats on the eligible list thats qualified. Everyone thats reachable that just came before you is all on equal ground. So as a hiring manager, im thinking about how am i going to diversefy my workforce . How am i going to find somebody that can relate to the clientele that we serve . How can i make the best decision . So when i hire a person, i dont say im hiring a person because theyre latino, im hiring the person because theyre the best for that position. Im changing that conversation, and im having conversations to change policies so we can add something to our Job Announcement to change that, as well. The post referral process, it doesnt have to be based on the calculation of a score, because what you just do is you create another exam, and you lose a lot of people that are minority that dont know how to speak well or present themselves well, but they may be the best person for working in that community. And you have to say you, hiring manager or supervisor, have to have the call in what is the best fit rather than who got the highest score in the managing process. Those are some of the things that im thinking of. The other thing is we are now engaged in working on a new application application system. What is it called . Smart recruiter d. H. R. Has already adopted. They started their i guess their first meetings on friday and monday to launch it, and smart recruiters going to take over job apps. Some of the things that theyre asking is what do you want to see in the creation of this . And i think one of the questions that the commissioners had is how do we recruit for or how do we have recruitments to show that were hiring for lgbtq communities . And i think we dont do enough in the data gathering process to gather that data. And here is the opportunity to put something in so when were going through the entire application process not even hiring, just the application process, that they have the ability to disclose if they want to, that they are a member of the lgbtq community, and theyre looking for a job, and we can kind of keep track of that. The other thing is theres a person by the time of portia bumton, bumton, i think it is. She is the recruiter i think it came out from a directive from the mayor that she wanted d. H. R. To have a dedicated recruiter. I just listened to her presentation today. Shes very motivated and excellent, and shes getting most of the departments h. R. Staff to take best practices theyre setting up a centralized location where you can get recruitment information, find out where job fairs are, all kinds of good things are being put together as a tool for anyone who looks for recruitment. The next discussion is going to be how do we recruit in the will go go lgbtq community. Id like to hear more about that. We need to be more proactive in our department in engaging some of these activities. Here name you may meet him the next time we have our discussion, shivini mapp, and shes our recruiter. Also, developing this new system, they asked me about what about metrics and data and information . I said we are at the infancy stages of gathering that data, and we need to know what to do in terms of motivating, selection date, and Holding People accountable. We also have to hold people accountable. Im sorry. Im going on. I get very excited. Where it is not a matter of d. H. R. Or h. R. Coming up with a magic solution. We are going to hold people accountable who have that ability to do hiring, that, one, they are going to be responsible looking at their own metrics and deciding how theyre going to have a diverse workforce, and if theyre not doing it, theyre going to be asked, what did you do to effectuate change . What did you do to ensure that you have a Diverse Group . So im going to be involved with a subject Matter Expert in something that shows that you are actively making a change to do something and taking it as your responsibility to do that. You, not h. R. The hiring managers, they need to be involved. The second part is once we get people in, what do we do to make them successful . We have perceptorship programs. A perceptor should also be a mentor, and they should also be using it for the whole probation program, not just for the 12 or six weeks. What are we doing for that whole time to develop skills that are needs and successful . I strongly believe that the success rate of probationary employees is the onus of the supervisors or managers that are doing the hiring. How do we make them feel successful, how do we make them feel part of the organization as we go forward. Im going to stop there no, im not going to stop there. You had questions, and im going to see if i can answer your questions. The first question i had now, c can our e. E. O. Officer was not able to give me that information, but i did contact the department of Human Resources, and just as today, linda simon said that she can work with us in giving us more information in trying to prepare a better report in answer to that question. So i dont have it today, but i can work on that, giving you something. I think i just answered your question on that. Also, how do we track lgbt to ensure these groups are represented adequately, and i addressed that kind of in terms of whats coming up. I think we can also do our own surveys in part of whats coming up already, and that can be through our pulse survey or people that are interested in volunteering that. So and use that from the voluntary basis as to what people are providing as we look forward in terms of our recruitment to see what people are doing to prepare for that, as well. Are nurses and r. N. S who move to [inaudible] i think i understood the question. So the answer is, haha, we count the movements, called reassignment as retained. So its not counted as a vacancy. The vacancy count does not change with these