high there, i'm kristin z. you are watching getting answers live on abc 7 news and wherever you stream. we asked experts your question every day at 3:00 to get answers for you in real time. today we talked to the ucsf department of medicine chair about the delta variant and how osha's continued changes regarding masks in the office. also we will share our interview with lindeman well miranda the creator of hamilton and preview his new project in the heights out today. first cal osha reversed its controversial mask rules again last night just five days after the state only reopens. it withdrew its rule passed only last week saying everyone

in a work setting needs to wear a mask. as long as one person is unvaccinated. before you celebrate, this does mean the previous cal osha rule a prize for now. it says everyone in an office needs to be massed. but for how long? how does this affect misses and customers? joining us to talk about all this is helen cleary the vector of the regulatory roundtable made up of a group of companies that want to improve safety and health in the workplace. thanks for joining us. >> thank you for having me. >> you took part in the cal osha call which was a lot of confusion to be cleared up. from what i understand we have defaulted and reverted back to the old rule which says everyone in the work place needs to be massed. is that correct? >> that is correct, i guess. the current standard will remain in place. that standard went into effect on the november 30th.

>> how does that standard stay? as you know on june 15th the state is supposed to fully reopen and the state health and human services dr. secretary has said basically masks won't be needed in most circumstances. how do those two jive and work together? >> the division, the cal osha division, is working to revise that standard that came out on the 30th. they propose that to the board last week. the board voted to adopt it and the new guidance came out on the face coverings. after that came out the division realize that new changes work necessary. they held the emergency meeting last night to talk about it. they gave a presentation to the board and the division spoke with the board and said we want to take a look at this. in order to do that the board had to pull back

adopted last week which was under review. the division can make those changes. what happens now is the division will make changes burkett scheduled to come out tomorrow and the board will vote on that draft on june 17th. >> what do you expect that to say and then depending on the vote, when does the new rule kick into effect? >> the division has been pretty clear that the only change they are making has to do with face coverings. fully vaccinated employees do not need to wear face coverings. as you mentioned the previous draft restricted that to everyone in the room had to be fully vaccinated to remove their face coverings. there making a change for face coverings. we haven't seen the language and are not exactly sure what it is. in order to make this type

timeline we had to keep the changes small. once they presented tomorrow and the board votes on it it has 10 days to be reviewed by oa l and it will go into effect following that. that puts us at june 28th. >> chances are unless something unforeseen happens you won't be able to remove your mask in your office setting until june 28th? >> correct. >> even though on june 15th we have the broader opening where we get rid of capacity limits, where we pretty much tell people, hey, you do not have to keep your mask on if you are holy vaccinated, unless you happen to be in certain high congregant that you asians like at a school, public transit, hospital and things like that, correct? >> correct. >> i want to ask you what kind of difficulties you think this presents? what kind of challenges for businesses during this period

of gray area, if you will, or the new rule has not kicked in? >> i think one of the biggest challenges is the confusion. that's probably why we are talking today. the cd ph public leaders, public health officials have all announced this big opening on june 15th and employees are hearing that small employers are hearing that as well. that's not exactly what's going to happen. employers are going to be met, i think, with this challenge of employee saying i can take the mask off and i'm fully vaccinated. i don't have to social distance. that's not the case because cal osha is responsible for the rules that govern the workplace. i think the miscommunication and misunderstanding is one of the biggest hurdles that employees have to deal with. >> what are you telling members or businesses that consult with you. like you said they are being three options by the states in terms of masking. they can go with the honor system where the customer says

they are vaccinated. you don't need proof. that's what safeway is doing, basically. or ask customers for proof, which i can imagine too many businesses want to be doing that. and requiring businesses and customers to keep wearing masks. do you feel like that's a huge problem? what do you tell your members what they should do? >> we primarily focus on worker safety. our members vary from manufacturing to retail to utilities. a majority of them do deal with the public, but they are focused on the worker safety. i don't know how they are going to handle the public part of it, if they are posting signs or not. as of right now with the employees, they are communicating to their employees trying to get ahead of this and let them know is what's going to be expected. this is what's happening. you won't be able to take off your face covering and physical distance think will still be required. there's other smaller

requirements in this role that they will continue to have to follow. the most important thing is to get the message out to the workers right now of what the expectations are. >> what types of work laced does the rule cover? i wonder if it's the same whether you are a business that has external facing elements like let's say you are in retail or restaurant and deal with actual customers. or if it's a workplace like mine where only employees and vendors come in? are there differences? >> no. there is one standard for every workplace in california. that's been in place since november 30th. it applies to all the places with more than one employee that comes in contact with another individual, unless you are working from home. there is that exception. it covers every workplace the same. we tell restaurants, manufacturing centers, offices, facilities like yours, everybody

really has the same blanket requirements. >> one last question for you. before the cal osha meeting last night i think some business interest were worried and were urging governor newsome to use his executive order of power to get rules that match the state and the cdc more. is that still something you are pushing for? is it necessary at this point? >> we never directly did push for that. there are a lot of groups and coalitions that are asking for that. yes, it is still a possibility. governor newsome passed an executive order in december allowing cd ph rules to supersede the standard that cal osha ets. if he has the authority as far as i understand to do that there was a press conference today saying there was an announcement tomorrow coming. we don't know what that will be. i'm hoping that brings some clarity to what the expectations are. and the messaging from the state on how to handle this. >> all right. unless

otherwise, for now, due to the cal osha reversal last night and the vote that's coming,

when it comes to covid-19? tell me what you think. we have a couple more breaks and we will get to your answers.

