bibas. hi there. i'm kristen sze. welcome to our daily program called "getting answers." we're asking experts your questions every day at 3:00 to get answers in real time. a hotel general manager in palo alto will be joining us. let's begin with a broader look at covid 1. 14-day average is 14,600, 50% higher than the summer peak. the state and counties are clamping down. you can post your questions on abc 7's live stream.

dr. rutherford, thanks for joining us. >> my pleasure. >> i trust you had a good thanksgiving? >> sedate, but yes. >> that's what we like to see. not everybody did it in a sedate way. what do you think? surge? when? >> well, for the first, you know, just answer the question directly, we're not going to know for several days now, so if infections were happening on thanksgiving, we'd be diagnosing tomorrow, wednesday, thursday, there's going to be some lag for backup -- from the holiday weekend, so i would suspect we'll be able to see something by oh, you know, say the end of the week this week. we may see cases going down. we may see cases plateauing, we may see them going up. i hope it's one of the first

two. >> we won't know for at least a few more days. who should get a test? >> well, i mean, people who have symptoms should get tested and diagnosed. people who have been nope as contacts or know they've been in contact with someone with covid, a prolonged period of time. they should get a test. >> what if i travel, if i fly? >> don't fly, that's the whole point about staying home, staying close and not moving around right now where there's surges all over the country. >> right. >> if you were to find yourself in that category, yeah, that would be not an unreasonable to do, but understand that you're probably going to have to get tested a couple of times to be sure. >> i'm asking people who did what they did over thanksgiving weekend. it can't be changed now. if you saw families that you don't normally see, you gathered

indoors, yes, should you test? >> yes. >> consider yourself exposed. you have a choice. you can isolate -- quarantine yourselves for two weeks, which is what the california rules say if you've been out of state, or you can quarantine for some period of time, give yourself a little bit of distance from the actual potential exposure and get tested five to seven days after. >> if people want to get a test, what's the ideal time frame. say you did your thanksgiving gathering on thursday and then let's say you flew on sunday. when should you tis? >> i think you have to assume that when you flew, you were exposed. at that point in time, your test isn't going to turn positive until day three, at the least. so that would be sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday. the least likely period to have a false negative is eight days

out. so you would be testing on, say, the following sunday, the following monday. >> got it. you mentioned the quarantine. you said something about seven to ten days. i'm curious about that. santa clara county says 14 days but they're thinking about revising it down. what's the optimal? >> well, the optimal's 14 days. are you really going to catch that last few? is it really worth it to keep people quarantined for a full 14 day days. i think the cdc's advice will be welcome when it comes and we'll be able to shorten quarantine and then the people have a negative test, they can come out earlier. >> for people who haven't had a test, what does that mean? should they not go to their

office, should they not go to their school, should they not go to the grocery store. >> quarantine means quarantine. right. they should stay in their houses and only be in contact with whom they travel and sit tight. that means have stuff delivered if you're going to go out, wear a mask and don't come into contact with people. if you want to walk around the block or take the dog out, fine, fine, fine, but just don't come in contact with people. unfortunately there's a choice been made and the consequences right now in california is that the state and many of the counties want you to sit tight for 14 days. if you're not going to get tested. >> if people do test positive, what should they do? i know some things are obvious but should they tell never their network? >> i think it would be helpful.

if there's contact tracing, someone will be in touch with you. the ability to do high touch contact tracing becomes more and more difficult. i know that san francisco is moving towards a system at least for some people of more automated contact tracing with text messaging and recorded messages, things like that, saying that they've been exposed and they should go get tested. while you're waiting for the results, assume you're positive and self-isolate. that's a new functionality of the new computer being used statewide. >> governor newsom said people made it clear to stay isolated. i think the most troubling is the icu.

bay area, 70% full but by christmas eve, 91% full. by christmas eve, 134%, so dr. rutherford, tills what is that projection based on? can we change it? what happens when we run out of icu beds? >> that's everybody's concern, believe me. yes, we can change the projections. we can turn the curve down. i think we may well have gotten a start on that as thanksgiving. and hopefully with the new round of blockdowns, which are very stringent in los angeles, we haven't talked about that yet but they boisk banned gatherings of any kind, social, commercial, whatever, so they're going into a hard lockdown in los angeles. i think it's those sorts of measures that are going to get us out of this and get us to the other end.

