building a better bay area for a safe and secure future. this is abc 7 news. thanks for joining us, i'm kristen sze. welcome to our daily program "getting answers." we're getting answers for you in real time. today we'll talk live to the state school superintendent tony thurmond about the state of schools and what happens next. and we'll talk to congresswoman barbara lee about an update on the covid-19 relief bill that may bring some cash to you. let's begin with the decline of icu availability. southern california down to zero percent as in no availability. san joaquin region, 0.7%. greater sacramento, 11.3 he%.

the bay area down to 13.1% rare big drop. northern california, 25.8%. here is the bay area region. all of it will be under the state's stay-at-home order at 11:59 tonight. the counties with stripes, those are currently the places that didn't implement the order early but of course that is going to change now in less than nine hours. the solid color counties already have orders similar to the stat states. right now we want to begin with the latest on covid and a vaccine, the surge here in california. joining us is chair of ucsf's department of medicine, dr. bob wachter. thanks for joining us. >> a pleasure. >> the moderna vaccine in the past hour got the green light from an fda outside panel, this is an advisory panel. so what does this mean, what is the next step and when is it going to happen? >> likely tomorrow, and it's pretty much the same drill as last week with the pfizer vaccine. the panel gives it its thumbs up. the fda does its final review.

and generally blesses it. so i think we can expect approval of the second remarkably effective vaccine by tomorrow. >> when that happens, when do you think they will go out and when will we get them here in california? >> probably similar to what we saw last week with pfizer. once the approval happened by the fda, the shipments began and we began receiving them in centers including ucsf about three or four days later, two, three, four days after the approval. i think by early next week, and it should kind of double the supply of vaccine that we have to work with. >> only double? or are there a lot more of the moderna? i seem to recall there are more shipments, or at least come in bigger numbers, the doses. >> yes, that is the numbers, i haven't seen the national numbers, but for california, it looks like there's more of the moderna vaccine coming than the pfizer vaccine. and that's good, not only because it's nice to have the extra vaccine doses, it will move things along more quickly, but the moderna vaccine is

easier you. won't see the pizza boxes stuffed with pellets of dry ice, it's easier to store and administer. >> laurie wants to know, any knowledge if the moderna or pfizer vaccine would be unwise for an individual with a shellfish allergy? >> the allergy question is turning out to be one of the most interesting cases. there were very few cases of people who had allergic reactions during the trials. the trials, 40,000 people received one vaccine or the other. we've now heard of a few cases, patients who had moderately severe allergic reactions in britain and yesterday from the united states. so not necessarily with shellfish. the recommendation is if you have an allergy to some part of the vaccine, you shouldn't get it. but for everybody else,

including shellfish allergy, the key thing is to stay around, where you get the vaccine, for about a half hour later so if so you have an allergic reaction, they can treat it. >> in alaska, a couple of health care workers, that was to the pfizer vaccine. can you talk about what they suffered and whether that is concerning at all? >> it's a little concerning. i mean, one of them had what's known as an anaphylactic reaction where their heart went fast and i believe they had a tiny bit of trouble breathing. that one got two shots of epinephrine, millions of people carry around an epipen, that's what tr what it is, and the patient recovered. that's been true of all four cases we've. allergies. it's not to the action part of the vaccine, it's in a part of the vaccine that's wrapped in a little bit of fat that allows it to get into your muscle. at least so far, no one has had permanent harm from it.

it means you should hang around for a half hour after you get the vaccine to make sure you don't have an allergic reaction. i wouldn't worry too much about it. >> correct me if i'm wrong, i heard today there were a few in the trial that developed bell's palsy in the moderna trial, i think. what do you know about that is that statistically significant? >> you're talking about tens of thousands of people who received the vaccine, this is four people, it's not even clear it's statistically significant. random play of chance, bell's palsy is common enough that you'll see a few cases in one group or the other. it's something that needs to be watched carefully but i don't think it's necessarily a worrisome signal. >> the odds of a person dying from covid is much lower than the chances of dying from an allergic reaction, some people say. what do you say to that? >> i think those people are

