our reopening efforts, with all that we're doing, the city is going to come alive again. let's continue to do our very best to make sure that we don't lose something precious in the process. process, the heart and the soul of our children. with that, for more information, please visit our website or call 3-1-1. and at this time, i'd ask dr. grant cofax to come forward and provide specific information from the department of public health. thank you so much.

>> good morning. thank you for joining us today. and thank you, mayor breed, for your leadership and commitment to our city-wide covid-19 response. as you all know, as a city we've been responding to this virus for over a year now. and, mayor, your steadfast leadership and support continue to be invaluable. san francisco, we have made significant headway in containing the virus during this recent surge. but, as we are seeing nationally, there are still many unknowns, including new variants.

we must continue to practice the safety precautions: mask-wearing, physical distancing, and limiting interactions with multiple households. please protect yourselves and those closest to you by following all of the precautions. together we can continue to move forward and make progress. the vaccines represent the light at the end of the tunnel. while sufficient supplies are preventing us from vaccinating as many people as possible as quickly as possible, we all have reasons to be hopeful. as the mayor just said, we have made great progress in vaccinating health care workers and those 65 years of age and older. and we continue to partner

with health care systems across the city, to build a vaccine eco-system, vaccine sites, focused on equity, speed, and access to meet the needs of san francisco's diverse communities. today, right now, this city has the capacity to administer over 10,000 vaccines a day. we could get 10,000 vaccines into arms a day. right now we are averaging just 4,000 due to a lack of vaccine supply. we just need supply to meet the demands and the capability of our vaccine infrastructure. and now i'd like to bring

you some data on where we stand with the virus. first slide, please. as you can see from this slide, the number of new covid cases in our city fell rapidly after the peak of our most recent third surge. however, what concerns me is that new cases of covid-19 have stopped declining, and there has been a trending up in the last several days. now we are averaging 135 new cases a day. now, that is certainly much better than than when we were at our peak surge, and averaging 373 new cases per day. and that was just one month ago. but our case rate still remains higher than any other previous surge.

our current rate is 15.5 per 100,000 people is roughly the same as our peak summer surge. and, remember, our goal is for an average of new cases to decline to less than 1.8 per 100,000. next slide, please. as you can see in this slide, our hospitalizations continue to decrease from their peak just a few weeks ago. and this is certainly good news. as our ability to properly treat those affected with covid-19 is a top priority. additionally, our hospital rate is a key indicator of both the state and local health indicators for reopening decisions.

right now, with regard to intensive unit care beds, our capacity is good. with 28% i.c.u. capacity, which represents over 90 i.c.u. beds available across our health care systems in the city. next slide, please. the mayor provided a significant update on the vaccines, but i wanted to share this map on the work of the department of public health, and what we're doing to vaccinate populations in our most impacted communities. through the san francisco health network, the health department's health care delivery system, we served more than 100,000 people each year, who are largely uninsured, underinsured, have medicaid, medi-cal, or are served by healthy san francisco, or other

such programs. many of the people in our system are in the southeast sector of the city, which, as you know, has had a disproportionate number of covid-19 cases. this map shows where d.p.h., the department of public health, vaccines are being administered, and it shows that the majority of the approximately 1300 daily doses that we are administering is in the southeast sector of the city. next slide -- oh, sorry. that's it for slides. before closing, i want to say a few words about variants. now, variants are a natural part of how all viruses evolve. some of the covid-19 variants that have emerged worldwide, and some that have been detected in the

bay area, have the potential to spread faster. now, across the nation, we have little laboratory capacity to detect variants. but studies do show that certain ones are spreading quickly in the united states and are likely to become common, if not the dominant strain. now, i know that this can be a scary idea. and there is reason for concern. but we know what to do to slow the spread of these variants. it's even more important to wear those masks, socially distance, and avoid gatherings outside of your household. and it's so important to emphasize that vaccines remain our ticket out, including with variants. and i can't emphasize

enough, if and when you're eligible and offered a vaccine, take it. the variants add uncertainty to this ever-evolving situation. but i can't stress it enough: slow the spread of the virus. take those prevention activities seriously. and i know it has been a year now. i know we're tired. we need to dig a little deeper to get closer to our ticket out, to get the vaccines into arms, to get to those 10,000 vaccines a day so we can really turn this thing around. and our acting health officer, dr. susan phyllis, is here to answer specific questions about the variants. look, we are all in this together, and together we will get through this.

