building a better bay area for a safe and secure this is abc7 news. >> i'm kristen sze. we get answers for you in real time. today we'll talk covid-19 vaccines and everything in between with dr. peter ken hong and how to celebrate st. patrick's day safely. let's begin with san mateo becoming the first bay area county area to move into restricted orange. the announcement was made today with the actual move becoming effective tomorrow and it comes one jeer to the date

area's first order. joining us is michaelagree. congratulations being the kiss county to move into orange. so, mike, moving tiers is, of course, combination of new cases and health equities. what enabled your county to move into orange? >> i believe it's a combination of everything. i think the vaccine is starting to have an impact as we get out into the communities where it's most needed. i think the business community has really rallied around the support of its residents to make sure they operate in a responsible and cautious way. i believe the communities had come together to necessary tate

the heart it wear a a a a socially distance. so more things, more businesses can open. >> all right. here's the big question everyone wants to know. what types of businesses and activities can be open in the orange tier which were not allowed in red? >> i think the one thing that a lot of people are looking forward to are bars opening outside and allowing to serve people outside where they're not serving food. so that's new. restaurants will be able to increase capacity 50%. stores will be able to across capacity. gyms will be able to increase capacity. really, the crease of capacity so that folks can be handled in a responsible way, and we're not fully open yet. we want people to understand that. it's not time to go out and party and have a good time.

we are moving with caution. that has allowed us to get to orange at this point. >> absolutely. i want to mention gyms 25%. me, occasionally, i like to go to the bowling alley and that can be opened at 5% as well. many school districts seem to have agreements with their teachers unions which allow them to reopen in the orange tier. do you expect more schools will open in your county now? >> we hope so. our county board of education has done a great job of settingt up a process for teachers to be vaccinated. we've been vaccinating teachers and getting a lot of them done. we hope the schools get back open very soon. it's very important to the students to get back in that classroom, get that instruction and get caught up from being away for over a year now. >> all right.

how about the vaccine supplies now in san mateo county. how many doses are you giving out per week? that's tough, still very constrained. that's from the state on down. really, the state is not getting the doses they need to really take care of folks in a massive way. we're constrained on our first doses. we have enough had get through our second doses. quite frankly, that's most of what we're doing. we're very constrained on the first doses and nell that will remain that way for the next two are three weeks. then we expect to see a lot more doses flowing. >> that's what we're hearing on the state level, so hopefully in a few weeks. one of our viewers said, yes, the vaccine is so hard to get. for people in san mateo county how can they get notified once they're eligible?

>> it's very important that people sign up on am i turn. the state will be moving through that relatively soon. i encourage everybody to go to our site. smt health and sign up. if we have availability, we will call you. we're still operating within all the tiers that the states had allowed us to operate and we're making good progress there but we need a lot more doses. >> you followed the state guidelines and expanded eligibility to people 16 to 64 with conditions that put them n- at high risk and jobs such as janitors, transit workers. do you have counties ties ties addition to that. or specific things? >> you know, it's difficult, right? you start with the premise now

we have all these tiers which create expectations. we don't have the doses to get them vaccinated. so it's creating a lot of frustrations. we're following the state guidelines and allowing those to sign up. as the doses come in especially the first doses, we'll be notifying them to get the vaccine. will the mow also say, the best vaccine is the one that goes into your arm. all three are terrific, absolutely terrific and we're going to ask everyone as soon as your time comes, get the vaccine that you're offered because that's the one that will protect you. >> how are you doing on vaccinating the homeless? the county is the main back stop for those groups. >> right. we're just starting that process this week in getting out doing that.

it's very important to get these folks because they could be super spreaders and we're going to make a concerted effort to get hut there with the limited doses that we >> all right. the county vaccination days. i know you did something for teachers and emergency workers. do you expect to hold those one-day vaccination events? >> we'll see more mass events that welcome everyone whose eligible in a big way. i mean, we can do 10,000, 15,000 a day. but right now i think we're more interested? getting into the neighborhoods and making sure we address the needs of the most vulnerable throughout the county. those are smaller and really effective ways to get to people who can't necessarily get to a mass vaccination site. >> okay. look, these new openings under

