tv Mayors Press Availability SFGTV February 3, 2021 9:30am-10:31am PST
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>> good morning, welcome. i'm michael lambert, your city librarian. on behalf of the library commission, we're so delighted that you could join us today for this important announcement. i would like to acknowledge our library commissioners that are present, teresa, tanya, pete, john, and dr. lopez. thank you all for being here. madam mayor, welcome. we are so honored that you could participate in this event. we appreciate your leadership of our city and we are super
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excited about your announcement today. with that, i will invite you to get us started. maybe i was premature on that. oh, there she is. [laughter] >> did we start already? [laughter] >> i was just welcoming you and thanking you for honoring us with your presence and your leadership. we're super excited about your announcement today. with that, i invite you to get us started. >> all right thank you michael. i appreciate that. good morning everyone. i'm really excited to share some incredible news. as you may know, before i was mayor and even before i was on the board of supervisors, i served as the executive director in the western edition.
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i saw how deeply important arts are and in creating a vibrant and diverse community. believe it or not, i used to sing in a choir, dance, and perform, but i was not the best at it. however, the arts connects us to one another. it bridges the gap in our culture by helping us understand each other. they are how we express ourselves during our brightest and happiest moments, and sometimes some of our darkest ones. for people of all ages, arts and culture can help us navigate a world that can be confusing and strange. they can also provide opportunity not only for jobs and income, but for people who are in under served communities to find their voices and to make sure they are heard. that includes the role of our city's poet laureate. since lauren was made our first
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poet laureate in 1998, this prestigious honor has showcased san francisco's finest poets from many diverse backgrounds. their work has reminded us how it means to be a san franciscan, it reminus -- reminds us of our diversity and calls attention to our most pressing issues and inspires us to create a more equitable and just society. it inspires young people to search for their voice in a way that may not have -- that they may not have thought was possible before. it opens doors of opportunities for them to pursue their dreams. that is why i'm so excited today to announce our eighth poet laureate. before we get to the big announcement, i would like to thank and recognize our outgoing poet laureate kim shuck for her
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imcredible service for our city. she represented our city beautifully through her work and has given her time over the past few years to serve our community. whether teaching at the local colleges, universiies and public schools or helping the library launch their first ever american indian initiative, kim on behalf of the city and county of san francisco, thank you for your service and we would be honored if you close out your tenure with one last reading as poet laureate. >> thank you mayor breed. there we are. i do have a poem. it's called san francisco has a new poet laureate. pick any bench, stoop, any fourth star in this city or over it. sit quietly, you'll hear the water of time.
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keys rattling, heart and innovation, war and colonization that only grows on the south side of that mountain right there. you'll hear the poetry of place, popsicle sticks scratching on the curb, jump rope songs, chess moves and love curses. every night in some back room, the future and past in autopsied words, gorilla words shouted at unsuspecting somewhere in north beach. the skyline mutters poems that have been and poems to come. if you stand at the cafe's door too long, you will hear what they choose to call in this moment a poem. old wives tales along valencia, you can hear the purring of fog as they pass through, the paintings comment quietly on
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every new show and if your hearing is very good, ambrose's dictionary runs on a certain bar on a certain bar stool and the faint laughter from one of sam's jokes will still grind breath. victims in more languages that you can see, and the unbound seat 3. there are songs of varying and unbaring to found all over the richmond, every bench, every head stone under the sand. paula talks stories at state, at tables and cafes that turned to bars. john's words rattled justice and the voices of those taken in captain jack's war has made them into their own songs too. there is an eighth poet laureat of san francisco and with the title comes more wealth and words than all the great libraries that have ever been.