movements. Its just a vacancy count by the department they moved from, but not the overall vacancy count. On four, were there any layoffs or furloughs reflected in the data, and i think that has to do with the ambulatory care data. So no, there was no layoffs or furloughs, and so i think i addressed that, and i think this question is okay to bypass. As we review the e. E. O. And a. D. A. Data, it would be helpful to know the location of each employee for context. My e. E. O. Manager says they do not collect data that way. Im going to look at some way to do that, but right now, we dont have the data to provide. Number six, as we review the personnel actions, which actions most commonly generate disciplinary actions, and i think i responded to that in terms of the interpersonalpersonal conflicts is more popular in terms of what we need to address. I do want to also add to that, d. H. R. Has a person of j. J. , and i dont remember her last name. She is the equity person for d. H. R. She is going to be working and i had wonderful conversations with her. She is going to be working on e a mediator programs, where departments have volunteers who want to go through this mediation process, and they will get a certificate once theyve been trained, and they will be dispatched to other departments to help resolve these interpersonal kinds of conflicts and these will help address issues coming out of e. E. O. Complaints that do not rise to the level of skrim napgs, but theyre personalality conflicts or some other type of conflicts moving on. Therell be a written contract of how theyre going to apply this, so of course, they only work if people agree to participate because they wont be forced to participate. But right now, were looking at possibly having people, maybe have two days not two days, two or three hours a week, or maybe two weeks relief time to do that if they agree to participate in this program, and were using existing staff, not new staff to do that as we launch the program. I dont know how soon shes going to get it off the ground, but thats in discussion right now. So thats all i have today for my brief presentation, so do you have any questions for me . Thank you so much for your energy and your analysis and your creativity and in particular the progress thats been made in just the short tenure that you and your team have been made. The progress is remarkable. We have to compliment you on your hiring successes that only a year and a half ago seemed impossible, and the diversity that youre spearheading is critical to us all. Its great that such energy came almost at the end of the meeting, and commissioner comments or questions oh, Public Comment, first. I dont see any hands. I want to remind folks on the Public Comment line, you can press star, three to raise your hand. All right. It looks like we dont have any Public Comment, but i do see commissioner chungs hand . Yes. Thank you, michael, for your presentation, and i think that it really is an eye opener for some of us, you know, to look at, you know, like some of the inequity, like, you know, in terms of the some of the disciplinary actions in terms of the some of the various racial ethnic backgrounds. I have a couple of questions. The first one is in the forprofit world these days, there seems to be a trend in creating, you know, like, a certain profession, and they call that either people culture or workplace cull enteture, an really look at, like, developing a strategy to i guess you know for lack of a better word, you know, to ensure, like, harmonies in organizatio organizations, you know, like from top to bottom. Would Something Like that [inaudible] i wouldnt even know how to ask it, yeah. So how do we address, you know, like that people culture aspect of it . You know, we talked a lot about, like, interpersonal conflict and, you know, like, different racial diversity, and i think that, like, you know, the elements like, that engaged, you know, like, staff in the more vigorous way is to really talk about culture, the differences in, you know, the total backgrounds and also, you know, how to create work cultures where everybody can work in harmony and hand in hand, so thats the first question that i have, and then, i have a second question. So i see you richard has joined me. I didnt know that you were going to be there. I dont know if you had some comments that you were going to make. But i know that our Workforce Development is actively working on courses, and theyre not necessarily going to be in person. I think were trying to develop doing some zoom meetings and expanding what we can do even in this in this time of covid19. And you may have some things some specific courses that you want to talk about. Richard is working in our Course Development team, and do you mind making some comments . Hi, mark, can you unmute me . Yes, youre unmuted. Thank you. Greetin greetings, commissioners. My name is [inaudible], and we take work culture seriously because employees are empowered when they are taken seriously. First, we provide training fore communication with diverse teams. We provide special trainings for managers in respecting and respect in the workplace. We consult with managers. We offer confidential consultation to managers to really help them understand their power and their responsibility towards creating a respectful and equitable culture, and this work has mostly you know, mostly been done in the past two years, and i think weve seen significant engagement h. R. Has seen significant engagement with its workforce where i feel like weve been able to win the trust of our employees, that h. R. Is here for you. We are a tiny team, and we are a mighty team, and we really thank michael in his leadership for understanding the role of just what h. R. Can do to advance a culture of respect and belonging. