Board of Supervisors — 2020-04-21

Hi.

Yeah. I'll call to order the April 21st 2020 meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Ms. Hartman? Here. Mr. Adam? I'm sorry, Mr. Adam? Are we muted up there in North County? Mr. Adams?

The next item of business is approval of the minutes of April 7th, 2020 and the meeting of April 13th, the 2020 budget workshops. Is there any discussion? I'll entertain a motion.

Move approval.

Second. Motion has been made and seconded by Supervisors Hartman and Williams. Madam Clerk will you please call the roll?

Ms. Hartman? Aye. Mr. Adam?

Aye.

Mr Lavinino?

Thank

you. Amendments and changes to our April 21st, 2020 agenda today. I would first like to begin announcing that we are allowing alternative methods of public participation in our hearing today as we have the last few weeks. And if you would like to make a general public comment or a comment on a specific agenda item, the members of the public can either email their item to the clerk of the board at SBCOB at countyofsb.org and please note in your email if you would like that to be read into the record or just made a part of the record. We are also allowing alternative participation by phone And if you call the clerk of the board at 805-568-2240, state your name, your phone number and which item you would like to speak on. The clerk will call you at the appropriate time.

Friendly reminder to all members of the public, please make every effort to be available and mute all streaming devices once it is your turn to speak. I have a few more announcements this morning. And as noted on our printed agenda last week, the department requests a continuance of administrative item number 10 and this is from Human Resources to consider recommendations regarding a second amendment to the agreement between the County of Santa Barbara and Robert Half International Inc for temporary personnel services. And this is just being withdrawn from the agenda.

Additionally, the department requests a continuance Departmental item number two, as stated on our agenda today and that is from public health. It is a hearing to consider recommendation regarding an ordinance increasing emergency medical services EMS agency fees for emergency medical technician EMT certification. EMT recertification and paramedic accreditation. And the department is requesting this to be continued to our May 5th 2020 agenda.

In addition to those announcements this morning, we posted an addendum on Friday amending our agenda. Amending administrative item A3 from behavioral wellness. This is to consider recommendations regarding a board contract with Big Sky Consulting LLC fiscal year 2019-2020 and Administrative item A5 from the clerk recorder assessor to read, receive and file the certification of results for the presidential primary election held on March 3rd 2020.

And declare their results as specified in the certification. Additionally we added an administrative agenda item to our agenda today adding administrative item number 19 from planning and development This is to consider recommendations regarding county acceptance of offer to dedicate a 958 acre portion. Of the scholarly ranch to the county and this is in the 3rd and 4th districts.

County Council recommends that the board trail this open session agenda item until after closed session agenda item a 19 involves conservation easements associated with the Strauss wind energy project. And last on our Addendum we posted on Friday, we received a withdrawal for departmental item number four planning and development. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding Santa Rita Valley Ag Inc cannabis cultivation appeal case number 19 APL 32 and this is in the third district. However, we did receive an additional memo from Planning and Development yesterday requesting a continuance of this item to May 5th 2020.

And with that Chair Hart members of the board I ask that you add The amendments that were announced for the administrative agenda to the motion on the balance of the administrative agenda. And for any amendments on the departmental agenda, we will address them as we progress through the agenda to allow for any possible public comment on those changes.

Thank you Madam Clerk.

Yeah I'm interested in 17 if anybody would pull it. I'm not going to pull it myself.

Okay well we can just go

ahead then. And then I just need the clerk to know that I need to, well there will always be a roll call vote on 19 because I need to abstain.

Are there any other items that board members would like to request to be pulled? Or are there any requests from members of the public to pull any items?

Chair Hart and members of the board, I have no request from the public on our administrative agenda to speak. All

right, well then Madam Clerk if you would read item A8 into the record please.

Chair Hart, members of the board, Administrative Item number 8 is from Community Services. It is to consider recommendations regarding the amendment and restated HEAP regulatory agreement for West Cox Apartments Affordable Housing Project in Santa Maria, and this is in the 5th district.

