Humboldt Co. Public Health Says COVID Causes More Problems for Kids Than Other Diseases We Already Vaccinate For, Talks Omicron, Winter Surge, and More

The Humboldt County COVID-19 Joint Information Center hosted a virtual news conference to provide an update on the county’s pandemic response, including vaccination efforts, and answer questions from local media. Panelists included Public Health Director Sofia Pereira and County Health Officer Dr. Ian Hoffman.

For this type of press conference, the Joint Information Center (JIC) moderates the question and answer exchange in a zoom meeting, where local media presents questions and follow-ups to local officials who give their responses in real time.  The resulting video, called a Virtual Press Conference, is then posted to the county’s COVID-19 YouTube channel at the end of the day. 

Here are some of the main points covered in the December 1st Virtual Press Conference, with a summary of answers from the participants. 

El video del 1 de diciembre de preguntas y respuestas de medios con el Dr. Ian Hoffman, que muestra subtítulos disponibles en español, usando las opciones del menú de YouTube y seleccionando ‘auto-subtítulos’ y luego seleccionando un idioma.

My name is Christine Messinger, welcome to the December 2st COVID-19 virtual news conference. I’m one of the public information officers for the COVID-19 Joint Information Center and today we are joined by Humboldt County Health Director Sofia Pereira and Humboldt County Health Officer Dr Ian Hoffman.

JIC: Sofia, can you give us a few words?

2 mins in: 

Pereira: Absolutely. Good afternoon everyone.  So, you may have heard that Governor Newsom is actually doing a press conference right now at the same time as our presser here.  We’ve seen the report of the first Omicron case in California, in the United States, and our team is following these updates closely and we will incorporate any new guidance that comes down from CDPH. so I just wanted to acknowledge that, given that there’s some stuff happening in real time right now, as we are in this presser together. 

A couple things that I also wanted to touch on.  First, we have a Public Health Lab leadership update. Dr. Jeremy Corrigan, who you all know as our Lab Manager – after 12 years of service in our public health lab, is actually moving on to be the Lab Director for San Diego County.

So we are so grateful for Jeremy’s tireless leadership, he has helped to grow our lap’s capacity to meet the demand for testing for COVID-19 and all the other work that he’s done outside of COVID-19 with our bioterrorism lab, etc.  So, really sad to see him go and we truly wish him all the best in San Diego, where I know he’ll continue to do great things.

We are, though, also excited to announce that we have our new Lab Director that has started this week, Dr Pepper Stockton.  Pepper joins our leadership team after serving as the Lab Director for Shasta County. he does have roots in this community, he’s lived here before, and together Jeremy and Pepper have been working really closely together to ensure that it’s a smooth transition. so we’re really thrilled to announce this transition and welcome Pepper to the Humboldt County Public Health team. 

And then on another note, I did also just want to speak to the importance of these pressers. They’re important to us here in Public Health. they’re important to the public, and so last week we did get together and discuss the need to provide them more regularly. That’s something that I think we all have a shared interest in, and frankly just one of the challenges has been for us is the human resources side of it. The staffing challenges have really been driving a lot of our decision making, and unfortunately that’s unlikely to change for the foreseeable future.

We’re just adapting where we can, but that said, we are still committed and renewing our commitment to continuing to provide these daily updates that we do, to field questions as they come in as we are able to, and to provide regular updates to the board of supervisors – and to hold these pressers at least twice a month.  In fact, we plan to hold another presser this next week as well, and we would like to do more, and unfortunately that’s what we can do right now with the resources that we have.

And then lastly, just kind of connected in terms of sharing information with the public – our dashboard obviously has been a resource folks, you know, have been tracking closely. It’s something we’re really proud of, and our epidemiologists have been working really hard on developing a new dashboard.  It’s still being developed, it’s still being worked on while they’re balancing all the other work that they’re doing, so we just wanted to… we’ve brought it up before that’s being worked on, and I just didn’t want to lose track of that in terms of educating the public that that’s something that’s still happening behind the scenes, and we hope, um, I don’t want to say a day, because you know, you say something and then you jinx yourself when it gets launched – but they’re working really hard to get something out with a really great new dashboard. I’ll turn over to Dr. Hoffman.

5 mins 20 secs in:

Dr. Hoffman: Thank you, Sophia. And thanks to everyone for being here today. Yeah I’ll also echo, welcome to Dr. Pepper Stockton. We are so grateful for him to be here, he’s stepping into some very big shoes, with Dr. Corrigan leaving. We’re, you know, have been so blessed to have him over the course of the last 12 years and wish him the best of luck. He’s been a wonderful asset to our organization for such a long time.