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i would like to add that you will hear a lot about honor and responsibility. there are a couple of tricky things. one of them is that people will steal your pens. i had some pens printed up. i'm not going to say what they say and i don't think they will prevent your pens from being stolen, but they will raise the value of their resale on ebay. i'm going to share with you just very briefly what dr. jose said to me a couple of days after i was named the seventh poet laureate. he said that everything you have done up until this point got you here and none of that will matter. what matters now is what comes next. have a great time and you do know where my kitchen table is when you want to hide. take care. >> thank you so much kim for that amazing poem. thank you for representing san
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francisco so well over the past few years. we look forward to seeing what comes next for you. now, it is my great honor to announce our eighth poet laureat. i had the privilege of knowing this individual for many years as he worked and volunteered at the african american art and culture complex. he has mentored men young men and women that came through our doors and taught them how to find their own vote and make themselves heard. his poems are just one of the many ways he fights for racial justice, equity, and human rights. he has shown our community what it means to be a successful poet, as a black man from san francisco. we are incredibly proud of the work he has done so far, especially his commitment to inspiring black men and boys and providing support for young people in our community. he will continue the work that our ancestors did as they fought for their own voices to be
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heard. i am beyond excited to see what he accomplishes as the san francisco's eighth poet laureate. i am happy to present tongo martin, the eighth poet laureate. >> thank you madam mayor for this incredible, incredible honor. i prepared some words that i hope i make it through. i'm already filled with tears. >> i'm going to let you have the floor, it's so great to have you. thank you for all the magic you created over the years. as i said earlier, when we work together at the complex, there were a lot of challenges,
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especially with our boys and we had unfortunately a lot of violence in the community and just seeing you as this literary figure and inspiring these young people to look at other ways besides, you know, being out in the streets and doing stuff that was happening then, focusing on how poetry, how music is poetry, and how they can really shift their voices to tell their own stories. you brought that to their lives and i know they continue to carry it with them today. so, you have been an inspiration for so many years, directed at so many generations of people. i'm so grateful that you accepted this honor so now i want to turn the floor over to you so that people can know who you are. if they don't know, now they know. we're looking forward to the work that we know you're going to do to make san francisco proud. so the floor is yours tongo.
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>> thank you. thank you very much. incredibly humbled and honored. also, deep appreciation to the selection committee. i want to send love to my mother and brother as i am only an extension of their love, imagination, and revolutionary commitment, love to my two powerful sisters and the whirlwind that has nothing on us, love to my family above mud and lava, love to my father and the rest of the village that is not here in the physical form. i would also like to thank kim shuck for being a leader of
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poets and beautiful force of the people. a poet of any station is secondary to the people. a poet of any use, that belongs to the energy and consciousness of the people, one of arts most important incarnation is that expression of mass resistance but really what art teaches us with its dominantable energy, the indominantable energy of an idea is evident that it is oppressors themselves who are in the position of resistance. it's bigger than any imperialistic, cognitively reflected in any generation. the power is ours and it is
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oppressors who are resisting us, resisting humanity, resisting us pretty well. it's resisting our right to determine our reality, resisting a coming epoch of liberation. mass participation in art is what is always created in san francisco, futurism. san francisco has legend too fearless for me to count myself as one of them. i am from this legendary collection of thousands and thousands of participants, revolutionary history and culture. i'm proud to be one of the anonymous thousands in san francisco who have road these buses all night, who has been raised in marcus's bookstore, who wants justice for mario
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woods and alex, who wants freedom. what the people taught me is that unity is the only thing and taught me that individualism, as it is practiced and codified, romanticized in this society is not really about your adventure through life but at its core, unfortunately, individualism is about practicing the selective humanization. other people are only human beings when it suits individual interest. civilism of sorts, that is deeply connected to slavery, both from what the society evolved from and process that addicts you to and power struggle that alienates ourselves, and at no point do we find the dehumanization of other people, the deanimation of
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people acceptable, are let alone necessary for an individual journey. so as much as i would love to assign the rest of my days to an individual invention, that time is over. history is heightening, showing us more and more everyday that we're part of people, a people beyond systemic description, and we need the entire pallet of protecting human rights and nurture human curiosity. the madness we see today shouldn't be surprising. these apartheid nativity scenes come home to roast and a capitalism in crisis, what is mixed in with the parole papers and the environmental racism and program deliverables and
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passivism. we're in a time of epochal shift where this is opening its arms if we don't open the historical process more critically. where do we go from here? what is our revolutionary practice or more conveniently, it begins with cultural work. it transforms the way that we relate to each other, transforms the way we relate to the earth, to a way that is conducive to liberation. a poet belongs to the energy and consciousness of the people, respecting their spirit. my only aim as poet laureate is to join with that energy, join with that consciousness in order to create vehicles of unity.