the orange tier are a shot in the arm so to speak for the economy, right? we reported today in san francisco hall of the small businesses in the city closed in the past year. do you have comparable figures for your county? >> i don't know the exact figures. i can tell you just walking around and driving around, there are a lot of businesses that have not made it through. part of our recovery process is to encourage the businesses to try to get back in or encourage new businesses to take their place. we have got to get people back to work. we have got to get businesses back open in a meaningful way and give people the security necessary to operate in this county. it impacts our entire economy. hotels have been devastated in this county and we're looking forward to the day they can reopen in a meaningful way. >> all right. we have about 30 seconds. what is your message to people in san mateo county who are

happy about moving into the orange? >> absolutely. the message is proceed with caution. look, this is a great day to celebrate. we've got more open but let's do it cautiously. let's be the first county to get to yellow and green if that is the next tier. we want it get fully open and we're there. we have the vaccine rolling out. the more caution we use, the sooner we'll progress so one day we're fully open. >> all right. congratulations. appreciate your time. >> thank you. coming up next, there's a lot of vaccine news to get updated on and we'll talk

and welcome back as california exand vaccine eligibility, a reminder that the pandemic is nowhere going away europe has some countries going back on lockdown. meantime, we have new worries. joining us is ucf infectious disease special lift dr. peter chin-hong. let's start with astrazeneca. we haven't approved the vaccine here but in europe countries have put it on hold because of a few cases that aper to link it to blood clots. what's the latest? >> so it started with four blood clots in norway. people started looking and there were a flew blood clots in germany, one in italy. i think that led to a lot of

worry. so as a caution, many european e countries put the distribution of the astrazeneca vaccination on hold. the uk did not. they did their own analysis and showed there was no difference between vaccinated folks in terms of clots and the baseline clot rate in the country. the folks in europe haven't done that kind of analysis yet, but they were reacting to sort of case reports. >> sounds like this is an abundance of caution kind of move that within the medical community it's not like there's a great sense of panic, that it should be stopped and thrown out, not at all, right in the. >> no. we have a lot of blood clots unfortunately, every year the u.s., up to 6,000, different kinds of clots that cause clots in the leg known

deep veinous thrombosis or dvt. it does make since that would be a vaccine- related effect. 4million a day are vaccinated in the u.s so i think a handful of cases in europe doesn't mean that it's necessarily linked to the vaccine. >> got it. good top understand that. okay. california's vaccine eligibility is, as you know, expanded to more people, mainly people with health conditions but it's kind of on an honor system, right? i talked to the doctor about that. obviously, it's for expediency. so many are worried that cheating will happen and it will be ram and the,

the next phase presumely 64-year-olds. are you worried? >> i think most will not have fraud or not honor the honor system. it's based on science, so i feel with the combination of the good faith of people and the science-based approach, openly it will be okay. like dr. aradon said, the main worry is having barriers, that people with have to get a letter or something like that, that it would have the letter verified >> i have seven or eight more questions but five minutes. we're being up the speed. hearing of vaccinated people

being affected in hawaii. is that an outlier of the vaccine not being effective. >> if you don't give time for it to take effect, which is two weeks after the second dose and if you're one of the 5% in moderna, pfizer vaccines who didn't have a response. >> moderna is testing the vaccine now on infants and children. is this the first of its kind and how do you feel about that? >> it's not the first of it is kind. it's the first of its kind to go this low. i think with ages six months to 11 years, it's the first company to do that. i'm not worried. >> and we need to do. it the plan is to evacuate children. the cdc said 12% of the u.s. is fully vaccinated. so at this pace, how long before we reach herd immunity,

do you think? >> it's a complex question but i think we're potentially able to reach this by summer, end of summer given the delay to get into people's arms but it doesn't take no consideration hesitancy. >> that is something we still have to evercome and work on through psa campaigns and board of mouth. do you think california will be open up vaccines to all adults by may 1st? >> i think we can open it whether we can vaccinate everyone will be another question. we have alaska and mississippi. >> you saw data suggesting americans, in fact, are showing up for their second doses, right? when there's a series people forget to show up for the second shot. i know i've done that b how are we doing with the second doses?

