hi there. i'm kristen sze. welcome to our program called "getting answers." we're asking experts questions for you every day at 3:00. we'll talk to an infectious disease expert about the covid-19 with developments, including more news on a vaccine. but california is taking a major stempniakward. 41 out of the state's 51 is coups are in the most restrictive purple tier. you can find this map on abc 7.com. locally santa clara and solano counties are in the purple tier. san francisco moved two takeovers from the least

restrictive to the red tier. san mateo and marin counties are not in purple yet lu they moved into the red tier, which brings us to our first guest. the public health officer from marin county dr. willis. thank you for joining us. know it's a big day. >> thanks. good to be with you. >> we look forward to your information because moving from orange to red such as your county did, what does that mean now? what changes can people expect to see and how soon? >> yes. we're responding to concerning trends we're seeing across the region. we had an almost doubling in our cases for the past two weeks, we were seeing about nine to ten cases a day, now we're about 15 to 20 cases in marin. we wanted to be preemptive and made a decision last week to go ahead and adopt those policies and correspond to the red tier,

despite being in the orange tier. the governor announced today that marin was being counted as a red tear. mostly just closing more indoor capacity. in the red tier, in the orange tier of the 50%, reduced to about 25% in the red tier. in marin, we've taken an additional step to close indoor dining sbirl as we move forward. so starting tomorrow our restaurants will be closed to indoor dining, encouraging people to use takeout and dine outdoors. we thought that was an important additional step to take because of the particular risks of that environment. >> ok. tell us also about the other indoor activities. i know you said some are reduction in capacities such as malls. but what about bars, boling alleys, what about fitness centers and their locker rooms? run through as many of these as you can for our viewers so they know exactly.

>> movies have been open 50%. now they're open at 25%. we have banned indoor concessions because people cannot cover their face in the theater when they're consuming refreshments. from 50% to 25%. worship services are down to 25% from 50%. naub essential office space. we had in the red tier are the orange tier we had allowed people to move back into nonessential offices. now we're black into only the essential services working in the space and those are the most important changes that we'll see. fitness centers, pardon me. we're moving fitness centers from 25% indoor capacity down to 10% indar capacity and indoor pools should be part of that, they're now closed. >> an attempt to clamp down on covid as numbers rise.

the governor said something pretty big today. a lot of people noticed. he mentioned the possibility of a curfew. he was cautious to say, we're still considering it, we don't know how it will look. just the fact that he put it out there. do you think that curfew is coming? >> i think they're really considering that curfew carefully. we've been aware that this was on the table. it's something that's more common back east in massachusetts, virginia. they're using curfews. some cities in the state of california, san diego, for example, are using curfews. earlier closures might be in place for dining establishments. bars might have a cheesing time of 10:00 or 11:00. i know they're seriously considering that. the idea is as people gather indoors -- the things that happen after those hours tend to be more -- people are gathered

together more, people are consuming alcohol, less adherent to the standards. those are settings where we're seeing more and more evidence of transmission. indoor restaurants, bars, etc. curfew would make sense. >> what about schools? what percentage of your county schools are open for in person learning? many had been doing that. give us use percentage and talk about whether that might be rolled back come if school year. >> we began -- opening schools has always been a high priority for us in marin county. we began the reopening of schools in the purple tier in august through a waiver. we worked closely with every school to make sure they can open following the 30 point safety plan. under that time in the purple tier we have 30 schools that open. we're now up to 70% of our schools in marin county are

open, some form of chas room-based learning. we've had a total of 15 cases of students in the school, none of them acquired in the school, all of them outside the household or the schools that the children were part of. we've had one staff case but no cases of transmission of covid 1 with our schools. so we think that we've demonstrated that we can do this safely. >> ok. so the schools will probably stay in their in-person learning phase if that's what they're already doing, right? there's no plans to -- >> that's right. >> ok. >> if they're already doing that, even if we go into purple, they can do a waiver to open and they stay open. so that's been a common question. if we go into purple do the schools have to close, the answer is no. >> they're saying no lock downs

right now but is that something the county has talked about doing on its own if the trends continue? >> we're really seeking the entire source of the state as much as possible. the blooupt has provided guardrails, clear policies. we think that those were a little bit too lax with regards to moving backwards. they were great for moving forwards slowly but they were too much to move backwards. the governor said it only takes a week of numbers to go backwards. you only have a date of the new changes when they're recognized. so they're tightening up and being more responsive to surges. i think that's encouraging. so i think we're -- our plan is to really maintain or relationship with the state and so far as the guardrails are secure. >> yeah. i mean, that is pretty significant, that now if you