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, reecha. I think this leads to my second question. We are in such an unprecedented time right now, and a lot of workplace talks about, you know, at the the amount of stress, you know, employees are facing. Are we doing anything in particular to, like, really help with, you know, like, our employees to cope with, you know, the escalated stress because of, like, you know, external environments and also, you know, like, some of you know, these responses to covid, you know, which led people to start working from home and all these kinds of settings, yeah . So one of the things that i wanted to say, is because we had to reach out to e. A. T. , they are available 247. I did put out a memo in relation to some stressful event, where employees need to know that they can reach out and have someone to talk to 247. They dont have to go down to that office and do that. In terms of other other things, any suggestions, reecha, that we are working on . Absolutely. The first thing we focused on as covid came to San Francisco, and we entered shelter in place, is how do we address our new employees joining in place, especially those joining Frontline Services to understand how we have a trauma informed approach . We partnered with a trauma informed approach team, and moving ahead, we are actually creating a virtual instructor led training to our new supervisors are feeling well trained, not just looking at a staffing module but being in n interactive space where they can stop any kind of harm from trauma affecting them. Those are our initial efforts. We also continue to post resources from the Employee Assistance program on our share point site, and i can tell you that in our individual oneonone consultations with employees, i think we continue to address that stress as well by connecting them to the right resources and people as quickly as possible. [please stand by] learned a lot of lessons from this period. Any other questions or comments from commissioners . It looks like commissioner christian has her hand up. Yes, thank you. I want to say thank you for this rich and thought provoking and upbeat in a very important substantive way that this presentation is about the work that you are doing at the department. And im a City Employee so my mind you talk about what youre doing here and i think about my and my colleagues are experiencing, wondering how much is centralized at d. P. H. Central. And how much is how much is free standing. But i want to thank you for your energy, both of you, and the things that youre doing. I dont know how often these update comes but i think that especially at a time that were trying to address systemic inequality and to create and break those are affecting our community and increase Peoples Health the health of the people in the city and county of San Francisco. Therestheres equity that youe trying to nourish within the department and the ability of the department and the city to care for the health of the people in San Francisco, especially those populations who have experienced and continue to experience a lot of disproportionate lack of attention and resources and very poor health. And so this is so important. And, i mean, i would be interested in hearing updates and just hearing from you about what youre doing and what youre thinking on a quarterly basis. But i dont know how often these presentations tend to take pla place. I would be glad to come back and to do work in the next quarter. I dont have you on the calendar, but we can talk with the Commission Leadership and see what we can do. Thank you. And another question that i had was how much of the work that you talk about with respect to managers and higher the people that doing the hiring, how much is mandatory for the managers . I dont know how much training the city requires people who step into that role of management to have and how much accountability they have to show for the things that have happened within the areas that theyre responsible for. I would hope that across the city and certainly in this department that there would be a pretty robust in engagement betn those who are responsible for others and the careers and the work experiences for people who work on their teams. Thats a great question. So i dont know if grant even knew what i was going to say today. I think that some of those points but it is something that is being felt citywide. You know that we are losing our director of Human Resources. And we will getting a new director of Human Resources hopefully still focused in what we need to do and going in that route. I have already started engaging in conversations with, lets say, the big i think theyre called the big five or the big six departments to talk about issues, diversity and where we need to go and the data and the metrics and the things that we need to look at. I have already started conversations with the Civil Service commission, which is a committee that talks about policy and procedures and rule changes to help with h. R. And, no, im not going to apply for the d. H. R. Job. Thats not going to happen. [laughter] but so the discussion is there. I think that most people dont know the responsibility of what i was just saying and thats something that has to be put out, it has to be not necessarily from h. R. , but it has to come from topdown and it had been to be bought as were all going to embrace this. Were all going to look at this in realtime and in real situations. And to be proactive about what were going to do. So its new. This is new. This is something that its going to be a culture change, and its not going to happen overnight. But weve got to get there. I want to once again say thank you and i appreciate what youre saying and what youre focusing on and thank you all for your