>> shockingly, about 90% are showing up for their second shot. the numbers may not look as good later on but an amazing job. thank you. >> put what's the latest on vaccine paare urging the biden administration to create a national database. is that something that will happen on a fed level, state level, county level, what do you think? >> israel is doing it as a country. i think right now it's problematic to even talk about because not everyone has equal access to vaccine. i just don't -- nobody wants services that vaccinated have would not be available to

people with protection who are not vaccinated. >> san francisco decided to make their own bmi threshold 30 instead of 40. what does that mean? hows did one figure out their bmi? >> so there are a lot of bmi calculators online. it's a calculation of height and weight f you google bmi calculator, you can do that. putting it at 30 is a continuous risk. it's trying it capture more vulnerable people. we have a more defined and mass so it might be easier to implement. basically, i hope everyone get eligible for the vaccine regardless. >> daniel wants to go what are you most excited and hopeful for right now? >> i'm really hopeful -- i

don't know, some old-fashioned things, i guests the vaccine va coming out but we have some really exciting vaccines coming up. novavax being one of them. then there are vaccines of the future. if we need boosters, maybe they would be easier to get, flu mist. i'm excited about pills being developed for covid, which means it could be like an outbreak control if a homes had an outbreak. like influenza, you can just give pills to people. >> so future vaccines or treatments may not even be in the form of a needle which a lot of people fear. so that is exciting. great. loretta wants to know what you think about the johnson & johnson one-shot vaccine. >> i love the j&j vaccine.

close to 100% of of of of of of serious disease and 100% in terms of hospitalizations. another thing with j&j we will in the see an allergic reaction. it's a different component. so a great vaccine. if it were the vaccine that i was eligible for, i would get it the. >> all right. real quickly. there's talk of california creating a green tier, minimal than yellow but more then no tier. what did you think about that idea? >> i think it's a great met forevehicle move, a great aspiration al move. it would be zero cases and businesses opening with no restrictions but we would probably still be wearing

and social distancing. >> dr. peter chin-hong, thank you for talking with us. >> thank you. since we're talking green, st. patrick's day is tomorrow and there's a way

by harnessing california's abundant wind and solar energy, we have the power to take on climate change. use less from 4 to 9 pm to keep california golden.

st. patrick's day is one of those holidays where people love to get together and celebration and sometimes with holidays. there are ways to celebrate safely. joining us more is liam reedy, the president of the united irish cultural center of san francisco. happy st. patrick's day. >> thanks for having us on. we are so excited about tomorrow's big day on the west side of the city. we hope we'll have a lot of people stopping by throughout the day.

we have a lot of things and, irish music, irish dance. of course, we have the corned beef and cabbage dinner for those who are hungry enough and more music and dancing later on in the evening. >> it's part of your event paint the bridge green, right? is there painting involve is there a bridge involve who probably a difficult task to paint the bridge in one day. chicago they can get away with dyeing the river green. it would be a tall task to get the bridge painted green in a short period of time. the paint the bridge green is a virtual event that our team has put together which includes many artists, international artists, lots of people from ireland. we have them nationally, from new york, the netherlands. we have a whole slew of events

for tomorrow evening. it's online at 7:30. you have to go to center web page. >> so you have the event at 7:30 at night and the daytime when you were talking about dinner and things. we have to make this clear to people it's safe and socially distanced. >> although we were kicked out of the building and broadsided last year, our event this year is under a canopy. we are allowed 25% inside with restricted capacity on the inside. so come out early tomorrow. we're practicing all the safe practices that one would expect but we are open for 25% but we have a wonderful outdoor can they i that can see 100 people

safely in our back parking lot. >> for the concert you have local irish dancers. it sounds fabulous. how can people watch and enjoy the fun. >> go to irish center sf.org. we have links on how to purchase tickets. the benefits will benefit our cultural programming which we have expanded into the youth programming. it's been very difficult the past year to develop online programming but we figured it out. we had to float the boat and figure out how a nonprofit would make this pandemic. >> all right.

thanks so much tonight, several developing stories as we come on the air. the first test vaccinations on children. a major first step in vaccinated millions of american children. moderna now testing its vaccine and thousands of children ranging from 6 months to 12 years old. and as authorities caution against crowds in the u.s., the new headline tonight just north of the border. ontario now declaring a third wave of the virus. and overseas tonight, the new wave across several european countries. the growing vaccine concern overseas, as well. more than a dozen countries suspending use of the astrazeneca vaccine and we'll tell you why. as millions in this country wait for vaccinations, the stimulus checks now arriving. and president biden's first trip out of the nation's capital to sell his historic