wrong. the number of people in the u.s. who have died from covid, and now 40,000 people have received the vaccine without a long-lasting side effect, unless you're confident you're going to be hermetically sealed in your house for the next several house with no support for covid, then i think the odds are far better that you'll die of covid than you are of a side effect of the vaccine. >> good to know, because even if you don't get sick yourself, you can infect somebody else. have you gotten your vaccine yet? >> i have not, i'm waiting for my email. if i abruptly cut off this call it will be because my email came and i'm running to get my vaccine. we're allocating it based on -- we've divided up health care workers in the different groups so people who directly taking care of covid patients are first to go. i'm in the second group after that because i take care of patients but not necessarily

covid patients. importantly, the doctors, including senior administrators like me, are not prioritized. so i actually think it's wonderful that a janitor who might have to go in a room and clean up a covid patient's room gets prioritized before me. >> sure. basic it on explore seems to make sense, even in the next phase, as they decide which essential workers go next, seems to make sense. so all good with the rollout so far and no severe symptoms among the folks at ucsf? >> yes, it's still a fairly small number, we've vaccinated 500, maybe at the end of the day it might be 1,000. we've not seen any concerning side effects. but we're going to watch very carefully. the ground rules are now that after we vaccinate you, you'll sit in a chair nearby, we'll watch you for a half hour and make sure that nothing happens. if something happens, we're ready, obviously, to deliver medications for it. but at least so far, so good. >> all right. very concerning to us, over 100,000 new cases in california in the last two days. i want to ask you if there's any

way to tell if we're still in the upswing in this latest surge. >> well, sure. the curve is still going like that. there's been no demonstration of a plateau yet. we're now getting out past the phase where it's from thanksgiving. it is still -- there's a lot of spread in the community. there's a lot of household spread. and there is no sign that it's turning down yet. and the problem is we're now coming into the next holiday where there's going to be a lot of people congregating. i'm afraid we're in a for a very bad patch, probably lasting until mid-january. it's important, with all the enthusiasm about the vaccine, the vaccine is not going to be -- is not going to bend the curve by itself for a couple of months. you're still talking about thousands of people or tens of thousands of people getting vaccinated, whereas we're talking about hundreds of millions of people that are going to need to be protected before you start bending the curve. so we've got a couple of tough

months ahead of us. >> we certainly do. how is the bay area doing compared to, say, los angeles or other parts of the state? >> much better. i mean, it's not -- it's not great. the bay area is seeing five times more cases than we saw a month ago at ucsf. today we have 55 covid patient in the hospital. 15 or 20 in our intensive care unit. a month ago that number was about ten. so it's real. we're seeing substantial surges. when you compare what we're seeing to los angeles, los angeles is several teams worse. los angeles had more than 100 deaths from covid yesterday. we didn't have a single one. so we're still fortunate, we're still doing better than any major city in the country. but we're not doing well and we've got to turn it around. >> given those regional differences, san francisco is now mandating a ten-day quarantine for anyone traveling, muc moving, or returning to san francisco from outside the bay area. do you support that? >> i think it's a reasonable

thing to do. there are no walls between our cities. if you have a certain chance of getting infected when you come in contact with someone in the bay area, if you come in contact with someone from other parts of the state, that chance is much higher, because the case positivity rate is four times higher in los angeles than it is in san francisco. so it's reasonable. people should not be travel. if they have to travel, it's reasonable to assume there's a decent chance you got infected and to be really careful. >> as more people start to get the vaccine, what do you think about immunity passports for people who have been vaccinated? >> i think that they're inevitable. i think at some point down the road, we will say that, okay, people who are immune can get onto this airline or can go into this workplace or maybe can go back to work. i think it's as a totoo soon fo right now very few people have access to the vaccines and we want to make sure that immunity passports don't increase health

disparities. but i think when we reach a point, it might be in the spring, when everybody has a chance to get vaccinated and some people choose not to, i don't think it's unreasonable for businesses or it may be even schools to say, all right, if you've been vaccinated, you can come in, if you haven't, you won't have access. that will also provide an incentive for people to get vaccinated. >> that is very true. dr. wachter, that is such an interesting debate, right, after you get over the initial, huh, that sounds like a dystopian society thing, and then think about the reopening goals, it does seem to make sense from a scientific at some point. standpoint. >> we do it in the schools, at ucsf, kids have to take the vaccine, so it's not that foreign. i don't think we should do it at the beginning but board the end game, it's a reasonable thing to consider. >> one last question, this one is from alex, i assume alex is a nurse. if a nurse who works with covid patients gets the vaccine, are they safe to be around their family again, if so, how long after the shot do they have to