Supervisor

Adam,

did you have a question?

Well I thought this board was senior friendly and this project was sold as senior housing. And it seems like now they're going to switch it out and take away the senior preference. And I don't understand why we would Why we would tolerate such a bait-and-switch.

Is there staff that's available to answer Supervisor Adams' question?

Chair Hart and members of the board, we are trying to locate the department director now. I believe he is aware. We are just trying to get him on the line.

All

right.

So why don't we just go table that item for now and we'll come back to that when he is available. The next item, Madam Clerk, is A11.

Chair Hart, members of the board. Administrative item number 11 is from Human Resources. It is to consider recommendations regarding the authorization and ratification of paid leave time provided in response to the COVID-19 emergency. And there is a four fifths vote required on this item.

Thank you Supervisor Adam.

Yeah, I didn't really anticipate voting against this. But I just wanted to make the observation that every company in the US would love to do this and it just goes to show that it's far easier for organizations funded by taxpayer dollars than private sector.

Thank you. And then A17.

No, I did not pull A17. Did somebody else pull it?

Okay then I think I must have misunderstood. I thought that was one that you were interested in. Okay never mind. Thank you sorry.

Interested but not

pulling. Let's see we are still waiting on staff so I guess we could trail that A8 for a future moment. And we could approve the balance of the administrative agenda with the changes that the clerk described, which is continuing item A-10, trailing item A19 and continuing item A2. Is that right? Or is A- 10 withdrawn?

Chair Hart and members of the board, yes, the changes made today is withdrawing A- 10 and amending A- 3, amending A 5 Adding A-19 but trailing that until after closed session. And perhaps now trailing A-8, we can add that to the motion so we would trail items A- 8 and A- 19.

So

moved.

Motion's been made is there a second? Second. And seconded any discussion? Okay with the clerk please call the roll.

Ms Hartman? Aye Mr Adam?

Aye

Aye.

Mr. Williams?

Aye.

Chair Hart? Aye. Motion passes unanimously.

Now is the time

public comment and we're going to the phone for Andy Caldwell.

Hi, this is Andy Caldwell representing COLAB. Thank you for letting me speak to you today. One of the things I wanted to bring to your attention is that your neighboring counties both Ventura County and San Luis Obispo County have begun to lift orders. And there was a coalition in San Luis Obispo County of the county supervisors and all I believe every single mayor Signed a letter on indicating why they believe they should be able to get out of this. Ventura County is opening up their car dealerships because they know they need the money, and I want to speak in general terms to this whole issue. One of the leaders in Europe mentioned the following. She said, This is in fact the first time we the world have quarantined healthy people rather than quarantining the sick and the vulnerable.

Hence, it's not Sweden that's conducting a mass experiment. It's everyone else. What that means in practical terms is that too many of our health professionals and the politicians following their lead here in America are looking through the wrong end of the telescope. And you know, the bottom line here is that Stanford professor Michael Levitt has indicated The rate of a virus will drop naturally over time.

And that even those countries such as Sweden that have not shut down and forced their people to stay at home, that infection rate will drop just naturally. Stanford epidemiologist and metadata analyst John Ioannidis believes that what we're witnessing is not a once in a century pandemic but a once in a century evidence fiasco And I'd also like to remind you that the law in this particular case, and I've never heard County Council Gazzone weigh in on this.

The law in this particular case when a governor or anybody else enforces police powers they're supposed to have a compelling government interest which I think at the beginning we did to flatten the curve But then it's supposed to be as narrowly construed. The application of that is supposed to be as narrowly construed as possible. Well, the fact that the governor has no end date and the fact that you can't measure any of the specifics in this plan I believe means that... And then plus the fact that we've already flattened the curve? I don't think the governor has any authority left to be imposing this shutdown by way of edict And I wish that your board would do what San Luis Obispo did and lead by asking him to rescind the order and give back local authority.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Caldwell.