the vaccines are affective; they are safe. and i am hopeful, and even optimistic, that our supply will increase in the coming months. there is truly reason for hope and optimism on the horizon. we will bring back our community and our economy the same way we continue to fight covid-19, by working together. thank you. >> thank you, mayor breed, and dr. cofax, for your remarks. before we begin the question and answer portion, we're going to take a moment to allow reporters to submit any final questions into webex chat. cameras off or on? >> we can begin. mayor breed, your first question comes from daniel

terman. do you support the city attorney's lawsuit against the school district in terms of: is this the best course of action to get schools to reopen? >> mayor: i want to be clear that, yes, i support the lawsuit. and if the possibility of getting schools open sooner, without this lawsuit, were in sight, if we thought that that was possible, there is no way we would have pursued legal action. unfortunately, this is where we are, and that's where we're headed. >> thank you. and the follow-up question: even if san francisco moves to the red tier, schools cannot reopen until those teachers are vaccinated. is there a plan to prioritize teachers alongside those aged 65 and older? >> mayor: to be clear, schools are open. there are 113 schools in san francisco that are currently open, with over 15,000 kids, and they've

been open for months. as it relates to the clarity on the plan and the vaccinations, on february 26th, we will move to tier 1b, and that will provide an opportunity for both educators, teachers, child care workers to be vaccinated at that time. >> thank you, mayor breed. your next question comes from joe fittipaldi. mayor breed, you spoke of the black student union, not to take away from the vaccine discussion, but can you talk about what support you've offered the black student union and what you think lowell high school should do to support them going forward? >> mayor: out of respect for the students, we had a lengthy conversation, and i want to make sure that they are comfortable with me sharing information from that conversation. but i did offer to help support them through this process, to help

facilitate conversations with administrators and others. sadly, what they're enduring is something they should not be experiencing. and, unfortunately, this is not a new challenge at lowell. several years back, other african-american students had faced similar issues around race and discrimination. and it is definitely important that we respond to it. and, to be clear, respond to it in a way that provides an opportunity for these young people to have an environment where they can learn and thrive, just like any other student at lowell. >> thank you, mayor breed. your next question comes from trisha sadani, the san francisco chronicle. now that the federal government said it would reimburse san francisco for much of its homeless program, would you support s.f. h., bringing more people off of the streets,

who may not be eligible for fema reembawrmts, and if not, how do you propose the city deal with the many people still out on the streets who may not qualify for fema reimbursement. >> mayor: just to be clear, they are already moving people who are not necessarily qualified for fema reimbursement. hopefully we'll get to a point where we're able to repopulate our shelter system. so this is not, like, frozen in time here. if you look around san francisco, even with the challenges we have around homelessness, h.s.h. has been doing an incredible job with helping to transition people off the streets and into either hotel rooms, if they're eligible, but some of the other options that we have. do we have enough to support everyone who is on the streets? no, sadly we don't. but we're moving forward with a strategy around

homelessness, to try to transition people not just into hotel rooms, not just into our shelter system, but transition them into permanent, supportive housing units. and that's a part of our long-term homeless strategy in general. >> thank you, mayor breed. your next question comes from dan curman, cron 4 news. you said that you do not support the current agreement -- >> mayor: i did not say i do not support the current agreement. i want to be clear about that. >> how can you get a reopening date when the teachers have trouble getting a vaccination? >> mayor: well, again, i want to be clear. i never said that i don't support the current agreement. the current agreement is just not clear. it doesn't provide any timelines, and exactly what we're going to do. i have a lot of questions, just like a lot of parents

have a lot of questions about the current proposed agreement. we have over 15,000 students in school, and have been for months, with the 113 schools that are currently open. and these are people who have not received the vaccine. and our department of public health says that without the vaccine, it is still safe to return to schools. but we do realize there are people who want that assurance. and so fortunately we're in a position where in the next few weeks, on february 26th, we will be able to move to the next tier 1b, so educators, teachers, and child care workers can actually get vaccinated, and i'm truly looking forward to that day. >> thank you, mayor breed. your next question comes from leslie mcclerick. given the tentative deal with labor unions, when do you foresee schools

reopening? >> definitely not this school year. when you incorporate the vaccine into the requirement -- i understand this is something that is important to the union, but at the same time, we are doing everything we can, based on supplies, to get the vaccines to people in san francisco. and the fact is, based on the limited information that i have about the tentative proposal, i don't think it is realistic that we can expect schools to open this school year. >> thank you, mayor breed. the next question comes from christian captan, ktbu. san francisco city attorney has expanded the lawsuit to get kids back into school. one moment, please.