wait before coming home, hugging their kid? >> this is a challenging question because this issue of do we know that it completely prevents the chances that you will get covid and have it in your nose and mouth. what we know it prevents is that you'll get sick. we know it will prevent death. we know it prevents hospitalizations, so it's really effective at that. we don't know for sure yet, we probably will in a month or two, whether it actually prevents you from getting covid, catching it, and therefore spreading it to another person. at least for now, even though you've been vaccinated, and by the way, it's not until you get the second shot and really ten days after the second shot that you're fully protected, you know you're save and you know you won't get sick from covid, which is spectacular. you can't say for sure you've not caught covid and therefore could spread it to another person. so at least for the time being we have to assume that people who have been vaccinated can still be infected, can still spread it and take all the relevant precautions. >> great information as always.

chair at ucsf department of medicine dr. bob wachter, thank you so much. >> my pleasure, thank you. next, state superintendent for members like martin. an air force veteran made of doing what's right,

not what's easy. so when a hailstorm hit, usaa reached out before he could even inspect the damage. that's how you do it right. usaa insurance is made just the way martin's family needs it with hassle-free claims, he got paid before his neighbor even got started. because doing right by our members, that's what's right. usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. ♪ usaa

welcome back. the pandemic has had a devastating impact on california school kids. this latest surge is further diminishing their chances to return to the classroom. joining to us talk about what the state's action plan is to support student and teachers is state superintendent of education tony thurmond. tony, good to see you again. >> you too, kristen, good afternoon. >> good afternoon. let's start here. what percentage of california's public school kids k-12 are still doing -- actually i should say are doing in-person

education now either fully or just hybrid? >> i would have to say that most, if we've got 90% of our counties in purple tier, most are still in distance learning. we're trying to find ways to support them and create a path to get schools to be able to open hopefully in the new year. >> most counties are in purple now. as you know, for a while in the fall most counties were in the red or orange. but most still did not open in person. and i want to know what your thought on that is. were you hoping they would? >> you know, we watch carefully. i think districts were trying to make decisions, some were in orange, many were in red. many of the school districts that opened, we did find that many of them scrambled and closed within a few days when they saw a spike in cases. given what we're seeing with the surge right now, it's hard for me to imagine anybody opening a school right now. i mean, just 53,000 new cases on

wednesday in the state, 293 deaths in the state on wednesday, seems to me that our best chance right now is to hunker down, try to stem the surge and get ourselves in a place where we can safely open with some more testing, come the beginning of the year. >> part of the prevention strategy in the school setting is relying on the vaccine. i mean, certainly that's one piece of it. how high up on the list do you think teachers and school staff should be in terms of inoculations? >> we think that teachers and school staff need to be at the very top of the list. let's face it, vaccines are a game changer for all of us but there's not enough in terms of the dose availability. by all accounts teachers will be at the front of the line, we want them as close to the front as possible. the vaccines touched down yesterday in our state. many of our health care workers are being vaccinated as we speak. of course there are seniors in long term care facilities who are very vulnerable and have to be tested.

we believe teachers and staff have to be at the front of the line. that gives us a chance to get our schools open in the new year. >> the governor will finalize who will be in group 1-b, next in line, so to speak. so you're advocating for teachers to be at the front of the line. >> yes, we'll continue to advocate for them to be in 1-b. >> what are other ways to reduce risks to allow children back? what about expanded testing? they're more available now and cheaper too. >> there's no question. many of our school districts have been scrambling to get more testing. we're working with the governor and the legislature to explore ways to get more testing. we have to pay for testing availability. to me that is the key to give us a path to open our students. we have to test students. right now most of the conversation has been about mostly testing adults. we have to test everyone in the school community to open school

safely. >> there is a bill in the assembly now that would require public schools to reopen by early spring as long as the district's county is out of the purple tier, red or lower. do you support that? >> kristen, i haven't had the chance to read the bill. we've reached out to the author and the author has also reached out to talk. we'll take a look at it. obviously we share the author's urgency around getting schools open. i would say we should be careful to not mandate things that take away flexibility for local districts to make decisions, meaning every district is different. some have more open space, some have access to more classroom space for social distancing. i wouldn't want to lock anybody into a requirement that doesn't take into account their unique needs and challenges. my hope, though, is that by the time the bill is heard, that we've accelerated the amount of covid testing and the vaccine so we find ways that schools can open without the need for the legislation. but we'll take a look at it.