yes, we can control it. we can bring more icu beds on line and -- but it's not simple. >> no. i mean, you mentioned the l.a. crackdown. you're right, no more gatherings with people outside your household. today governor newsom did say that for the deep purple counties more restrictions will be coming and we're still thinking about i. what do you think should be the next logical next step? >> i think you're seeing it being played out in los angeles and santa clara. santa clara has issued accessory closures. los angeles has received notices of excessive closures like for all gatherings. that's just the -- that's the way it's going to play. i found it really interesting and compare and contrast with france, which has done a remarkably good job.

they're really pretty tightly locked down. businesses are not many businesses are open. bars, restaurants, gyms, pools, theaters, all closed. the other businesses are open with restrictions on how many people can go in. interestingly, they haven't closed their schools and k-12 education is still going strong there. they imagined to really flip it around and get a handle on it. >> new york city, actually, the mayor has just decided we're going to keep the schools open, close the bars. to people who are parents like myself, that seems very sensible. but i got to ask you. there are restrictions on students, including santa clara's ban on all sports practices, that includes, high school, if you will, collegiate, club teams. i'm going to ask you, without those options for kids to play, do you actually think that's

going to help? is it really effective or is it going to push the kids to play in arizona or out on their own unsupervised. >> the opportunity for child to child transmission is not particularly high. if you're a 235-pound middle linebacker for a professional football team with a lung capacity -- endless lung capacity and the ability to sneeze and cough with great force, that's quite another thing. it's unfortunate. that's kind of where we are. it's affecting not only the 49ers but stanford and san jose state as well. we're going to have to see how it plays all out. these are the kind of restrictions that are really trying -- that we can put into place to really try and achieve control of the epidemic. it only gets more draconian after that.

>> we're going to take a short break. in the meantime we'll continue our conversation on

and we are back dr. rutherford. if we get the vaccine, can we still get covid 1? >> well, there's going to be a certain number of people who don't -- whom the vaccine doesn't take. that's the so-called vaccine efficacy. when you hear it's 494.5 or 95% or 90%, what that's referring to is if you contact into contact with the virus, ok, that's the

first if, and a hundred people who had not been vaccinated would get infected by people who did get vaccinated would become effective. it's 95%. doesn't mean you have a 5% chance of ef getting the disease. you'd have about a 5% failure rate. >> that's incredible. >> that's what it is. it's the measles vaccine, which is the best vaccine we have going. >> the governor said california will get 327,000 pfizer doses in mid december. he said the distribution plan will be announced later this week but who do you expect to get them first in the first delivery? >> the cdc suggestions and that of the national academy of medicine as well is that it should go to front line health workers, icu, emergency department, people who are actually seeing the patients

themselves and older people who are living in congregate living facilities and the people who work in those facilities. nursing home residents and the people who work in nursing homes and the front line health care workers who are going to be seeing patient. that's going to eat up those doses. it's two doses per person. >> right. >> that's 1663,500. >> yes. >> if i can do the math. >> can you give us a time line for each category of people to get the vaccine, ending with those of us who are middle age and no exposure and no conditions. >> the first will come around the first of january and that will take care of older people who are not living in residential care facilities and

those living with preexisting companies those will be in the spring, spring, early summer we'll move to everyone else. if moderna comes on line, we have twice adds much. >> how quickly will they get that and how quickly will that go out? >> i'd say it's roughly the same time line. >> ok. >> days to get the fda approval. it will then go to cdc to be reviewed again. plus california has its open review. its adds about a week, i think, maybe, but it will pay off in making people get vaccinated. >> is it a possibility to get teachers as essential workers the vaccine early on in the process so that kids can get back into the classroom? >> that's a possibility. i'm sure it's being discussed. but what you can't with the surge coming is not having

enough people to work in hospitals and icus. >> absolutely. >> people with covid and even in little rochester, minnesota. >> ok. there's also the astrazeneca, pfizer, moderna. looks like we could have three viable vaccines. like could we pick the vaccine we want? are some better suited for others than others? >> no. i don't think you'll get a choice. you'll have what's available regionally. the astrazeneca vaccine, they're still messing around with it -- not messing around. they're still trying to complete the studies to understand exactly what happened. they talk about a half dose and a full dose was much better and the half dose was actually a mistake, they weren't supposed to get a half dose. now they have to figure out what

that's all about. i think that will take a while to get that disentangled. i think we're talking about pfizer and moderna for the next few months. then maybe as ttrazeneca can gon line. it's got a less demanding series of police officer freezing steps in it. it's probably also less expensive so it should be used in less developed countries. >> sounds like it's possible that that one may be kind of for the rest of us, to speak, the people who get them later? who knows? >> i think it will be distributed regionally and we'll get what comes for southern california. >> you talked about alerting people if they've been exposed. i read that washington state started a notification system today.