change tiers you have to that into place, make the changes in 24 hours as opposed to having three days and you can move several tiers at once. some counties moved two tiers. it is getting colder and darker earlier. is there anything you can do to support the restaurants shutting down indoors? what can you do? >> we've been working from the beginning. we recognize that this is a collective process. we need to do this together. we established the marin recovers group to navigate these decisions together. that's the first, is that we've been traveling together friegt the start and negotiating what works. what's feasible in the environment for the public health. the good news is that a lot of our restaurants really have filled indoor capacity. if you go on the main streets of mar ip county you'll see out into the may street there's

areas where outdoor dining has been established. those are -- that's the way i think dining will have to look for the near future. >> all right. before we let you go, i have one more question for you. that is whether there might be new enforcement measures when it comes to masking, social distancing and not mixing between families? >> yes. you know, we're working with our law enforcement to make sure that -- really the laws have been in place. it's a matter of enforcement. we have things where they can give a parking ticket if they're in a setting where a facial coverage is ordered. as an example. it's really in the power of law enforcement to take the steps that we've established as the rules, working with mayors and city councils to embolden them and recognize how important it

is to take enforcement into their hands. ultimately, these are difficult to enforce. it really does rely on the culture, the community, our corrective understanding together of how vital it is we take these measures in our every day lives for ourselves, our family members and the communities. >> sounds like awareness campaigns will be a big part of that. dr. matt willis, thank you fore your time and information. >> thank you. bye-bye. >> bye-bye. we'll take a short break, folks. when we return, infectious disease expert will join us to talk more about this. but also

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welcome back. today we got the news that california is facing a real covid surge resulting in roll backs in reopenings. another vaccine looks to be safe and effective. joining us to talk about the latest, infectious disease specialist dr. peter chin hong. thank you for joining us. hope you had a good weekend. >> my pleasure. thank you for having me on. >> let's get this question out of the way. a lot of people are asking this do you think we'll be going back into lockdown soon? >> unfortunately, i think the writing is on the wall. governor newsome is studying some of the evidence from some of the european countries. the fact that he's looking at these plans of what has happened in these countries suggestion that he's thinking about nor austere measures, even more than what was announced today. >> no. i mine, obviously, the governor

of washington has already taken that step and we see a lot of american cities, chicago, doing the same thing. it could be just a matter of time. before we explore mohr about the tier status and where we are in california, i want to give people some good news. i want to dive into moderna announcing today that its fact seen is stunningly effective, apparently. tell us about this vaccine and what preliminary data shows. >> the moderna vaccine is similar to the pfizer vaccine that we heard about last week, and i'd an cells create the protein on the covid-19, which is a spike protein. the body sees it as foreign and creates antibodies to protect against the real thing when it comes in. as you said, about 95% ef ficac.

very good news. >> lucy liu gonzalez wants to know will the vaccine be mandatory? >> right now there's no plans to make it mandatory. but we're in transition to new administration, and with the -- you know, the covid-19 task force that president biden elects -- president-elect biden has anounsd, they may have different plans, but i don't see any movement about making it a mandatory vaccine to date. >> i really like your coronavirus stuffed animal. i'm sure it's great for students and education purpose. is it true the vaccines will only be available for adults? i wanted to ask you about advantage seep priority, anyway. explain to to us. >> it will be available to children eventually. it's being studied by all the major vaccine companies to date but the kids, because they don't

don't have the brunt of the disease currently in the u.s., sure, they get ill and as we know from multiple case reports and media news reports, but they're not in the highest priority. we have four tiers, five, if you consider everyone else. >> ok. you know, last week pfizer announced that its vaccine was 90% effective. what are the key differences between these two and which one is more deliver rabble on a large scale? >> the moderna vaccine is more deliverable. mainly because it is more forgiving for temperature. it still requires, i would say, very cold temperatures as opposed to super coldle temperatures. pfizer negative 70 degrees celsius, really, really tough to get there unless you're in a research lab. normally walgreen's, cvs won't have it.

moderna, 20 degrees celsius. it may be more forgiving, leaving it out, defrosting, etc., shelf life. >> what are the next steps, if you will, with these or the other vaccins? basically people want to know how many more steps and when will they become available? >> so the next major step is really to present the data in much more detailed form that it's been released in the press release to the fda. this will be deliberated by a group of scientists and other regulators and the emergency use authorization or eua is what we would expect sometimes after thanksgiving, hopefully, and ready for rollout. pfizer saided that they'll have as much as 50 million doses by the end of 2020. moderna said 20 million doses. >> ok. let me just ask you. the administration on the federal government level, they've put a lot of resources

into developing the vaccine, but what about the distribution? that is, are the states and counties kind of ready to roll? are those plans all set once the vaccine is produced? >> the devil is in the details, and those details are very opaque right now. part of it politically is for the current administration to give the blueprints to president biden, but there is no movement towards giving them that blueprint yet. we know the military will be involved. there have been some test states, california is one of them, that have be instructed to design the system. the exact components of the system, we don't really know yet. >> all right. well, president-elect biden said today more people may die if we don't coordinate. over on facebook live right now