we'll come back for that question. christian captan. the san francisco city attorney has expanded the lawsuit to get kids back into school. school board and union agree that the lawsuit is counterproductive. is this the right tool to incentivize both sides to reach an agreement? and what would constitute concrete details for reopening? >> mayor: if i didn't think that it was the right thing to do, i wouldn't be very supportive of doing it. the fact is that we have tried to be supportive. and you can look back in a number of press

conferences that i've had to specifically talk about the support that we provided the school district, how we put aside, in many cases, many of the things that we were focused on in order to provide that support, in order to make our public schools a priority. we will continue to do that. but the fact is, it hasn't worked. and that's why i support our city attorney using the legal process to get to a place where, hopefully, it will make a difference. not necessarily, you know, if it makes a -- if it makes a difference with negotiations, great, but, more importantly, i just care about getting our kids back in school. so whatever that takes, whether it is the legal system or negotiation, that's fine. but i want to make sure at the end of the day, we're being honest with the public about what will happen. and, ultimately, all of the details don't matter if kids aren't back in school. i think that is the most important part.

what is the first day we can expect to see a kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade kids return to school. that's the most important piece of what is missing here. >> thank you, mayor breed. next question comes from liz hillaman, bay area reporter. what will be the vaccine prioritization after phase 1? one moment. the next question is from abc news. in light of the recent crimes in san francisco, do you think prop 47 should be revisited? do you believe that it has played a role in crime in san francisco? >> mayor: i think, unfortunately, being in the midst of this pandemic, seeing, sadly, a lot of people lose their

jobs has probably played a role in what we're seeing as it relates to crime. i do think when we talk about crime and accountability, i think the that there is -- you know, it is not an easy solution because specifically when you talk about someone who has committed a violent crime against another human being, you know, that's a different punishment versus someone who it may have been their first offense, they stole something, and they need to be held accountable, but at the same time jail may not be the best solution because ultimately we want rehabilitation or we want support or we want an option to try to get that person on the right path. so i think there are various layers of accountability that need to be implemented in our criminal justice system here in san francisco, regardless of a proposition. it is what we're working with, and it's what we are in a position to try and

work within. and, mostly, the goal is to make sure that people understand that they will be held accountable when they commit crimes in san francisco. and i want to take this opportunity to just talk about some of the recent violent crimes. sadly, where people have been murdered in our city. elderly people have been murdered. and in those last three cases, our officers acted quickly and apprehended the suspects in those cases. and they are being prosecuted. we understand that after the fact doesn't matter. those people are no longer with us, but at the end of the day, here in san francisco we are going to take an aggressive stand to protect the citizens of this city against crime, and we'll continue to do everything we can to do that. not just with law enforcement, but with our

criminal justice system as a whole. >> thank you, mayor breed. we will now continue with questions for dr. colfax. >> mayor: thank you. >> this is from a bay area reporter. what will be the vaccine prioritization after phase 1b. will the age group step down in 10-year increments? >> doctor: right now we are focused on vaccinating people -- health care workers and people over 65, and then on the 26th, as the mayor announced, we will move into phase 1b, which

includes emergency service workers, food and agricultural workers, and educators. now we're still waiting for the state to finalize the next tiers of the vaccination priority. we're following the state guidelines. the bottom line is we need more vaccine to get it into arms as quickly as possible. our goal is to vaccinate everyone in san francisco as quickly as possible. >> thank you, dr. colfax. your next set of questions come from joshua sabitini. are the vaccines being equitably administered? or do you notice any disparities? and when will you release the race -- >> doctor: it will be updated regularly with regard to the race and ethnicity of people who

received vaccinations. as i mentioned earlier, equity is a core value of our vaccine rollout. we want to ensure that people in those neighborhoods who are eligible for vaccine have ready access. we're building -- we have built a vaccine eco-system where every door is a right door to receive the vaccine. whether it is a mass site, whether it is one of your neighborhood clinics, whether it is a pharmacy, whether it is a mobile site team that we'll be launching to reach people who need to remain at home. so we're working on all of the above, and every door is the right door approach, to ensure there is equitable access to vaccine. we're very concerned about it. it needs to be a focus. and we're working to get it right as quickly as possible. >> thank you, dr. colfax. you're next question comes from multiple media outlets.