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events, workshops, readings, publications, these are all just vehicles of unity. i will never tire in building as many as the city can handle. so, meet me at the library. [laughter] >> if you can't make it, i will for sure meet you wherever you are. let me now say rest in power to cure junior and diane, and i will conclude with this poem titled faithless. a tour guide, through the robbery, he also is. cigarette stand, look at what i
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did. ransom water and box spring gold, this decade is only for accent grooming, i guess. ransom water and box spring gold to corner store, war gangs, all these rummage junk. you know, the start of mass destruction begins and ends in restaurant bathrooms as some people use and other people clean. are you telling me there is a rag in the sky waiting for you? yes. we should have fit in. warehouse jobs are for communists and now the whistling is less playful and if it is not a city, it is a prison. it has a prison. it's a prison, not a city. when a courtyard talks on behalf of the military issue, all walk takes place outside the body. a medieval painting to your right, none of this makes an impression. you have five minutes to learn.
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when a man goes sideways barb wire becomes the roof. did you know they killed the world for the sake of giving everyone the same back story? watching indiana, fight yourself into the sky, oh penny for when. it goes up and over your headache, marking all aspirations, the first newspaper i ever read and the storefront, they left us down where the holy spirit favors the bathroom. for those in the situation offer 100 ways to remain a loser. watching those clock, what are we talking about again? the narrater at the graveyard, 10 minute flat. the funeral only took 10 minutes. you're going to pin the 90s on me, all 30 years of them? why should i know the difference between sleeping and the pyramid of corner stores on our head. we die right away. that building wants to jump off
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other buildings, those are down tone decisions. what evaporated on earth that we can be sent back down? thank you all again, much love. i want to give the whole roll call right now but that's too many. much love to all my family and thank you again madam mayor. thank you. san francisco for better for worse, which you are raised, you know? >> thank you so much tongo. just so you know, the chat is blowing up. there is so much love and excitement for what you will bring to san francisco and i just want to thank you so much. thank you for the incredible poem and your inspiration and just everything that you continue to do.
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i look forward to what you will accomplish as our city's poet laureate. i can't wait. it's going to be exciting, especially when we open up. when you talk about meet me at the library, it's like that's your slogan now. [laughter] >> so we're going to take it to another level. that's your slogan, meet me at the library. hitting all the libraries all over san francisco. >> that's right. >> just inviting the people in and really bringing it back to some of the basics. you know, with the way technology is nowadays, sometimes we get away from just picking up a book or picking out a book or looking through an index card. i guess we don't look through index cards to find books anymore. sitting there and having discussions, i'm looking forward to what you're going to bring and really excited about that. i really want to thank the people that nominated you. you know, there was a really
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compelling, you know, letter of support that you know, went into all the details about your work. you have a lot of fans out there. i want to thank the selection committee, the people who served and had to go through all of those applications because i got to tell you, it was a hard decision and i was so excited that so many people in san francisco, you know, really embraced and support poets in such an incredible way. there are so many wonderful nominees. i'm looking forward to you connecting with all of them as well and really the outgoing poet laureate kim shuck, thank you for that poem and your commitment to san francisco and the role you have played over the years. thank you to san francisco public library and the commissioners who are joining us here today and our librarian, michael lambert. so many amazing people and i think that based on your comments today, meet me at the library, that's going to be a
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new part of the campaign to really bring people together, to inspire and to really you know, set things off on a whole other level. thank you tongo for your work and commitment. we're so honored that you will be san francisco's eighth poet laureate and if there is anything left to say, you're welcome to have the floor. if not, we can turn it back over to michael lambert. >> i just want to say much love and appreciation. >> great. >> thank you so much madam mayor. my heart is full, #meetmeatthelibrary. congratulations tongoo. i want to thank all of you for joining us this morning. our public affairs office is happy to help facilitate any interviews with our new poet lawyer -- laureate, thank you
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>> mayor london breed: good afternoon, i'm san francisco mayor london breed. and thank you so much for joining us here today to provide some good news for a change as it relates to just the rough year that we've been having as a result of this global pandemic. as of today in san francisco, our case rate is at 261 cases per day, and that's down from a
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high of 372 cases per day. our hospitalizations are at 194, and, sadly, 293 people in our city have lost their lives due to covid. our infection rate is below 1. we're at .95, and our i.c.u. capacity is stable at about 26%. the good news is that we are in a better place than we've been in a long time. and today we got some even better news from our governor who announced the lifting of the stay-at-home order in the bay area. and in the state of california -- but more importantly in the bay area, because that pertains to us -- we anticipate that tomorrow we will be told that we will be in the purple tier, which provides us an opportunity to do so much more than we have been doing.