And Chair Hart, members of the Board, I do believe we now have Community Services Director available by cell and we can call him now for Administrative Item number 8. All righty, Chair Hart and members of the Board. We have Community Services Director George Chachian on the line and if Supervisor Adden can please repeat his comments on Administrative Item Number 8 that would be much appreciated.

Well, Mr. Chapman, I am just unclear on why we're allowing the senior preference to come off of this project because there seems like there's no shortage of seniors that need housing. So what is the reason that we're going to entertain this patent switch?

Let's see, I think it was hard to hear the question unfortunately but I think it's why it wasn't changed for seniors. Originally the project was senior based but the housing authority when they took it over building a project for homeless and so the senior preference was removed only because HUD allows for seniors preference only if you hold projects. It's for seniors but partially for seniors I guess I'm not satisfied with the answer, but if it's a federal program there is nothing

to say about it. But it might be the new model for approving projects is to bring it in with one set of pretenses and then modify it. That's kind of what we're afraid of, is that this could be the new model for getting projects passed.

Supervisors if I could say something, Supervisor Adam to the Chair you're right Present something that as we go through the regulatory process isn't true. We will make sure we do a better job on that But I do want to point out that these funds are heap funds from the state and those are specifically for homeless housing So it could have been that We thought we could serve senior homeless and it looks like through this process because of the restrictions on fair housing, we had to remove that. It could be that seniors or senior homeless individuals are still part of the project. It's just that we can't put it in the documents evidently.

Thank you Mr. Chaplain and Ms. Miyasato for the clarification. Is there a motion to approve this particular item?

So moved.

Motion's been made by Supervisor Williams. Second. And seconded by Supervisor Hartman. Roll call, please?

Ms. Hartman? Aye. Mr. Adam?

Abstain.

Mr Lavinino?

Aye.

Mr Williams?

Aye

Chair Hart?

Aye

Motion passes 4-1 with Adam abstention

And that concludes our administrative agenda.

Chair Hart and members of the board, departmental item number one is from the county executive office. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding a coronavirus disease 2019 COVID-19 update.

Thank you and CEO Miyasato would you like to introduce this item?

Supervisors, as you know we've been providing updates on COVID-19. Today we have various folks providing the update not just Dr. Lon Dovinoso but Brian Olmsted who is obviously with our Sheriff's Department and also a member of our unified command so he'll be giving part of the presentation on the Lompoc federal penitentiary issues.

Thank You Ms. Miyasato and welcome Mr. Olmstead

Good morning, Chair Hart and members of the board. So I'm going to give an update like stated on the Lompoc Federal Penitentiary with the outbreak taking place related to COVID-19. Just a little bit of information about the facility it has multiple facilities within the campus and with a total of over 2700 inmates that are housed at the on the property March 18 was the first positive test result of an inmate At the facility, and then about a week later on March 25th was the second positive test result of an inmate. After that every day we started getting additional positive tests during that time public health has been in contact with their prison staff disease control unit and have been working with them as the numbers grew there was a fear that with the congregate setting that a prison has and Saturday, April 11th was our first conference call where we included The California Office of Emergency Services, the Bureau of Prisons and Santa Barbara County Unified Command.

We talked about the issues and started looking for a solution. Over that Easter weekend, that following Monday we developed a plan and a request that the penitentiary build a mobile hospital within their facility so We could move some of the inmates that were in the local area hospitals below the level of a ventilator back onto the campus of the prison. Plus also as new inmates tested positive and needed medical attention, they could stay on campus relieving any kind of pressure that would be on the hospitals.

The plan was developed and it was decided to build a mobile hospital on the facility. Is in the process of contracting with a national health carrier, Aspen Medical to staff that and develop the plan for it. The public health members of the unified command met several times on the site with prison officials and they decided on a old factory that's on the prison grounds as the best place to convert to a mobile hospital.