welcome back. you just heard one perspective from the business side about cal osha's mask guideline saga. let's hear from the medical expert joining us to talk about that and more, the chair of the department of medicine at ucsf. good to see you. we don't need plurals or multiples. we have you and that is plenty enough. >> thank you. good to be here. >> if you were in charge, what would you decide when it comes to wearing masks in the office? i know it's different at a hospital setting such as yours, but what do you think? >> if i was sure everybody was vaccinated, i don't think anybody needs to wear a mask. i think that's pretty clear. where things get a little funky is what do you do if you are not sure that everyone is vaccinated and what we do about people who we know are unvaccinated. i own personal approach is that vaccinated people can hang out with other vaccinated people. they don't have to wear masks inside. unvaccinated people should be wearing masks inside. if you are not sure, i think

you have some decisions to make about whether or not to require vaccination or to require that unvaccinated people wear masks. what i worry about is unvaccinated people without masks i still think that the level of risk that we have got to be careful about. all of the low number of cases in the bay area does make it much safer than it would have been a few months ago. >> that's comforting. are you just as vexed as everybody else why cal osha kind of did what they did and said what they said in this past week when the state was pretty much saying after june 15th we will not have mask mandates?

the cal osha folks, now they are reversing themselves again. but they were kind of saying the onus is on everybody else. even if you have been vaccinated if one person is unvaccinated, you have to keep your mask on. is it surprising? >> i am confused. we are hearing different guidance from different organizations. it would be nice to have uniform guidance and cal osha and the state completely in line. it sounds like they are getting there. it is pretty confusing. i agree with it. >> it would have been nice to have communication up front. i saw today investment bank goldman sachs is requiring its u.s. employees to report their vaccination status. i wonder what your thoughts are about that? again, in a hospital you have to do that anyway. but in banks in the private sector, what do you think? >> i think the world would be a better place if the workplaces required that people were vaccinated to go in. we know that people can do their work without going in. i think until covid is largely eliminated from our world, i am actually completely supportive of organization saying to people they need to be vaccinated in order to work in the work lace. it's not clear to me what

goldman said that everybody has to be vaccinated were just saying they have to report their status? >> i think they are saying they have to report their status. but there are many employers that say vaccinated. many universities want students to be vaccinated to come back on campus. a lot of people discussed whether they have a right to. whether private employers have a right to. i think they do. >> no question they do. ethically it's a reasonable thing to do. i think legally there's no question that they do, although there is some chance that they will get sued. this is happening in a hospital in houston that has required all 25,000 of their employees to be vaccinated. about 100 of them have chosen not to and have started suing the hospital. the hospital has put

folks on unpaid leave and is beginning to move toward letting them go in a couple weeks if they don't begin the vaccination process. certainly for a hospital, that's a perfectly reasonable thing to do. in the workplace, it's a pretty hard thing for an employer to do. i personally would be in favor of employers requiring vaccination and not allowing unvaccinated people to come back until they are vaccinated or requiring that the unvaccinated people wear masks all the time inside. it's very, very tricky. that's a reasonable and legal thing to do. >> let's look at what is happening globally. today president biden announced the u.s. will be donating 500 million doses of the pfizer vaccine to the rest of the world. he said america is not safe until the world is safe. do you agree with that? >> yeah. america is a of a lot safer than it was. look at the bay area. the vaccination rates are incredibly high. as long as there are pockets of the world in the united states were the unvaccinated rate is

high you will have outbreaks. they will be brought into the bay area as long as sfo is open. you will see many outbreaks. our vaccination rate is so high that we probably are at a point where we will not see a big surge even though we will see new cases and variants. the risk around the world is we could at some point see a variant that's nastier than the ones we have seen so far. the new variant out of india, the delta variant, is worse than the old uk variant which was worse than the original. there's nothing in the rules that says we can't see another variant at some point that begins to elude our vaccines. right now we haven't seen it. i do think we have to get the world vaccinated as quickly as we possibly can. >> we don't want to give the vaccination time to evolve. talk about the vaccines we have and the efficacy against the delta variant. even if it's not preventing people from getting covid, is

it still preventing people who get the delta variant from getting very sick? >> it is preventing people from get covid. a study came out that said the efficacy of the pfizer vaccine against the delta variant is about 90%. maybe that's a smidgen lower than the 95% we have all gotten used to, that it's still incredibly high. what we are seeing is the first shot of pfizer and i assume moderna does not work nearly as well against the delta variant. with the old virus, a few weeks after your first shot you were 80% per sec protected. the second shot got you up to 95%. with the delta variant it's looking like the first shot only get you to 20% or 30%. the second shot get you up to 90%. by the time you are fully vaccinated with pfizer all