on the question of equity, can you provide an update on how many residents within is zip codes 92134 and 92034 have been vaccinate? have there plans to make more appointments available for hard-hit zip codes. >> the doctor: as vaccine becomes more available, we will expand vaccines in those areas. the in other words and zip codes where covid-19 is most concentrated. right now at the southeast health center, we're able to do over 200 vaccines a day. we're also planning to launch, in collaboration with better health, a mass vaccine site at the produce market off of bay shore boulevard. so we hope to have that scaled up and ready to go within the next two weeks, so that people have access to vaccine there as well.

we're also establishing the neighborhood access sites. last week at 24th and mission, in collaboration with the latino task force and ucsf, and we established a site there. and we're looking at establishing sites in the bay view so people have access there. and i want to emphasize these are not mutually exclusive sites. where people are lining up to get vaccine, thanks to the mayor's office, we arranged transportation for people to go to our vaccine clinic at san francisco general hospital, so people were able to access vaccine there, and not have to wait in line at 24th and cap. and at the mobile sites, these mobile teams are going to have capacity each to do 150 vaccines a day. we'll be launching these mobile teams very soon. so they can focus in neighborhoods where people have the greatest amount of disease, and don't necessarily have the

capacity to get to other vaccine options. so really every door is the right door, with a focus very specifically in the health department on meeting the needs of people in the zip codes where covid-19 is most prevalent, where the rates are highest and people are most at risk. >> thank you, dr. colfax. your next question comes from michael barba. when should the san francisco police department officers expect to get vaccinated? >> doctor: emergency responders, emergency workers, service workers, including the police officers, are eligible in phase 1b, and that will be february 26th. >> thank you. your next set of questions comes from various media outlets. is the city now receiving a stable amount of vaccine from the state, or is it still unpredictable? >> doctor: let me emphasize that we are

directly receiving -- the health department is directly receiving only somewhere between 10,000 and 1 1,000 vaccines a week -- a week. so, as i said, we can do over 10,000in' vaccines,000 vaco arms a day. we hope the supply increases dramatically in the next couple of weeks, especially so we can vaccine night the 1b essential workers, along with the people 65 and older who continue to need to get vaccinated. so we just need more right now as quickly as possible. i'm hopeful there is more on the horizon, but we're ready to go. if i can get 10,000 vaccines after this press conference, we will get it into arms in 24 hours. >> thank you, dr. colfax. your next question comes from mora dolan, l.a. times. any thoughts on why virus cases have stopped decreasing, and even

rising, in recent days? >> doctor: so i think it is important to emphasize it is sort of a balance here. we are way below our peak during the holiday surge, where we went over 140p 140 per 100,000. i think we don't have exactly one reason as to why this has leveled off. i think we know as we gradually increase activity in the city, viral cases generally do go up somewhat, so it is really a matter of trying to mitigate that, and ensure that people still realize this is a very serious situation, and that we need to socially distance, and wear a mask over your face and nose whenever you are outside of the house, and avoid gatherings -- high-risk gatherings -- whenever possible. i think we also need to also understand that with

some of these variants, especially the british variants, the research says that is predicted to become the dominant strain in many parts of the u.s. by march or april. we know that that virus spreads more quickly than what we call the wild site, the original type of the virus. so there are multiple possible reasons. the key thing is we know how to slow the spread. we know that the vaccines are coming. we can do this. we just have to dig a little deeper so we can all get the vaccine and get through this and reopen our city and have life go back to normal as quickly as possible. >> thank you, dr. colfax. your final question comes from robert rodriguez. will the effort to reopen schools change the prioritization or rollout of vaccines in phase 1b at all considering teachers' desires for vaccination

before returning to the classroom? >> doctor: as the mayor said, we have 113 schools open right now. the schools can reopen without educators being vaccin vaccinated. and we share the priority that the kids need to get back into school for the health of the kids, for the health of the parents, and to close out learning gaps. when we reach phase 1b, teachers will be eligible for vaccine. we want to make sure we vaccinate teachers as quickly as possible. the bottom line is we need more supply of vaccine to make that possible. >> thank you, dr. col colfax. now for questions on coronavirus variants, we invite the acting county health officer for san francisco, dr. susan philips.