The plan involves phase one and phase two. Phase one was to take part of the office area of the factory and convert 11 offices into isolation areas for the mobile hospital. They've already started the construction on phase one, and they're working on completing that in the next several days to a week. Phase two is to continue converting the rest of the factory into a congregate setting with at least 60 to 80 beds in that congregate setting.

Phase one will include up to 22 patients in those office cubicles. As of right now, they're the healthcare providers working on obtaining all the medical equipment and establishing their staff and getting them transported here. The prison is working with Army Corps of Engineers to identify how they're going to do phase two buildup. But like I said, phase one's already been approved and they're working towards getting that completed.

The current numbers as of yesterday afternoon is 96 inmates have tested positive, 12 are in area hospitals and 29 staff members have tested positive and 1 is in an area hospital. Additionally, there's been one inmate death related to COVID-19. Like I said we're in daily conference calls during the Monday through Friday with the California State Office of Emergency Services and Bureau of Prisons with the Santa Barbara County Unified Command and we're continuing to work through this issue to relieve any kind of pressure that inmates might put on the area hospitals.

Thank you Mr. Olmstead, that's really helpful and very comprehensive report. Questions for Mr. Olmstead? Any questions in San Maria? Supervisor Lavenino. I'm

not sure it's a question for Mr. Olmstead but it might be so if we add the total number of prisoners or inmates that's 96 and then 29 Employees gives us 125 active cases. That's more than half of our total active cases for the entire county, isn't it? Because I think 236 is active right now. It might be for Dr. Renoso.

Yeah if you look at the total we're over 400 in total positive cases obviously some have recovered but this list The numbers I'm giving are the positive numbers, not so much how many have recovered since then. Some have been transferred back to the facility because they've recovered from the hospital. It is a large percentage of the county's numbers though.

Thank you for that clarification. And I don't know if Brian has the answer to this, but we've only seen one case at Santa Barbara County Jail and I believe there's only been one case at CMC. Was there a, is it something that we're doing right or was there a protocol difference at a federal prison? Have we gone back to find a source or do you have any idea on that?

So the prison has a disease control unit that they're identifying, trying to trace that back to the initial infection. They have put the whole facility on lockdown. They've really restricted the movement of the inmates and the staff. They're doing temperature checks for the employees as they come in. With the sheriff's office early on, we started a very strict process of trying to control and prevent the COVID-19 from coming into the facility.

And so far, we've been very successful with it. Our inmates are first as soon as they're booked The facility, they're in a quarantine location for at least two weeks where they're monitored. And then after that two weeks, they're checked again and then they're moved into a different part of the facility. So we've had a very robust system of trying to keep COVID out of the jail.

Thank you, that's helpful. Any other questions for Mr. Olmstead? Okay, thank you. Thanks. Dr. De Ruinosa? Welcome.

Good morning. I'd like to begin my update with a glimpse at our latest numbers. So of the total cases we have as of yesterday, that is 416 so as you can see the Lompoc area 96 of the cases being related to the prison and 72 cases in the community. This totally, this whole bar represents 40% of our cases. Next is in the Santa Maria area we have 101 cases so that represents about 24% Of the total cases, following would be Santa Barbara with 11% and Orchid at 8%, and South County at 5%.

In terms of age distribution, we have the two largest groups are the 30 to 49-year-olds at 35%, and that is this number 147. And the 148 cases in the 50 to 69 year olds represent 36%. So we do have in the 0 to 17 age group about 4% Followed by the 18 to 29 at 16%, with above 70 and above at 9%. So it is distributed throughout all age groups. With regards to patient status, we have 45% recovered.

43% recovering at home, 11% still in the hospital with 1% death. And of the patients in the hospital we have 65% of those hospitalizations non-ICU with 35% in the ICU. So this graph gives a snapshot of the total cases in our county. So earlier, Supervisor Lavagnino asked about the prison total. If we look at the total of prison cases that would be 125 but if we break that out 77% are due to inmates And 23% are due to employees, and those employees are distributed throughout our county.