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the fact is that we got here because after the thanksgiving day holiday, we saw the numbers begin to creep up aggressively. and we shut down early because we were very concerned as to what this would do to our i.c.u. capacity in the city. if we had continued along the pace that we were going and did absolutely nothing, at this time the end of january we would be out of i.c.u. beds. and because we acted quickly, and because i followed the health care orders that were provided by the department of public health, we did so early, even before the state required us to do so. because we did that in san francisco, we are in a better place. but we're still in the midst of this pandemic. we still have a responsibility. yes, this is good news that we are finally seeing a difference with our numbers.
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but there's still work to be done. it still means that we have to wear masks and we have to socially distance ourselves from one another. you have to just use common sense and continue to just accept that we are going to be living with this for some time, even as we see the numbers decline, even as we reopen, and even as we start to administer even more of the vaccine than we already have. so what does this mean? what does this mean in terms of our reopening? well, as i said, it's good news. so outdoor dining can resume. personal services can resume as long as you can wear a mask. so you can get your hair done, you can get your nails done. a number of things with personal services, as long as you're able to wear a mask. this will start on thursday. outdoor museums and zoos -- outdoor entertainment, like skate parks and mini-golf,
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indoor fitness limited to one-on-one. indoor funerals for up to 12 people. so these are things that were not happening before, and they will be in effect as of this thursday again, thanks to all of the hard work that we have all been doing to stay safe. we'll also see capacity increases in our grocery stores and in retail. and in outdoor fitness and outdoor religious and political events. outdoor recreation and some low contact youth sports can continue as well. and golf and tennis with people outside of your household, and small gatherings of up to three people, no more than three households per group, and what we're saying, again, because we remember not this past weekend but the weekend before, we saw so many people at the delores park and at alamo square park and at parks across san francisco. and we saw them gathered with
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large groups. there were, of course, a lot of people who were just following the rules and keeping their distance. but we did have some real challenges. today is a beautiful day. yes, it's cold outside, but the sun is out. just keep in mind that this is just not an open door for us to all of a sudden to let our hair down and to do whatever we want to do. let's keep doing what we're doing. let's keep being smart about wearing our masks and who we interact with. let's limit the number of people that we interact with so that we can make sure that we don't see another surge and see this virus continue to get out of control. today is, of course, a day of celebration but it's also a day to just remind ourselves of the importance of how much more work we have to do to get to a better place. now i want to talk a little bit about the vaccine. we in the city have developed a capacity to ramp up to up to 10,000 doses a day. now, of course, we want to do
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more than 10,000 doses a day if we have the vaccine. this past friday, i was at city college, where they first started to administer the doses there and they've been able to administer over 1,600 doses so far and that site alone has the capacity to deliver up to 3,000 doses per day. we also have a site that we're opening up at musconi and in community where there's large sites in partnership with our private health care providers so that we can get to people sooner rather than later. our goal is to also to make sure that we're doing pop-up sites in neighborhoods and communities that have been most impacted by the virus. we want to meet people where they are. we want them to feel comfortable when they get the vaccine. so as soon as we get the number of doses that we need to start to administer, we will do just that. i will say that there's been a lot of misinformation, there's been a lot of criticism that has
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surfaced over the course of the rollout of delivering the vaccine to people. and i just want to take a moment to talk a little bit about what we've been doing here in san francisco. in fact, when we first found out about what we would need to administer the vaccine, including the freezers and all of the other technical stuff, we learned that information back in august. and we instantly prepared for that because we knew that in a place like san francisco, with the number of people that we have both living and working here, that we would need to make sure that we had the capacity so that when the vaccine was delivered to us that we had the refrigeration necessary to basically to keep those vaccines ready to go for people before they were distributed. the work that went into the infrastructure, working with our private health care providers, and just understanding what needed to be done in terms of