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all right. we are back with dr. peter chin hong. we were chatting on facebook live. i want to address the bad news cop fronting the nation as numbers really soar. can you give us the big picture of what's happening nationally? >> i think the governor put it best when he's saying we push an emergency breake. you have no other choice but to press the stop button. you're on the treadmill in the gym, you press, the treadmill to come to a halt. that's kind of where we are in california. we haven't seen increases like this so far. more than 80% in the country and doubling in the last ten days in california. >> that's staggering to think about.

i think we're up to 8,000 cases a day. hey, what's the biggest sources of infections and transmissions that we know of? >> it's been hypothesized and the governor said a week or so ago where he's worried about indoor gatherings, but i think it's multi-factor. indoor gatherings is one of, pandemic fatigue, which is so real. some people have coined it pandemic resentment. the third issue is travel. people coming into if state from lots of other places where it was raging. it was only a matter of time before we saw that increase. >> speaking of traveling, people are making plans or have plans for holiday travel, thanksgiving or christmas. look, what's your advice to people? if it were your family member, would you say, hey, cancel? what would you say? >> unfortunately, i would say

cancel. maybe there are some people biting the bullet to go, an older relative who may not live until the next thanksgiving holidays. it's that individual tlask you and your familiar only will know. i think for most people it is the kind of situation where we would say unfortunately stay put. we have to think about kids coming back from college to california, how you going to deal with that, too. in general, people are moving toward a little more austere measures. >> speaking of college students coming home from school fore thanksgiving, what would you say? like if they were going to do it, should everybody, for example, wear masks the whole time that juniors back at home? what do you think? >> it depends on some colleges where they've been doing regular testing on the students, if that call -- if your child goes to one of those colleges, you can probably shorten that quarantine period. the safety period, following the

recommendations on the hospitals or even looking at had been done, if you get a test within three or four days, you kind of good to go. a week will give you more confidence. two weeks will give you the most confidence, which is the recommended quarantine time. there are rumors is that the cdc is going to ame ame ame ame that's coming later in the week. >> we look forward to seeing that. lorain wants to know if i decide to take the vaccine and i end up with obvious side effects, should i prepare to quarantine myself from my family as if i were contagious? >> when you get the vaccine, it's not going to be live virus, so there's pretty much zero chance with this particular -- these particular two vaccines that you're going to get covid because it's really looking at just the piece of the virus,

which is this protein that can't infect you. there are other vaccines being studied in china, for example, where they're using whole virus. we're not using those in the united states. so no chance of covid. if you get a side effect it's mainly due to the local swelling, some people have gotten higher temperatures but they go away after a day without taking ie boe proposin. if you want to study placebo or if you got infected. >> but it's not the vaccine. alexis wants to know will there be a vaccine for everybody by march? i think she's trying to get at a time line. everybody wants to know. >> yeah. >> is it march, is it april? what do you think? >> i think it's going to be the summer, to tell you the truth, but that's really, really

optimistic. it depends on how many other vaccines jump on the bandwagon. it's a numbers game. it's just a matter of how many people can get shots. so we have pfizer, mad earna, jnj, nova tech come on the ba bandwag bandwagon, we may have the ability to vaccine people sooner. >> you know north dakota where they're getting hit so hard right now. they've okayed covid positive but asymptomatic doctors and nurses to treat patients. is that safe? i mean, how is that safe? >> well, maybe they're -- you know, when you're desperate, unfortunately, that's kind of where -- you know recommendation lies. that is very surprising to me. it's not something that luckily we would want to do in

california or in the bay area. i know at utsf we probably wouldn't allow that but if they're running out of staff to take care of patients, and we may get the situation if people go in sick during winter surge, but hopefully won't get to that. yes, i would be very nervous in that situation. but in the hospital

and we're back. thank you so much for joining us on this interactive show "getting answers" today. today we were all about covid-19. we talked with a public health

officer and specialist after to many counties moved back into he tonight, several developing stories as we come on the air. now the second vaccine breakthrough. one week after the news from pfizer, moderna today announcing its new vaccine is nearly 95% effective. the company hoping to have 20 million doses ready by the end of this year. in addition to 20 million by the end of the year expected from pfizer. tonight, one of the key differences between the two vaccines. and when will most americans get access to either one of them? it doesn't come a moment too soon. tonight, cities and states imposing new restrictions. some with stay at home advisories. 1 million new cases in the u.s. in less than a week. california's governor saying he's pulling the emergency brake. new restrictions in several states and in the major cities, from philadelphia to chicago, where the mayor there is asking