I want to start off with a couple brief updates so we all know about Omicron and it’s as Sofia mentioned, it’s here now in California as of a few hours ago. Locally, some things that we’re doing, we put out some information to the medical community over the last 24 hours about getting enhanced travel histories, and really any – we’re encouraging anyone who’s had international travel in the last 14 days to go ahead and get tested. And if those, if those are being tested locally here by one of our doctors, that they should send those to our public health lab so we can expedite them if they are positive.

For whole genome sequencing, we’re looking for other ways to try to do enhanced screening of returning travelers, that’s going to be the focus. We don’t think that this is circulating locally although there certainly are some cases, you know, in California and across the country, of travelers from the areas that have seen Omicron in the last few weeks. So, locally our case counts are improved and they’re stabilized for several weeks now.  We’ve really seen that peak that we saw a few months ago come down. We’ve been fairly stable now that the case rate is still fairly high compared to where we were even a year ago before the first surge.

So we are aware that the case counts – while they’re improved, they still remain high in our hospitalizations are also greatly improved but still also remain fairly high at rates higher than they have been at any point before the Delta surge that we experienced in the past few months. So we’re keeping a close eye on that and we’re keeping a close eye on our vaccine progress. I think that’s really our goal right now, is continuing to increase access and reduce barriers to the vaccine. Where you know, the latest review of the numbers you really are very encouraging has upwards of about 20% of the five to 11 year olds with their first shot, which is incredible to have that done in just a few weeks.

I’m really excited for that, and I’m encouraged by those numbers and want to see that continue to go up. As for the 5 to 11 year old group. We’re up to 50% of the 12 to 17 year old group are also fully vaccinated now. Which is extremely encouraging and overall of the entire eligible population in Humboldt County – about three out of four people have received at least one shot. So if we look around, most people in our community have gotten a shot and you know believe in the confidence and the science and the evidence behind these vaccines which are highly effective. They’re very safe. The majority of our communities already have one and they will be the thing that will end this for all of us. So encouraging numbers.  We hope they continue to go out and look forward to your questions, thank you. 

JIC: Richardo, Do you want to ask the question?

9 mins 45 secs in: 

La Lenllador: Yes, thank you. South Africa’s Department of Health recently found that 10% of those infected with a new variant are kids under two. What advice do you have for parents with children, to protect their children from COVID?

Hoffman: It is a great question. I haven’t seen that data yet. What we know about all of the variants of COVID is that they can infect everyone, and that impacts that under five population who, you know, can’t get a vaccine yet or are still vulnerable. so you know for everyone who should be wearing masks I think you know that’s really the main thing that that we have right now besides vaccine if you’re eligible for a vaccine are definitely get one. Like I said, they’re safe, they’re effective, they protect yourself, they protect your communities and you know as far as younger kids, and other ways that you can protect them, as you know – try to keep them out of crowded public spaces.   You know, avoid large gatherings until we have this pandemic under control and if you are in those spaces, and they’re over the age of two and can safely wear masks and make sure that they’re wearing masks as well.

11 mins 25 secs in: 

North Coast News: Good afternoon, I wanted to know of course, we have all this talk about the Omicron variant and of course with the holidays right around the corner, should people anticipate the possibility of another lockdown or additional restrictions?

Hoffman: Yeah, I think you know the first part of the question is are we expecting another surge, and I think the answer is – we are definitely expecting another surge of cases. You know, what that is gonna look like, it is… you know, we have constantly been playing this game the whole pandemic trying to predict the future. With Omicron, it’s really, we’re in a holding pattern now.  We just don’t know. We know it’s more transmissible, we’re seeing that data both in the mutations but also in the rate at which is increasing and in the southern African countries where were circulating, but what we don’t know is, is it as deadly? 

Is it as deadly, is it causing as severe disease, and then how is it interacting with people who’re previously infected or had a vaccine?  So, yes we expect a surge in cases.  We don’t know what’s gonna happen. I I think in terms of our reaction to that, we need to be mindful of what we have – which is vaccines.  So everyone should get a vaccine if you have your full vaccine and [if] you’re due for a booster please get your booster that’s also gonna be an effective tool as that is extremely effective tool in public places. And you know, until we know more about this, you might want to consider things like avoiding large gatherings, limiting you know your larger social interactions. As far as other lockdowns, I’m not hearing anything on that so I don’t think that’s a tool we’re looking to go back to it unless there was some extraordinary reason to go back to that. 