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traffic coordination, in terms of distribution, in terms of checking information, it is a process. in fact, when i was at the site at city college this past friday, one of the conversations that i had with a doctor is that these vaccines, they have to stay refrigerated at least until the hour before they're actually used. so just imagine the coordination that goes into that alone. this is a complicated process. and i want to be clear -- that had we waited to start more recently, like some people had said that we did, we wouldn't be where we are now -- opening up large sites. opening up and setting up pop-up sites and distributing the vaccine at some of our community clinics where many of our elderly live and are able to walk to. we wouldn't be in this position had we waited to start. we started last year in the summer as information came, and we adjusted.
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and we stepped up to the challenge to meet the need. in fact, the department of public health specifically based on the number of vaccines that we have received, we've already have distributed over two-thirds of those vaccines to individuals and the remaining batch that we have are mostly for people for their second dose and are scheduled to be given to others for their first. those vaccines are coming in the door and they're going out the door as quickly as we can make that possible. so i want to be clear that it is complicated, it is challenging. but this same department of public health is the department of public health that had advised me as the mayor in the beginning of this pandemic that we had to shut this city down so that we could save lives. it's the same department of public health that led the efforts during the aids crisis where san francisco was left on its own. it's the same department of
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public health that i am working with to roll out the vaccine distribution. because not only do they know and understand the importance of what this means to save lives in san francisco, i understand the importance of what this means to save the lives in san francisco, to get our city reopened, and to get our economy going again. nothing is more important. i trust and support and work closely with the department of public health to make the hard decisions to get this vaccine out to the public as quickly as possible. so i want you to understand that we are in a better place, we are not where i want us to be, because we don't have sufficient supply of vaccines to distribute to the public. but i will guarantee you that as soon as we get them, they will be out on the streets in someone's arm so that we can get things rolling again.
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and i appreciate the patience and the understanding of so many san franciscans as we go through this process. keep in mind san francisco has done an amazing job through this pandemic. i know that we're tired of being indoors. i know that we're tired of the schools being closed and not being able to connect with our friends and family. i'm tired of this too. i understand how important it is to get back to our lives. i understand that more than anyone, because i feel the responsibility, the weight of this entire city, and every single resident. i feel that on my shoulders every single day. but i'm asking for more patience and understanding and trust that we will continue to do everything that we can to get these vaccines out the door. in fact, tomorrow i'll be having a conversation at 1:15 online
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with dr. susan philip and dr. naveena baba, who are two incredible women who have helped to lead this effort from the beginning so that we can ask questions about some of the concerns that i've been seeing from people who are wondering, well, why is this happening and that's not happening. why is this going on and that not going on. well, tomorrow your questions about the vaccine will be answered. and i hope that it will instill just really an understanding and also a clear guide for what we are doing here in san francisco and what we need to continue to do to get the vaccines out as quickly as possible. and i am excited today. i'm excited today because the vaccine rollout -- i'm excited today because many of our small businesses will begin to open. i'm excited because i know that people in san francisco,
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although this is a great day, they realize the importance of still following safety guidelines around covid and understanding that the virus is still out there and that we still have more work to do. but today still is a day of celebration. and i'm, again, grateful for all of you for everything that you've done to get us to this point. now, the last thing they want to touch upon is we have a new president. i love saying that -- we have a new president, we have a new vice president. and one of the first announcements that the president made last week is the fact that our shelter-in-place hotels that have been provided to many of our homeless people who are a part of this vulnerable population, that they would not only just reimburse the 75% that they agreed to reimburse at the beginning of this pandemic, but this president has committed fema to reimbursing us at 100%.