work in the department here at d. P. H. Thank you. Any other comments or questions. Mark, any hands . Im not sure if dr. Colfax wants to close out the item with any comments . Just to thank you, just really quickly, thank you, michael. And michael and i when we talked about your joining the Department Last november, i dont think that any of us expected we knew that there was a lot to do and i think that you have done a remarkable job in bringing the department if a new direction that we needed to go. And thank you for bringing this data forward and to committing to the work. I also want to thank rega for her work and her team. And karen hill, i believe that karen is on the line and just done an incredible job in our covid19 response and hiring people. Theres a lot of work to do as you saw from the data, but i think we are moving in the right direction. And im just so pleased with the work that this team has done. In unprecedented circumstances, not to say that theres no challenges, theres a lot of things to prove but it will take time but, michael, and thank you for your commitment, so, thanks. Commissioners, with your item we can move to item 11, which is other business. Ill send out a new calendar to you, commissioner christian noted that i had the september the next september meeting wrong, it should be september 15, not 16. And then the october 1st joint meeting with the Planning Commission to discuss Health Care Service master plan is going to be postponed and i will send that out later but i wanted to give you heads up. Any other question or business on this item . Okay. So i believe that you have a consideration for adjournment at this point. Is there any motion to adjourn . Motion to adjourn. I second. I will do a roll call. Clerk [roll call] thank you all. Congratulations to commissioner green for i think your first meeting. Thank you. Thank you all. Have a good night. Be safe, everyone. Byebye. Thank you. Good morning. I am mayor london breed. Thank you for your patience. Today we have a total number of 9544 cases of those diagnosed in the past six months of covid in San Francisco, with sadly 83 people have died. This is, as i constantly say, a fluid situation. Remember just recently as i reminded folks at the last press conference, of course, one day we were talking about a phased plan. Then the next day we had to make significant changes. More recently we had a level of confusion between state issued guidelines and local guidelines. I want to be clear that we are definitely working and communicating with the state. I just believe that there was a level of confusion as it relates to what we were doing here locally because of our numbers and because of our Public Health officials. What we try to do is provide you the most uptodate, accurate information. It is important that you visit sfgov. Org to find the latest in guidelines. There are certain things that we have repeated over and over again that we are at a point where those are the kinds of things we should automatically do. That includes making sure we wear our masks, social distancing, doing our part because what happens is there are a lot of questions asked of me and so many leaders in the city. The biggest question is when can i open my store, when can my kid go back to school . When can i do this or do that . I understand the desire. I have those same desires, and the only way to get to that place is if we all do our part. Today we want to talk a little bit where the city is, a new phase every opening because of where the city is, but also just reminder that just because this happens doesnt mean that we, unfortunately, cant pull things back if we see a surge. Labor day weekend is coming up. Everybody is thinking, well, this is the time i miss my family. It is six months. Here is an opportunity to get together. That is highly discouraged. Highly discouraged, especially if you want your kids to go back to school sometime soon, you want to visit your elderly parents in the senior home that probably doesnt still allow visitors, if you need to reopen your shop to go back to work. As we approach Labor Day Weekend, it is so important that we remember in those family and friendly gatherings that occur that is where we see through Contact Tracing where the spread happens, where we run into problems. We saw it during the fourth of july weekend there was a spike and during holiday weekends. We understand human nature wants to connect with other people, but we have got to get through this. We have got to get through this. Dr. Colfax will go into more detail what is happening in the city. We are still based on the state system that has been established that the governor announced last week, we are still in the red category, and we want to, of course, move away from that as much as possible, but it doesnt mean that we arent able to move forward to provide guidance on when we expect to reopen. We are off the wait list, which is a good thing. We are not out of the woods. Keep that in mind. As of today, we no, i thinks like haircuts and outdoor hair salons and massages can resume, outdoor pools can reopen. This is not what people wanted. I sure dont want to get my hair done outside, to be honest. I get it. This is what we have to offer. We also said that as of today that gyms can open, our door gyms as well. We are working on the guidelines to make sure they are prepared. Most likely september 9th would be the first opportunity that could be available. Another thing after being removed from the state watch list, malls were opened. As of today malls can reopen because we are no longer on the state watch list, and because they were open previously before we were placed on the state watch list. Now, i also have heard there is a lot of talk about not knowing what the guidelines are for various