dr. philips, your first question is: what is the status of the new variants in san francisco? have you identified any of the variants from the u.k., south africa, or brazil? >> doctor: thank you very much for the question. i wanted to take a moment to step back. i know many of us have been hearing about variants, but to give a quick primer, when we're talking about variants, what this really means is viruses, as dr. colfax said, normally mutate randomly. this happens all of the time. when the mutations sometimes cause them to be less fit, we don't hear about them. occasionally there can be a mutation or a grouping of mutations that causes the virus to become more fit, to be able to transmit more, make people more sick, and that is what we're talking about when we talk about variants. these are random occurrences that then spread in our populations.

so in san francisco, we have not identified the variants of interest that have been nationally talked about. so these are the variants that started in the u.k., which is known as b117. it is a variant that began in south africa, which is b13151, and the variant that started in brazil, which is called p1. this is different than the testing that we all know and think about now for many, many months, where we'll go and get a swab in our nose and get that diagnostic test. that is done in very many labs across the city and the region. the sequencing is actually the test that we need to do to find the variants. what that is is looking at the genetic material of the virus, sequencing the virus genome to be able to

see what the mutations are. that only occurs in a few specialized laboratories. and we're very fortunate in san francisco that we have strong collaborations with our colleagues at ucsf and the bio hub, both of whom are experts in doing this type of work. in context as a country, we do not have the robust infrastructure to do this very, very systematically. so we are, by necessity, not able to sequence the 6,000 plus ses men's that specit we are testing every day, and the 2% to 3% that are positive, not all of those can be sequenced because of the specialty issues. we don't have a complete picture across the world, across the country, in the bay area or in san francisco, but we can get a glimpse of what we think is happening by how frequently we find different variants in these specimens that are tested.

so, where what we know, there has been the u.k. variant identified in california and in the bay area. in fact, california has the second highest number of cases in the united states right now. so we have to assume that there could be that virus circulating in the bay area and in san francisco, but we have not identified it. what dr. colfax said is so, so important. we know that the prevention methods that we've been talking about for a year are what will stop and slow the spread of these variants, even before we're able to access vaccine, which is, in fact, our ticket out because the vaccine in studies has still been shown to be affective against these variants, and particularly against preventing against severe disease. while vaccine is the ticket out, we have the ability in our hands right now to stop transmission of any virus, including variants, by masking, by distancing, by washing our

happedz. hands. i want to add one additional wrinkle to this: the less virus that is transmitting and replicating, the less chance we have of having new variants emerge. we talked about how it is random mutation, but every time the virus replicates, there another chance for random mutation to end up resulting in a variant that would be a concern, for faster spread, making people sicker, or a concern with the vaccine. so we have the power in our hand to not only stop the variants that we know now, but also to prevent new ones from emerging. so i would really urge all of us to take the standard prevention methods that we have in public health, as a department, we're working to understand the types of distribution of variants, not only in san francisco, but reachly and regionly.but in the meantime, we

asking for everyone's help in slowing the spread. >> the follow-up question is: what happens if the variant from the u.k. continues to spread in california and becomes the dominant variant down there? will that happen here, too? and what is the level of your concern about these west coast variants? >> doctor: so what we know from the models, and what we understand from science nationally, is that the u.k. variant, because it does spread more quickly, person to person, is likely to become the dominant strain in the united states by march. so we don't have any reason to think that that will be different in san francisco. but, again, we have t-e ability, as we have done time and again, to not necessarily let the models become our destiny, if we are distancing, washing our hands, wearing face coverings all the time, and particularly as we are reopening and coming into contact with each other more, it becomes so

important to do those things. there was a second part of the question about the west coast variant. so this is a different strain of virus, which has been identified in california and in other areas on the west coast. and this is called cal.20c, and it has been identified in some outbreaks, not in san francisco, but it has been identified in individuals from san francisco and in the bay area. our colleagues at c.d.c. are still evaluating all of the data to understand if it is, in fact, more easy to transmit that variant and what all of the implications are. so we don't have a clear understanding yet of the implications. but we do know it is transmitted the same way. we have no reason to think that the vaccine would not be affective against this variant or any others. >> thank you, dr. philip. there are no additional questions. >> doctor: thank you. >> this concludes today's

press conference. take mayor breed, dr. colfax, and dr. philip, for your time. for future questions, please e-mail dem press at sfgov.org. thank you, and have a nice >> this is a special meeting of the small business commission, february 8, 2021. this meeting will come to order at 4:33.