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what that does for our budget is incredible. we're still facing a significant deficit, we still have a lot of financial challenges, but what this means is that we have a level of certainty. no, this is not going to be forever, but it will be long enough that as we start to transition some of the people that we have in hotels in san francisco into permanent housing situations we can now backfill those hotel rooms with people who fit the guidelines under the fema requirements for reimbursement. that is really great news. and i'm excited to continue to work towards trying to get our most vulnerable off the streets. but i want to be clear about something. if you were not on our list to receive support and care in our homeless system as of april last year, and you basically came to
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san francisco thinking that there's an opportunity for you to get help in some capacity, unfortunately, we will not be able to help you. and the people that we'll be able to serve are people who were part of our system of care before april of 2020. they're already on the list, they're already waiting. they're sleeping outside. they're sleeping in tents. and we are not going to jump the line for someone who just decided to come to san francisco yesterday. there are people who are waiting and they will be prioritized and they are the only people that we can help at this time. so i want to make that clear that that is what is going to happen moving forward, with the good news of receiving reimbursement 100% from fema. so i want to thank each and every one of you again. today is a good day. today is not a day to go outside and to throw up your mask in the air and to celebrate in that way. you can go out and celebrate and throw your hands in the air and just keep your mask on.
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make sure that you're continuing to comply with this health order and doing everything that you can. when you go to restaurants, just be mindful. when you visit friends or family, just follow the health orders. we're not out of this partner p, but we're better today than we have been in a very long time. it gives me hope that we are finally getting to a better place -- the place that we continue to talk about. the place where we say that we're the light at the end of the tunnel. well, we're seeing a crack of that light come through bright. and that's because of your work and your efforts and everything that you've done. so, thank you. and the better our numbers get, the more we will be able to open, the more that we will be able to get back to a place where we can see one another in person again. thank you again. and now i'm happy to open it up to questions. >> thank you, mayor breed, for
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your remarks. before we begin, the question and the answer portion, we're going to take a moment to allow reporters to submit any final questions they may have on webex. thank you, mayor breed. at this time we'll start with dr. colfax. >> mayor london breed: okay. thank you again. dr. colfax, i'll let you do the white gown.
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>> good afternoon. >> thank you for your patience. dr. colfax, your first question comes from various media outlets. why are people from out of the county getting vaccinated at city college? >> thank you so much for the question. i think that city college has been a great partnership with ucsff, and if we had enough vaccine we could get you 3,000 vaccines there a day easily right now. but i think that key issues to
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understand right now is that for the vaccine, the focus has been eligibility for vaccine has been for health care providers and for people 65 and over. many health care providers work in san francisco, but outside of san francisco. so many of the health care providers will be vaccinated here because it's a place of work. similarly, people who are 65 and over who are eligible for the vaccine, they may live in oakland but they may have their health care provider here in san francisco. so they would be getting vaccinated here. vice versa, if you live in san francisco but you have a health care provider in oakland, you could go to oakland to get vaccinated. the issue is that the bay area is porous and we're all interconnected and we need to get vaccines into arms as quickly as possible. >> thank you, dr. colfax. your next question comes from various media outlets. why are we reopening with new virus variants circulating?