businesses. I want be to direct any business, any community, anyone who is uncertain what they need to do to sf. Gov reopening. There is not only a laundry list of guidelines for various businesses, there is information that you can review so you can be prepared even if your business is not open at this time. You dont have to wait until these announcements occur. You can get ready before the opportunity is available to your business. The path forward is good news. Again, we have Labor Day Weekend coming up. We have real concerns because the more reopen, the more people are gathering and spreading around, and we still have concerns. We want you to do this responsibly because we want to make sure we see these businesses continue to be open. All plans are subject to change, just like they were before. The last thing i want to do is tell you that we are going to be opening and then need to make changes and start closing businesses again. That is the last thing i want to do. The good news is that starting midseptember, hotels for tourism and visitors, outdoor movie theate theaters and mini , tour buses, boats. Indoor museums, zoos and aquariums with approved safety plans, houses of worship can allow Outdoor Services up to 50 people. That begins midseptember. We will provide the specific date once we have confirmed the date and make sure we are in touch with those various businesses with the appropriate guidelines. The end of september is, i think, really good news. This is something we should all be working towards. What that means is sacrifice of another month of masking and socially distancing and doing everything we can to get to a place where we can have indoor personal services. We can move hair and nail salons and barbershops and massages by the end of this month indoors. That is incredible if we continue at the pace we are now. And we will be able to allow tattoo, piercing and indoors no more than 25 and 50 outdoors. Door oneonone training with the gyms. Safely with mask wearing because that is critical to success of not opening establishments but allowing them to remain open. The path forward for schools. I just want to be cheer that as mayor i am, of course, very, very supportive of our schools, our kids, in particular, and wanting them to learn, grow and thrive. What we have seen this year with our students, especially those students who may not have parents or grandparents or Family Support to help in lessons. When we provided devices and internet service, they are still falling further behind. It is why it was so important that we open these learning hubs. We are almost at capacity. We know how vital it is that kids have access to people who are able to help them with lesson plans. I am extremely concerned about the future of our children as we continue with covid. We have to make prioritizing the ability to get schools reopened, we have to put that at the forefront. We know it is not as easy as we can open the schools. There are teachers and educators concerned, we know we need to put together plans. We know it is not my decision but the decision of the School District to move this forward, and my plan is to do everything i can to work handinhand with the School District so we can move forward to get kids back in school as soon as it is safely possible to do so. Starting in midseptember we will have Community Learning hubs. K through 6 schools that submitted health and safety plans through the waiver process will be able to open. I want to be clear. There is a process and it is their decision. We want to be clear that the opportunity to move forward with k through 6 is possible. After that work toward getting the following open by midoctober, after that the goal is to take it to the next level. By midoctober k through 6 not part of the waiver process will be part of the waiver process and will determine whether or not they will open. Middle school through eighth grade. High School Students are similar to adults. We are cautious and not certain we will move forward with high schools any time soon. All of this again has everything to do with the numbers, with where we are, with what is happening as we open more businesses, as we start to move around San Francisco like we havent before. We will all play a role in this success of what we do moving forward. I cant reiterate that enough because you all have been a part of stopping the spread at one point. When we first started this journey six months ago, this city was like praised, it was praised because of our fast action and because of the people of the city who played a role in doing everything you could to not only stay home but to also support your neighbors and to support one another. Six months later, i am tired of it, too. I am tired of living like this, too. I understand how you feel. I cant imagine what parents are going through or people caring for elderly parents, but you know what . We all have to sacrifice. We are all going to have to sacrifice to get through is this. As i said. If we want to move to the next level, if we want to get kids back in school, want be to keep the business that we grew up going to open, the businesses that rely on us every day, if we want to keep them open, all of us play a role. I want to thank you all for your cooperation. I know it is Labor Day Weekend, i know it is attempting, but, please, keep in mind that this virus is still out there and we need everybody to play a role in making sure that it doesnt continue to spread, and as we reopen we dont want to see the numbers go back up, which will force us to take a different direction. That is the last thing i want to get out here and say is that unfortunately, i told you yesterday that we were opening and i am telling you today that we have to close because of the numbers. That is the last thing i want to do. Keep