So the prison total makes up about 30% of all of our cases. Case by patient status. So the first three lines, so here we have this is our grand total. You can see that we are still increasing incrementally with yesterday being at 416 cases of that 57% are existing active cases and 42%, the green line here is recovered. The bottom line, the bottom graph, this purple dot denotes the new cases in our county.

Supervisor

Adam?

Yeah, I need to make a point on those last two graphs that total is an accumulation of all of the known cases. It isn't accurately reflective of the current conditions because it never takes off the 45% that we know recovered. And it doesn't have any recognition of any amount of cases that may be out there, that people were asymptomatic or even had mild symptoms.

I'm not a big fan of those graphs.

Capture confirmed cases. We have, it's anecdotal the level of asymptomatic cases out there or cases that are mild and are not reflected. So these again are reflective of only people who have tested and are confirmed.

It's probably

important

to add that.

I wouldn't

know how to capture- We only tested people, I apologize for the delay. We only tested people that were presenting with symptoms, is that correct?

Correct and that has been under the guidance of CDPH and our community healthcare professionals. With limited testing.

It leads you to conclusions that are kind of wacky.

That may be so, but we as a public health department are following the guidance of CDC, CDPH, as well as all the healthcare experts in our community.

And the reason for that guidance and the reason for less than ideal testing capacity Is the shortage of tests both here in our county and across the country and the world. And so, public health officials have I think wisely said we need to ration the tests to the folks who are most obviously in need of medical evaluation. But Supervisor Adams' point is that if we had more tests, we would have more positive cases is true?

Well, if Supervisor Adam could tell you that my point is that the information is at least semi, if not wholly invalid on those graphs. And we can't make any more tests appear, nobody can. So the fact that we're not doing any random sampling in favor of just sampling people that present with symptoms Is destroying the validity of the test, if you will or the calculation.

Because you just can't sample only people who are sick and then come up with a graph like this that shows an ever increasing number. It's just an invalid question. You're asking an invalid question. And that's all I'm going to say.

Thank you Supervisor Adam. Dr. Domenico, go ahead. Excuse me, Supervisor Williams has a point.

I think the department has followed the guidelines correctly on testing. I think we do have data that indicates our testing per capita is comparable for other communities so I don't think people should be operating under the assumption that if they lived in another county they would be getting tested There are some communities, very small ones that have been able to test general population. But as far as the information I've gotten, those are communities where somebody with a lot of money has rolled in and paid a ton of money in order to be able to do that. So a little town of Bolinas is testing everybody but they're only 1600 people and That thousand dollars for that if you looked at the population of Santa Barbara County and did that it would be I believe one hundred and twenty million dollars.

So if anybody has 120 million dollars lying around maybe we could change the situation dramatically but we also do believe that public health is pursuing Options that we'll be able to increase our testing. But I do want to agree with Supervisor Adam that this is not as useful of a graph as if you are illustrating the curve in which we are used to seeing it, which is either in the amount of people currently hospitalized or currently active cases because this graph will continue to grow no matter whether we get it under control or not, right? Because it's a cumulative amount of cases. The one thing it does illustrate is that the growth in cases is linear and not geometric, which is a good thing.

It means that we have never had the geometric spike so that means journalists you shouldn't use the term spike for anything in Santa Barbara County because the growth is all linear but it would be helpful if you could provide Form we've been used to seeing it internationally, nationally and locally which is in the. hypothetical graph curve and we could now assess that versus the actual curve of Santa Barbara County.

Right, I apologize for not including that. I have so many graphs this morning and so at the risk of boring you to death over the graphs, I last minute took that out but I can say that if you're looking at the bell curve We are actually well below what we were projecting and I have a slide that briefly touches on I think that because of all the interest in the different types of graphs, I will make that. I will post those graphs on our website with some context so that the reader can understand how we're tracking cases and hospitalization as well.

Thank you. And I think that's a great segue to your next slide.