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how will the city deal with new variants and avoid shutdowns? >> so we are opening at a high level of case diagnosis. we're at about 30 per 100,000 right now, which as the mayor mentioned, is substantially lower than we were just a few weeks ago. so this is very good news. we know that the rate of the virus spread in the city is slowing right now, which is also good news. we will continue to monitor the rate of spread and hopefully that will continue to go down. with regard to the variants, we are concerned about that. but there's no reason to panic. we know that wearing masks, social distancing, and using the good hygiene practices, we believe that it's also effective with regard to reducing the variant's spread. so right now, even with this relatively high rate of cases, because things are moving in the right direction, because our hospital capacity -- even
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through this third surge -- remained relatively good in san francisco, compared to other jurisdictions, and the fact that san franciscans had now beaten back three surges -- look, we have been in this for nearly a year right now. it's time for to us take this approach of gradually reopening and we're reopening, and let's see where we are and do the right thing so that we could even get to that next step and open up more. >> thank you, dr. colfax. your next question comes from heather knight, san francisco "chronicle." how many vaccine doses has san francisco received and how many has it given to people? >> so right now, heather, we have received as a city 127,000 vaccines. that's across the whole city. that's across the health care systems, across the city. and we've administered as a
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city, we estimate just over 59,000 vaccines have been administered. at the health department, we've received 34,500 vaccines to date. and we've vaccinated more than 23,000 people. now in those numbers i want to stress a couple of things -- we are ready to go with mass vaccine sites right now. we need to get to 10,000 vaccines a day. the numbers that i gave you alst with regard to the vaccine that is remaining that those vaccines have been scheduled for second doses or appointments that have been made for first doses for most part. and with the d.p.h. supply, even with the 10,000, our total that we'll get this week, we will be scheduled to basically to exhaust our vaccine supply by as early as wednesday or thursday. we need more vaccine right now so that we can get those shots into arms. >> thank you, dr. colfax.
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the next set of questions come from alex fererria, san francisco business times. in what ways will the restrictions in place in san francisco be on thursday differ from what the state is allowing in the purple tier counties? or, is the county reopening to the full extent of the purple tier? >> so just to be clear right nod that the counties are coming out as the shelter-in-place order, we will be told what tier we're in tomorrow. we'll look at that very carefully. and with regard to the orders, those will be -- be released accordingly. and that those will be released on thursday at this time. >> thank you, dr. colfax. your next question comes from holly striker of kqed. what amount is the expected next
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shipment of vaccine in san francisco? >> so, remember, we have visibility only to the vaccine that the health department will be getting because the other health care systems in the county, the kaiser and the sutter and the dignity, they get pulled from their regional counterparts what vaccine they'll be getting. what i can tell you right now because this is what we have insay the into -- is that the health department is scheduled to get 10,575 doses this week. that number could change. and we will know that number when they tell us that that number has actually been shipped to us. but, again, that's ready to go out the door right now. we need more vaccine. >> thank you, dr. colfax. the next question comes from eve batty theatre s.f. can we hear more about the thinking behind the decision to leave the 10:00 p.m. to 5:00
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a.m. stay-at-home order in place? >> so, what we're doing right now is working to gradually to reopen the city. we're taking the initial steps in a situation where the rate of the virus is still relatively high. we want to see that number continue to go down before we release that 10:00 to 5:00 order. so let's just give us a little more time and see how those numbers do to ensure that we don't have to reverse again. nobody wants to go backwards again, so let's take the first step. we have beaten back three surges. let's prevent a fourth surge as much as possible. >> thank you. the next question comes from christian kaftan, channel 2 news. how will this work county-by-county, when the entire bay area was covered under the state's previous order? could there be surges in other counties that could impact san
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francisco? >> well, i think that has been really great about the local county collaboration -- actually, a year now -- is that the bay area health officers have been coordinating and working together. and for the most part the region has been well coordinated. so, again, we will see what tier the counties are assigned to by the state tomorrow. and i expect that in general that the county orders will be aligned for the most part. >> thank you, dr. colfax. your next set of questions come from dan curman. who is getting vaccinated at city college? those in the san francisco health network? those in the ucsff health network? or anyone over 65? >> so people who are eligible for vaccine right now are health