basically people get an alert if they are close to another app use oar. do we have that coming to california? sounds promising. >> yes, we do. it's being -- it's in studies now at ucst and understand whoever's on the receiving edged of this has to have downloaded the app and has to look at it. and even in a country as compliant, say, as singapore, only 20% of people downloaded the app. i think this stuff has a bit of a ways to go. if it works, it works. it works great. think of populations where people are doing nothing else but looking at their cell phone all day long, like college staunts and high school. i'm being facetious here. those are the kind of people it

works well for. it's not going to work well for your 90-year-old mother-in-law. >> i want to get to debbie's question about whether these vaccines, are they live vaccines? >> a very good question. my wife had three sets of medical boards asked me the same question yesterday. they're in between. what they are is messenger rna. they're a fragment of genetic material. they're not live in the sense that they -- that they'll come in and the virus will replicate like the oral polio vaccine or measles vaccine but there are live deponents. they get put into the hosts, meaning yours, dna and it cranks out viral proteins which the body then raises an immune response, so that's kind of in between. >> i've got a 20 second follow-up.

can you get a little bit sick from it, you know, because sometimes when you get a fully live vaccine, you do suffer some of the side effects. >> it's just -- the piece is too small. it's not going to trigger the immune system. some of the astrazeneca vaccine is that the body might recognize it. so the russian uses the adeno virus. that does make people sick. >> always great talking with you. i always learn so much. i feel like it's a free lecture. and i love it. take care. >> take care. >> talk to you soon. >> absolutely. >> restrictions impacting the region. we're going to talk about the

santa clara county issued new orders. this could impact businesses tlout the bay area. from the 49ers to local businesses, it's having a direct impact. joining us is the general manager of the sheraton pallo atton hotel, jim. nice to see you. >> hi. how are you? >> i'm doing just fine. i got to ask you the impact on you. this is for hotels and other lodging facilities to open only for essential travel and for use to facilitate isolation and quarantining. when did you find out about this. >> i think saturday night is when we were first notified, so we scrambled pretty quickly. >> this is kind of like when the lockdown first started, right? what do you think about it? >> it doesn't help. but things weren't good to begin with, so, you know, i guess in one regard it might as well happen now. december was not looking like it

was going to be the best month, but you know, yeah, it doesn't help. it's understandable. >> you're seeing cancellations? >> yeah, a few. a lot of our business has to do with the hospital, so it is essential travel. i think how we've been impacted most is athletics. visiting teams, things like that this week cancelled. that's disappointing but it's kind of the way it's been since march. >> were you getting business like parents visiting students or are you talking about athletes actually staying there? i know a while they couldn't stay in their dorms, right? >> no. you're right. a few months ago we had quite a few athletes staying here. of the last week, we were expecting three or four visiting teams, stanford basketball and all those sports have canceled. >> because of the same order, of course. >> exactly. >> you're located near stanford

hospital. how has your business impacted in terms of changes to the hospital due to covid? >> so it's been kind of strange. in the beginning we had a lot of business with health care workers staying here, which was good and bad news. it was bad news that they had to be here but it was good for the hotel because it kept some people here working. they've implemented something that if you're having an elek active surgery, you need to come in the day before and get covid tested. >> can i just ask you, in terms of this essential travel only for hotels, how would you enforce that? >> that's a good question. and what you do is you put -- people know. you're really limited on, you know, what type of questions and how you can answer questions of people checking in. so you let them know about the order, but a lot of it is on the

guests themselves. i think for our team here it is really to let people know what the order is. but we're limited opd what we can enforce. we're not exactly going to search people up and down on everything about what brings them here. you kind of limit it. you do the best you can. >> well, jim, i know these are hard times for the whole industry, and you have a beautiful hotel, a gorgeous facility, i've been there myself. i hope you'll hang in there and come out the other side doing better than ever. take care, be well, thanks for your time today.

all right, folks, we're

back. thank you so much for joining us on this interactive show tonight, as we come on the air, major news on the coronavirus vaccines. and here in new york, the governor sounding the alarm. tonight, abc news confirming united airlines is now flying the first batch of pfizer's vaccine around the world and right here to the u.s. and news the second vaccine maker moderna is now asking for emergency approval, too. moderna now saying its vaccine is 94% effective against covid and 100% effective against those severe cases of the virus. and tonight, news from one of the leaders of operation warp speed, now saying anyone in the u.s. who wants a vaccine will have access to one by june. and the meeting tomorrow over who gets access to a vaccine first. tonight, new york's governor with a new warning, telling hospitals to start identifying retired doctors and nurses who can