13 mins 45 secs in: 

NCN: Great thank you guys have a quick follow up, I mean you talk about hopefully not going back to lockdown, could you confidently say at this point that we won’t need to worry about more restrictions or a lock down ahead of the holidays this month?

Hoffman:  Yeah, I mean I, again I think that we’re gonna be watching things very closely. It’s not even being discussed right now, so I wouldn’t say that it’s something we should expect for sure. I think we should expect an increase in vaccination , first and second doses and increasing boosters. Thankfully, we have masks still required in our county. I think that puts us in a better position to deal with this as we learn more about Omicron in the coming weeks and months, and will wait to see.  We monitor the cases. We monitor the hospitalizations, you know, daily, and see if there’s any other actions that are needed, but I don’t… there wouldn’t necessarily be anything else locally that would be down this would be you know federal and state actions at this point.

NCN: Great. Thank you so much.

JIC: Ali, Do you have a question? 

15 mins in:

Two Rivers Tribune:  How is the County continuing to work in rural communities and with tribal health organizations?

Pereira: I can speak a bit to that. So, we’ve been having our SNAP nurse vaccination team going out to all different rural parts of the county, testing access as well and we’ve been working closely on investigations with the tribes, and with United Indian Health services and making sure that we’re maintaining that support, as well.  So, really in all those areas we’ve been making sure that there’s access.

Hoffman:  Yeah, but just add a little bit to that.  In all the different branches of our response, COVID response,  investigations, the vaccination efforts in our lab – our tribal partners have been integral part of those conversations, and you know we really try to foster those relationships because we know this is a disease that affects that community so much more. The impact on those communities is greater than the rest of the community as a whole in our county.  So we definitely prioritize that and will continue to do so as the pandemic continues. 

JIC: Ryan, do you want to ask a question?

17 mins in:

Redheaded Blackbelt:  Yes, thank you. I actually wanted to sort of piggyback on Austin’s question about a surge coming this winter, and the potential lockdown measures which are not expected, right, but my question goes to the masking order.  There were certain metrics laid out last time we met and, you know, the goal post being I think mid-January, and if we hadn’t met those metrics, Doctor Hoffman indicated that potentially there were other factors that would be considered in order to lift the masking mandate, and so at this point I’m just wondering now, is that still on the table?  Where are we at with those metrics, and you know, taking into account the new variant which is turning out highly transmissible so if you could just comment on that.  Thank you. 

Dr. Hoffman: 

Definitely great question. a lot in there, so, let me try  to get to everything,   Ryan, feel free to follow up if I didn’t cover it all. So, first part, where are we at? 

So, the first part – where are we at. Count wise, we’re still really hovering between red and orange on the CDC tracker.  You might have seen it dip into the yellow for like half a day yesterday, that was really due to reporting lags from the Thanksgiving Holiday. We see that a lot around weekends and holidays where there’s a little bit of delay.  We’re still, you know, with the old metrics maybe we’d be right around purple, red tier.  

So, we still like I mentioned, we saw pretty high case counts so we haven’t even started to be into that lower case count threshold that’s the number one as far as the hospitalizations go as i mentioned we do continue to see fairly high hospitalizations. I mean they’ve ranged from…just under 10 to upwards of 15 over the course of the past couple of weeks and you know a year ago, 15 would have been really bad for the hospital. They’re used to it now.” things are better, but I certainly think that it’s not a state that we want to be looking to remove a lot of the precautions that are protecting the hospitals. So you know, we’re going to be watching that. We’re not there right now with hospitalizations. 

As far as vaccination, again, I think the effort with the 11 year olds has been extremely successful. We’re above the state average there, Northern California and you know including vaccination rates all of those post complete there’s plus all the people who had one shot in their second shot or you know we get enough people getting their for their completion of their series yes 70% you know in a matter of a couple of weeks.  The 80% you know is a goal for us to get to, and I still think – you know, could we get there by mid January? We’ll see. 

Omicron is definitely something that is gonna catch a lot of people’s attention and you know, maybe that’s the thing that motivates people to get their vaccines. Maybe there’s something else – they wanna go see their family for the holidays and be protected.  Getting the information from their doctors, from the medical community who is strongly supportive of the vaccine whenever it is, because there is still a chance to get there by January 15th.