we'll be talking to the author soon. >> and parts of the bill stipulates that there's a plan that by march the districts will come up with a plan for reopening in person. i just watched a san francisco school board meeting and there was a school board member who was crying, literally crying, that distance learning is not working for a lot of her kids and saying, where is our plan, we don't even have a plan. what can you do to help these districts at least during this time when we can't really open, to formulate those plans for a return? >> there's no question that has unavoidable impacts on many of our students. the gap is districts are still looking for help on how much state covid testing they can get. the governor's office and others are standing up a brand-new lab, the valencia lab that will work with districts. we think there needs to be more testing, expanding it to

students, expanding the expandit interval, the frequency of testing. we want to help them get there. >> join us on facebook live right now as we take a short break. we'll continue

all right, we were chatting on facebook live with school superintendent tony thurmond. we'll continue that conversation right now. superintendent, i want to ask you, and this is alex's question on facebook, what is the plan when kids return to school and you find they are well below grade level? >> i think we're going to have to pursue what i call a major recovery effort to offset learning gaps. it will start with teachers who will assess students and where are they entering. this is what teachers do. they assess and then they help students to think about how to get back on grade level. we're going to need some interventions that allow us to do some small group work, a lot of work during afterschool, a lot of literacy and tutoring help, especially in specialized

work for our english learners, to give them more exposure to language development. i expect we'll see summer programs geared to help offset learning gaps. >> that would be fantastic for a lot of parents that are concerned about all the learning lost since march. alejandra rodriguez says there doesn't seem to be a plan for special ed kids to go back, only for the general kids. so she's wondering, look, special ed has been, you know, understaffed in general, how can she as a parent be sure that her kids will be safe and learning? >> the first of athing i want ho know is she can ask her district, we have the ability in our state to allow small cohorts of students to be able to be in person instruction. this is largely built to support students in special education. so to make sure that she's familiar with that. we are very concerned about how

to support students in special education. we want to accelerate some of our family engagement programs. my office has just released this week what we call equity grants. and these are grants that school districts can use for things like family engagement, special development for educators, all the things that we think are going to be important to help to offset the learning gaps that many of our students, including those in special education, are experiencing right now. >> oh, okay. those grants are good to know about. charade butler wants to know, do you need to hire more school counselors because of the social and emotional issues that students are being faced with right now? she says, currently the ratio for councilor to students, i don't know if this is right or not, she says it's 350 students to one counselor. >> and that ratio is true. that's often the counselors who do traditional academic counseling. that doesn't even speak to the counselors who do meant healnta.

i want to commend the counselors and what they've been doing. we work with a lot of community based organizations. our school counselors association, school social workers association. we want to see if we can use state dollars to expand the state medical program to support counseling. our school districts have about $2 billion right now that they can use for any type of program on social/emotional learning. we did a big webinar training this week to show district how to do counseling programs and social/emotional learning programs. we probably had a couple of thousand educators and staff participate. we want to continue to encourage folks to pursue these programs and use these dollars that are available to support social/emotional learning programs for our students. >> last question, we have about 20 questions. brandon wants to know, will kids be required to be vaccinated to

start school in person or just teachers? >> at this point it's focused on teachers and staff. the cdc and other places are still trying to determine what are the impacts of the vaccine on children. there just isn't enough data yet. and so most people expect adults first, we study, and then when we have clear information, we can look to the future to vaccinate our students. >> all right. super tony thurmond, always great when you spend time with us to explain what you're working on on the state

. thank you very much for joining us on this interactive show. we talked about the new icu availability numbers. you can see the bay area is down to 13.1, southern california at

zero. we also talked with state superintendent tony thurmont. tonight, several developing stories as we come on the air. just a short time ago, a second vaccine clearing a major hurdle. late today, an fda panel recommending emergency use authorization for a second vaccine here in the u.s. recommending emergency approval of the moderna vaccine. the fda's final decision expected within hours. tonight, what the data reveals on the moderna vaccine, preve preventing severe cases of coronavirus and can it stop the spread of the virus? what we've learned. could there now be two vaccines up and running before christmas? while across the country tonight, vaccinations under way. drive-through sites for health care workers and new questions after a second health care worker suffers an allergic reaction. and news that there could be extra doses in some vials of the pfizer vaccine. all of this comes following the deadliest day of the pandic