that in mind as we move about the daytoday activities. This is really great news for Small Businesses, especially the personal services that i know are struggling to survive. Thank you all so much for your cooperation and work. At this time for a detailed Public Health update from the director of the department of Public Health, doctor brent colfax will joint us join us. Good morning, everyone. Thank you, mayor breed for all you do for this city every day. I am dr. Grant colfax, director of department of Public Health. I am happy to join the mayor and cochair of the City Economic Recovery Task force to discuss the San Francisco path forward towards recovery. As the mayor just explained the state has removed many of the restrictions that had previously prevented us from reopening low risk activities and businesses. While we have managed the impacts of the virus better than many other cities and counties. For example, we have one of the highest testing rates of any city in the country, and given the rates of infection, we thankfully have one of the lowest death rates in the country. Both of these, while being one of the densest cities in the country. We still need to move forward with gradual reopening as infection rates remain high as do hospitalizations. They have gone down over the past few weeks. We still have one of the highest hospitalization rates in the region. Of course, we are continuing to monitor the virus in our community and adjust and adapt our response as needed. We continue to have a high positivity case rate, and this continues to proportionately impact or Latino Community. Today in San Francisco we have 9544 confirmed cases of covid19. Over half of those cases are diagnosed in the Latino Community. We have made progress, but there is much more work to do. This is a priority for the department of Public Health. The reality is that we know more about the virus today than we did six months or even three months ago. We learn more and more about the virus every week. We are able to analyze more data and learn more about the relative risk and preventative measures we all need to take to reduce and slow the spread of the virus. This information is so key as we continue to follow the science, data and facts. These will inform our efforts as we open incrementally so we can manage the spread of covid19 and sustain the progress that we have made. We continue to monitor the rules and limitations of the states friday announcement, but in San Francisco we are placing an emphasis on our city indicators while decides whether we can reopen more and at what pace. We must look at the local contacts. Remember the state guidance is broad brushed, meant to cover counties as small and rural as yuba oral pine but also as large as la or as dense and urban as San Francisco. We will continue to be guided by the local Health Indicators which tract the covid19 cases, deaths, hospitalizations and Contact Tracing capability and availability of all important personal protective equipment. I want to provide an update on todays indicators from our data dashboard. The rate of new cases of covid19 remains high. We are seeing about 75 new cases every day right now and are still in the red zone. Our Hospital System indicators measuring the rate of increase of hospitalizations as well as capacity of our Healthcare System to respond are in green and indeed that is good news. Our other Health Indicators remain solid. Testing is green. We are testing over 3500 people a day, more than double our goal. Contact tracing is yellow and orange. We are reaching about 81 of cases and 77 of their contacts. While this metric has improved over the past few weeks, our goal is to reach 90 on both. Our ppe supply is at 100 of what we need for 30days, placing us in the green zone. The gradual reopening of Outdoor Services, hotels and children activities means people will start to move about the city more. Increasing risk and potentially Community Spread of the virus. With more activities we will likely experience an increase in not only cases but also hospitalizations. We will continually assess the new positive case counts and hospitalization numbers. Our reopening pace will be informed by our ability to manage the risk of more activity that may result in more cases and again more hospitalizations. Reenforcing the mayors comments, we need everyone to do their part, especially as we enter the holiday weekend. We must remain vigilant. I know six months if we are tired, but we must dig deeper and do our part. There is more virus out there than ever before, and indeed we have a narrow window to keep moving forward. The most important thing you can do to slow the spread of the virus is to continue to take precautions. I thank you for taking these precautions in march, june, july, now and in the future. Even in this time of uncertainty, especially in this time of uncertainty, it is important to remind ourselves and our neighbors that we do know how to slow the spread of the virus. Stay home as much as possible, cover your face to help us all keep on track. Keep six feet apart, wash your hands frequently, and please do not go out if you are sick and avoid social gatherings. We are in this together, and together we will get through this. In this evolving risk environment we will bring back our communities and economies the same we continue to fight covid19 by working together. Thank you. It is now my pleasure to introduce assessorrecorder carmen chu, cochair of the citys Economic Recovery Task force to discuss further the San Francisco path towards recovery. Thank you may or breed and dr. Colfax. We were here on friday to share our plans for expanding outdoor activities. We mentioned at that time we would be back this week to talk more about forward plans as we think about other industries. As