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care workers and people over the age of 65. right now that site -- those patients -- are ucsff patients who by the most case meet the 65 and over criteria, and, again, once we get more vaccine we're ready to go and give up to 3,000 vaccines at that site alone. >> and a poll question, do you feel as if the feds are sending less vaccine to the bay area region compared to southern california due to the massive outbreak there? >> i'm not going to speculate on what the feds may or may not be doing. i think that the bottom line is that across the state regionally and locally we need more vaccine as soon as possible. san francisco is ready for the vaccine. our goal is to be able to inoculate at least 10,000 people a day. as you just heard, the health department is getting just over 10,000 doses this week. so we need to get that vaccine here so that we can get it into
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arms as quickly as possible. >> thank you, dr. colfax. and we will now continue questions with mayor breed. >> mayor london breed: all right. >> mayor breed, your first set of question comes from nbc bay area. what do you say to landlords who feel that they're being taken advantage of by tenants who continue to pay zero dollars in rent and intend to continue living rent-free during the
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eviction moratorium? >> mayor london breed: well, i appreciate the question. and, you know, san francisco since the beginning of this pandemic, through not only the rental subsidies that we had through the city and county of san francisco, that try to provide some additional rental assistance to make sure that when this is over that people are still responsible for that rent and will need to pay it. we just found out from the federal government that san francisco will be given $26 million in stimulus money to help with rental assistance. this will be significant. we know that it's not just the people who are struggling to pay their rent, but some of the small property owners and others who might be struggling because they're not receiving that additional income. there is hope with this new $26 million and i'm excited to see what that does to help to address some of the challenges that exist. because what we don't want to happen is that we don't want --
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after this pandemic is over, we don't want to see a lot of people getting evicted and we also don't want to see a situation where so many small property owners who rely on this income to help to cover the expenses of maybe their in-home support services work, or the repairs on their home, we don't want to see them in a bad situation either. so right now, great announcement, $26 million in rental subsidies. that's a start. we know that there's more to do. but i think that we're going to continue to work towards the goal of trying to make people as whole as we possibly can. >> thank you. and a follow-up question, should the future stimulus checks include a requirement that a portion of those funds go towards a person's rent? how can smaller landlords afford to keep allowing renters to live for free? >> mayor london breed: i think that something of that nature might be somewhat difficult to manage. i know that, for example, we have the ability through the resources that we provide for
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rent subsidy to make direct payments which ensures that these resource goes directly to cover the rent. on a federal level, i have no control over that, but i do think that it's important for us to do everything that we can to make sure that we get direct payments into the hands of landlords, to make sure that we avoid the evictions that could occur if these rents are not paid. >> thank you, mayor breed. your next question comes from ron lynn of the "los angeles times." some restaurant owners have been very upset at the outdoor dining ban and have opposed the government orders to shut them down. do you think that san francisco's latest success vindicates your efforts to impose an outdoor dining ban and to implement stay-at-home orders, even ahead of the state's timeline? >> mayor london breed: well, i truly believe -- yes. if -- you've gotta understand that to close down a major city like san francisco, and then also when you see the numbers
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surging and to have to go backwards, those are some of the hardest decisions i've ever had to make, because i know what it means -- not just for the people who are supporting these restaurants -- i know what it means for the workers and the food and all of the things that these restaurants have to do to be open in the first place. but the fact is that we had to prioritize saving lives in every decision that we made. and what we're seeing are the impacts of those decisions because our case rates, the deaths that have -- are the lowest death rates in the country of any major city in san francisco, the i.c.u. rates, i think that all of the numbers that we're seeing in san francisco demonstrate that we made the right decision and now that we are reopening outdoor dining, we want to continue to make sure that we are being very careful. because we don't want to go backwards. >> thank you, mayor breed. your final question comes from
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kathleen novak of kcbs. with the extra funding from the federal government, will san francisco be able to open up more hotel rooms to people who might not qualify for fema reimbursement and cover the costs out of the city's budget? >> mayor london breed: well, we are not certain that that's going to be possible because our goal is to provide permanent housing, not temporary housing. and what these hotels and these safe sleeps sites that we opened up during this pandemic have done is provided temporary shelter for the people who, unfortunately, are homeless. and we're being reimbursed for that purpose. but our resources, the money that we have in available to assist with our homeless population need to be used for permanent housing options. and that's where our priority will be. >> thank you, mayor breed. there are no additional questions. >> mayor london breed: thank
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