Yes, so this graph is useful because we have been asked well how do we know the percent increases in cases day by day? So this graph is a nice depiction of even though the cases are growing incrementally linearly We see that it is on a downward trend. It is variable, so it is not consistent. The only consistent thing I can say about this graph is that we're seeing a downward trend but there again, there is variability day to day and so hopefully the goal is to see some consistency in the downward trend.

So the takeaways, lower number of cases than predicted in the model. And we believe that it is directly tied to Governor Newsom's executive order and that our community efforts to adhere to physical distancing as well as the compliance with health officer orders to prevent the spread. However, the number of cases still are increasing. With the active cases still growing, so there's that potential for spreading. And we absolutely need to see consistent decline in cases over time to inform our policy changes.

Question on that?

Go ahead, yes.

Thank you Chair. Just on that last bullet need to see consistent declining cases over time between the number of cases still increasing and active so Are we lumping in, I mean that includes the Lompoc Federal Prison as well. Let's just say we had a complete drop off and we're kind of seeing this elsewhere is that we're seeing outside of Santa Maria and the Lompoc prison a decline in new cases.

Are we going to do this even if we continue to have the problem at the prison but nowhere else?

I think that is a great question, and that is something that our team is looking at. And the reason why we want to include the numbers from Lompoc Prison in our analysis is because it's such a fluid situation. You have staff who live in the community and there is... And that affects our community interactions, it affects the number of cases. So I don't believe that you can totally remove what's happening in the Lompoc prison from the equation.

I wouldn't say you have to eliminate it but I would say you would have to balance it with what the health is of the

rest

of

the county. Right. That is something we would take into consideration definitely. So, if there aren't any questions I'd like to move into sharing with you the preliminary demographic data of our cases.

You know Dr. Reynoso just before you get to this next stage I think the clerk has an announcement that she'd like to make.

Yes thank you Chair Hart and members of the board my apologies for the interruption but I did just want to let the members of the public and the media know that we are Allowing media into our April 21st, 2020 board hearing that is today. So if any members of the media would like to participate in our hearing room today they can do so and just call the clerk at the board at 805-568-2240 to let us know that you are coming and we will escort you up to our hearing room. Thank you.

So this is, if you visit our website you can click into any of these areas and it will delineate the number of cases. So I just want to in case you have not explored this feature on our website it is available. So we were able to interview, or at least touch base with 307 of our cases. And so that depicts if we currently have 416 cases This describes about 74% of our total cases.

We did interview 221 cases, and to this I really want to give a shout out to the Public Defender's Office for assisting us as well as general staff in the public health department for making this possible. To go back and interview the cases within a 10 day period. So that was pretty, pretty astonishing. We are including 86 cases from the prison in our analysis and it will be noted when we do that.

So race and ethnicity of prison population. So these are the 221 cases in our community, and this consists of we have 61% of our cases in the Hispanic group 31% among the white group and 1%, Asian, 0.5 in the American Indian, 2% in African-American, 0,5% Native American Pacific Islander, 2%, denote that they are multiracial and about 2% refusing to answer. So when we compare that number, the number of cases that we interview with the representation in Santa Barbara County population you have in the olive column is the comparison. So the Hispanic cases are overrepresented, underrepresented among whites, underrepresented among Asians A little bit, so I want to say that the American Indian Alaskan Native, the African-American Black as well as the Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander.

These are really, really tiny numbers. So that would be very statistically challenging to form any conclusion. So if we include the incarcerated population in our analysis, the numbers change. However, the overall representation still is on track with over-representation among Hispanics. We note here that even though statistically it's challenging you see the numbers for the African American Black population is doubled.

The primary language is English with 19% Spanish, health insurance About 90% of our interviewees have some form of insurance, whether it be private insurance or public insurance. With 8%, without any form of insurance. When we asked whether they have healthcare provider they can see, 84% of the respondents say that yes. They have a health care provider that they can see with 15% saying no.