dr. Colfax mentioned and the mayor pointed to we consider the restrictions and parameters the state provides. We will continue to reopen based on local Health Indicators. Today is important because it shows all of us what our path forward could look like. I will take a moment to thank the Public Health team for all of work they are doing to keep San Francisco residents and workers safe. I want to thank all of you for your individual actions that collectively have made a difference. Because of your actions, wearing a mask, keeping social distance and making sure you are taking precautions, we are here today to talk about what a path forward could look like. I want to acknowledge how hard it has been. I think for many people over the last month, month and a half it finley set in another i eye fine finally set in. We felt heart break we wouldnt be moving forward and this might be here longer than we hoped. We miss our family and friends and want to get back to work. More than anything as the city first started down this path when we first entered shel shelterinplace. We were here and it didnt really settle into us what this would all mean. What we did know was this this was going to be a situation unlike anything we had ever experienced before. Not only from Public Health perspective we are in the middle of an active Global Pandemic the Economic Impact would be so devastatdevastating and quick. Unemployment went from under 3 to 11 . There are over 60,000 in San Francisco unemployed at the moment. So many kids are having a very hard time adjusting to Distance Learning. Our most vulnerable continue to be isolated in homes and other settings. Not only that, we have heard from so many businesses they are hanging by a shoestring. In the beginning we knew there was a lot that we did not know about the disease. We had a lot to learn about how it is spread, prevalence and what it means for those infected and what treatments would look like. We know more today. We knew we had to b be flexibled transparent to sherry opening plans to get the economy back on track. We are transparent and will share forecast as soon as we know it, share guidance and best practices with you so you can operate safely, so that you can interact safely. We knew that we had to let the data guide us to make sure we were careful about watching the hospitalizations, our case counts, test positivity to allow that to guide decisions if it is safe to reopen, pause, or take other actions. We had to be thoughtful in our approach. We had to make sure that we understand the impacts of the actions we are taking. We go this is important to sustain the progress that we make. It helps no one when we pingpong and go and open and close businesses. People have to make investments to pull back or not able to use. These dont help our economy, they hurt our economy. We knew we had to focus on information an and guidance. The safety of our workers, customers interactions matters with economic recovery. There is no economic recovery unless people are confident reengaging with our city and city life. We will continue to provide immediate relief to workers, families, businesses. We will continue to be as flexible as we can. Through our words and actions we will break the narrative it is a decision between Public Health or the economy. Over the last few months we know we need both. That is our continued commitment to you. I am cautiously excited. There are many cautions out there, we hope you continue to do your best during this week end. I am excited this plan recognizes many things. One, we need to take steps to move the Economic Activity indoors. We need to do it safely to sustain the opening. It really does begin to recognize what that path forward could look like. This plan also recognizes the importance of uplifting large and Major Industries in the city including hog hospitalities. Thousands are employed in hotels and restaurants and Retail Stores. We can do that safely. We have shown the world we can do this safely. I will rest on this one thought. It is a refrain you have heard before. The idea that that progress isnt automatic. Again, i think san franciscans are familiar with this call to action. We have heard it before in all of thesive vit rights movements that we have had. While we make progress sometimes we somewhere to fight to make sure we dont lose ground. That is what we are facing. We know this can come back. What we have shown is that we know how to beat it back and can open up businesses together. I want to thank you, San Francisco, for all of the work you are doing to continue to help move our city forward and make sure we are able to keep opening in a sustained and safe way. To make sure we balance taking care of workers and customers at the same time. Thank you, San Francisco. We will begin the q a portion with dr. Colfax. The first set of questions from the San Francisco chronicle. What have you learned about reopening and about the virus since may and june that you are applying to reopening plans now . I think we have seen in our local response as well as across the country that we can mitigate and slow the spread of the virus, keeping the Hospital Capacity adequate and having enough capacity in our system to care for people who become infected. The other side that we have also seen is we know if we let down our guard, the virus can spread very rapidly. I think it is really getting this balance between the need to manage the control of the spread of the virus and realizing that there are key factors that we need to consider with regard to education, Mental Health, Behavioral Health and other Public Health considerations that we need to take into account in our reopens. We know that masking is so key. We know that more than ever. Something we learned a number of analysis have shown if as