moderna if you are protected against the delta variant. we assume well protected against getting sick and dying as the shots seem to do for all of the variants now. >> good. due to the vaccination rate, the deaths are really coming down in the u.s., which is great work but because of that, young people seem to be a larger proportion of deaths in cases. talk to us about that. >> it means that when we look at the cases down, the deaths coming down and hospitalizations coming down, i wish we could see curves that show the rates in vaccinated versus unvaccinated people. you would see there are two different curves. these things are coming down massively in people who have been vaccinated. and in many cases not coming down and some cases even going up in unvaccinated people. if younger people are the ones who are unvaccinated and that's true in the bay area and other places that most people over 65 have been vaccinated and the

unvaccinated tends to skew younger. you will see more cases in those folks and

area. i don't think you can count on everybody unvaccinated wearing a mask and fessing up. that human behavior. >> thank you. good to see you. >> nice to see you as well. i want to share my conversation with "hamilton" lin-manuel miranda. we talk about his new project "in the heights" hitting theaters today. >> there's a breeze off the hudson. just when you think you are sitting living here the memory floods in. the morning light off the fire escapes. >> high, how are you? >> you are in an honest to god newsroom. >> it's an real newsroom that you are welcome to visit any time.

>> i see people around other people. it's very exciting. >> it totally is. we are so excited. we had to wait an extra year for "in the heights" to come out. >> yes! >> i finally saw it. it was joyous. i laughed and i cried. i hope those are normal reactions. it's amazing, congratulations. "hamilton" fans recognize the musical style. >> lights up heights at the break of day. i wake up and i got this little punk i got to chase away. >> you started writing "in the heights" long before hamilton, right? >> it's 20 years of my life. i started writing when i was 19 years old. i am 41. it's been a long journey this film. again, i can't think of a step of it i would trade away because this cast is so extraordinary. the direction of the film is extraordinary.

i learned how to write musicals writing "in the heights". there's five musicals called "in the heights" and one made it to broadway. >> you only need one. that's what i tell the kids. i found it super relatable as a chinese-american immigrant finding a home in america, relying on your community and most of all like the nina character not wanting to fail your family. right now america is so complicated. do hope this will be a universal story that unites us? >> i hope so. i'm so glad nina resonated with you. nina is the character that was closest to me. i am first-generation. we both know what that familial expectation is. we know the burden of sam family sacrifice. would also wanting to find your own way in the world. i think john understood that. he's also first-generation and his dad started a small business that he grew up in. i knew he knew that on a molecular level. i think that's incredibly

relatable. most of us come from somewhere and we are navigating those questions. >> totally. i'm glad you mentioned john chu. he's bay area's favorite son. you talk about the most dumplings ever at his restaurant. just putting that out there. the stage production got 13 tony nominations and won best musical. the movie should have been a slamdunk, but 10 years ago hollywood was a really different place and a different mind-set. it almost didn't happen. >> it straight up didn't happen. again, it was a mambo. it was one step forward and two steps back. the one step forward that was the miracle was that we actually got our shower written by latinos and starring latinos onto broadway and we were able to tell our own stories. thinking that we would have smooth sailing to hollywood was nacvetc

retrospect. we quickly hit the wall there are no latino movie stars that test international. you kind of raise your hand and say if you don't make movies with latinos, then there never will be. you cannot make international stars unless you make the movies and take chances on the latino talent. the credit goes back to john m chu. the way he created crazy rich asians he made this big hollywood movie and he said here's the movie stars you know and here's the movie stars you don't. but they are all movie stars. it was intelligently cast. now henry golding can open a movie and aquafina lots of movies. in terms of making stars, i think we wanted to do a similar things with heights.

we got jimmy smits and mark anthony. you have heard of those people. we also have leslie grace who is a huge star in the music world. we have anthony ramos. hopefully it will create a lane where none existed would be amazing. >> i just have to say people need to stay through the end to see the post credit scenes with you as the man. >> there's a post credit sequence. samuel l. jackson may or may not invite me to the avengers. stay through the credits. >> congratulations. >> thanks.

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revise their rules that no one needs a mask in the office. that wouldn't take tonight, several developing stories. president biden and the major announcement on the world stage. the president reaffirming america's commitment to its allies, meeting with british prime minister boar rigs johnson today. what the british prime minister said and the signal it send. and the president revealing the u.s. will send 500 million doses, a half a billion doses of the pfizer vaccine, to poorer nations around the world. and first lady dr. jill biden and the jacket making news tonight. cecilia vega reporting from england. back here at home tonight, the chilling grocery store shooting. a toddler among the victims. what authorities are now saying tonight. the coronavirus and this evening, the cdc now investigating a potential link between vaccines and heart inflammation in younger americans. what they're siege and what you need to watch out for. the cri