Household sizes. We have 31% of our respondents living in household two or less, and 53% living in household with three to five people. And 14% living in households with six or more people. The annual household income, we have the rough median is at 19%, and that's 50 to 75,000. With 24% on this side below the 50,000 and 26% on the other side above the 75,00.

Education level. We have at the highest group with 30% sharing that they have some college or technical, so that's one to two year three years of college or technical training. Knowledge of the coronavirus before getting sick. We have 80%, so that's 26, 29 and 25. So this represents 80% of the interviewees saying that they are somewhat knowledgeable to extremely knowledgeable about coronavirus.

And where our interviewees heard about coronavirus is from TV news. at 80%. Knowledge of hand washing before getting sick. So we have 93% understanding about regular washing and able to practice it, so this is a really good encouraging number. Knowledge of social distancing before getting sick. We have 48% stating that they understand social distancing, meaning to keep six feet apart from others and was able to practice it.

But what is concerning is the 16% in group A 8% in group B and the 24% in group C. So that all together amounts to 48%, who either are not understanding what social or physical distancing is, or understanding why it's important, or unable to practice it. So there's room for improvement in this group right here. Social distancing at home. 58% said that yes, they are able to practice it. With 38% saying no, physical distancing is not possible.

So this is social distancing at work. 39% says that yes, it's doable with 36%, almost as much saying no. So what are the takeaways from our preliminary demographics? As testing expands and our data collection progresses, the distribution by race and ethnicity for the cases may change. And our data currently shows that Latino Hispanic represent a disproportionately higher number of cases compared to their representation in the Santa Barbara population.

We need to continue efforts to reach community members whose primary language is Spanish. We need to conduct outreach and enrollment efforts to the uninsured cases, to make sure that they get plugged into publicly insured insurance. We need to continue messaging physical distancing and hand washing. And we need to continue to partner with businesses and work sites to ensure optimal physical distancing.

Actions that must be aligned in order to achieve, we need to make sure that the ability to care for the sick by the hospitals and we are making strides in that, the hospital system The public health department is actively working to distribute scarce medical supplies. Prevent infection in those with a high risk of disease. We still continue to prioritize testing among the vulnerable groups and we have plans in place to support those vulnerable groups who are unable Self-isolate.

Build capacity to protect the health and well being of the public. We will continue to refine our Health Officer Orders, and we will continue to focus targeted public messaging about physical distancing, about preventive measures that every member of our community can take. Reduce social and emotional economic disruptions We have our community wellness in place.

And we continue to public message about how to stay healthy during this time, as well as the economic assistance available. So I'd like to end with just a quick Recap or reminder about the governor's roadmap and where we're at. The first one, the ability to monitor and protect our communities through testing, contact tracing, isolating, and supporting those who are positive or exposed. So there's a lot of conversations about will we see cases increase as we expand testing? Can we test asymptomatics? Where are we with testing as a community? And I appreciate Supervisor Williams referencing that per capita, Santa Barbara County is on target. However we know that testing is a big concern. So the public health department is actively negotiating an increase in our capacity to test.

And I anticipate the availability of that or an update to your board sometime later this week. We are also hand in hand, while we pursue an increase in the availability of testing. We are also standing up our tracing isolation quarantining unit so that we can track and support those who are positive. The ability to prevent infection in people who are at risk with more severe COVID-19. We are working on that, identifying the vulnerable groups and again this ties to testing. This ties to making sure that we have a Quarantining and supportive services in place. The ability of the hospital and health system to handle surges, this is an ongoing conversation with our healthcare partners. The ability to develop therapeutics to meet demand, this is something that we are looking to Sacramento to support.

The ability for businesses, schools, childcare facilities to support physical distancing. Again, this is in the works. Planning stages in partnering with all of these stakeholders. The ability to determine when to reinstitute certain measures as they stay at home orders if necessary. And again, we are looking at what is happening in Sacramento receiving guidance from CDPH as well as having discussions with our neighboring counties on lessons learned with their attempts as well.