a society we can get up to 80 masking that will have a dramatic effect on the virus. In the guidelines coming out there will be an emphasis on the need for facial coverings. Out door activities are safer than indoor activities. Outdoor activities you can see in the phasing that we have. Outdoor activities that are expanded as of today. We also understand the need after six months for children to come back in to inperson learning as much as possible. We think that can be done in a safer way. From what we have learned in the data globally, we will be making recommendations around how to move forward with educational activities. There is no such thing as no risk. Pacing is important. That is why we spread out this process every opening and we need to be cautious as we go forward. Thank you, dr. Colfax. This is from ev baty. Are there Indoor Dining problems that keep it off the list of those you are hoping to open in september and october . If you look at the pieces we released today they fall into the buckets of the lower risk activities. The component of Indoor Dining there are a number of things that are concerning. Outdoor dining and takeout is open. There are opportunities there. Indoor dining would be in a later date at this point because of the risk that is entailed in people sitting down for long periods of time in crowded croud quarters taking off masks. I miss going to restaurants. If we all do our part we will be thrilled to see it coming online sometime in the future. Many next question with healthner from the San Francisco chronicling. Any plan for reopening kids playgrounds and basketball courts and Outdoor Recreation item . We are evaluating. One of the key things with regard to playgrounds. I would love to see them reopen and many parents and kids would as well. Playgrounds are mostly uncontrolled environment with a lot of children mixing different ages, interacting with different families. That does increase risk of transmission. At this time we do not have a date to reopen play grounds. Our Health Officer and Pediatric Team is looking at the data. That is something we would like to do as soon as it is safer to do so. Next set of questions are for mayor breed. First set of questions are from heather with the San Francisco chronicle. Six weeks after the city settled a lawsuit regarding the tenderloin how are things going in the neighborhood amid the covid19 pandemic . We didnt just put together a comprehensive plan to address homelessness and the large number of tent encampments we have spread to other neighborhoods where we have seen a level of homelessness that typically these particular neighborhoods dont experience as well. In the tenderloin in particular we saw over 400 tents with a few hundred people. We have been able to reduce that to as of today 41 tents. We have been able to get most of those people the help and support they need. That includes transitioning some of those folks to the safe sleeping sites, some into hotels, some into permanent be supportive housing. It is easier said an than done. It required a village of people working several different agencies. The home less Street Operations center under the Emergency Management because of this covid crisis and need to try to get people indoors, prevent the spread within the Homeless Population and provide people with a safe place to sleep, this operation has been incredible. I want to thank all city workers who played a role in going in to address the real challenge in several areas including one by ocean beach, one on oak street, in addition to the tenderloin. These camps resolution teams include workers from the department of public works, members of the San Francisco police department. Workers from the department of Public Health and the mag management team. I want to thank them. They are out there every day. Our Homeless Outreach team. When they began the resolution of addressing the encampment site. They dont show up just that day. They have to develop a relationship with the people there to understand the challenges they face so they are able to provide the support and assistance that they need. It is an ongoing process and the most effective thing we are able to do to resolve encampmentses and it is something we will continue to do. People are tired and frustrated and there is a lot of poverty and lack of housing and resources for so many folks. It is something we are working hard to address. Our program that we have established applan around homelessness has been the most effective that it has ever been since we put together this plan to address encampments. It is going well. It is not good enough. Going back to the conditions of the tenderloin in particular, it is really shorible. I want to be honest. We may have removed encampments but what we see in soma and the tenderloin around the behavior, urinating and def if indicating and public acts that are unmentional that have impacted the quality of life for the people in the community, we see things get worse. Part of what we need to do especially around the significant amount of drug dealing that occurs in the tenderloin, it is to to point where we have to get dress i. We cant have it both ways. You cant be upset that we are making arrests and then be upset we are allo allowing it is cont. These acts should not be tolerated. We will continue to push and do our job to make sure we cleanup this community so that people walking down the street with a baby stroller dont have to get off and go to the street to walk around a bunch of people selling drugs and shooting up. Is that okay for families to live like that . It is not. We are in a much better place than in a long time. Thank you madam mayor. No further questions. This concludes todays press conference. Thank you, madam mayor, doctor colfax, and ms. Chu for your time