And then lastly, you know, what happens if we’re not there on January 15th? You know, we’re gonna be looking at that. It really depends on what the status of you know, are we in a current new surge with cases, or is this Omicron really widely circulating, and what does that look like? is it causing high levels of hospitalizations and severe disease? So these were some of the reasons we kept this in place and didn’t take it away earlier like other counties. You know, we’re gonna be very, we’re gonna stick to the guiding principles and if it looks like the right time to remove the mask mandate on January 15th based on those guiding principles, that’s what we’ll do.

RHBB:  OK thank you. I think you covered it for me on the masking question. I appreciate it. 

JIC: Kim?

22 mins in:

NCJ:  Yes, there was an advisory that went out about the higher case rates and the Eel River Valley, certain zip codes. I’m just wondering, has anything changed in the area that interim time, and are there higher vaccination rates, or is it staying about the same with that area still seeing that 60% or more of the cases?

Hoffman: Yeah. Thanks, Kim. Good question. So um case counts have come down across the board across the whole county um so that is encouraging so that you know a lot of that data was from when that peak was you know pretty high and now that the the case numbers are lower they are also lower in the greater Fortuna area. The update I got from our epidemic team yesterday was that they are still significantly higher in that area. So, I don’t think, you know, the numbers haven’t changed a lot other than that they’re just lower. So they’re lower across the board and they’re lower in the Fortuna area, but they’re still higher in the Fortuna area than they are in the rest of the county.

I don’t have any good geographic-level data on the…progress with vaccines for that area. It’s something we could look at, but we’re constantly trying to target and do outreach, and you know, all of the geographic areas that have lower vaccination rates to make sure that there’s plenty of opportunities, and I think there’s ample opportunity for people in the Fortuna area to get vaccinated. So, hopefully those who choose to, will go out and do so.

JIC: Kim, do you have a follow-up?

23 min 40 secs in:

NCJ: So, my follow would be, and I think you probably said you don’t really have a good geographical level progress on vaccination, but I’m just wondering if you have any anecdotal information on progress of vaccines, and when the 5 to 11 opened up in the greater Eel River Valley, do you have any idea of like, where people are getting those vaccinations?

Hoffman: I don’t. I think, you know, again, we made sure to include all geographic areas to try to hit for, you know, five to 11 year olds in all populations. So that it’s just, it’s a small group of ten thousand. Around ten thousand is the population for five to eleven-year-olds in Humboldt County, and so we’re about two thousand of those who’ve been vaccinated so far, and most of them haven’t been able to get their second shot yet because it’s only been a couple of weeks. So, in the next couple weeks, they’ll be able to get fully vaccinated. I mean, it’s something we’ll pay attention to, we’ve always paid attention to that geographic, you know, zip code level – but it’s a little too early to start to do any more targeting. I think right now we’re still just in the messaging phase of, you know, get your vaccine. It’s safe, it’s effective. It will protect you, it’ll protect your community, and including kids. You know, we do see… We’ve had a few local kids hospitalized – sent down to the Bay Area for care – because we don’t have that kind of care here, locally. 

We’ve seen cases of severe disease…in kids locally, and I think the…data is very clear that when you compare COVID to other childhood diseases that we vaccinate against, you know, the number of hospitalizations and even deaths compared to things like say hepatitis, measles, mumps, rubella – all of these things that we routinely vaccinate our children for, COVID is causing many, many, more times hospitalization and death than those other diseases that we already vaccinate our children for. So it really makes sense for us to be vaccinating these kids, to protect themselves, but also to protect all of us, because they get sick, they go home, they get their family sick, they get grandma and grandpa sick, and then those are the people who are at the highest risk for going to the hospital.

So, we’re hoping that that message gets out, more people continue to get the vaccine for kids again, 50% of 12 to 17 year olds. It’s a great number. It will continue to go up as time goes on and more people you know go ahead and get their vaccine.

JIC: Ricardo, do you have another question?

27 mins in:

LL: Yeah, what’s the status of the Latino community with COVID?

Hoffman: Yeah, so the Latino community definitely has a higher, you know, case rate as well, much like our native population.  Much like the black population here locally, but also across the state and the country. So we have seen really in these groups, about a two to three times higher case rate, and that results in higher hospitalizations and obviously higher deaths. 

So we have tried to focus our vaccination efforts in those areas as well, and support both the tribal vaccination, and also doing outreach to the Latinx community and making sure that there are opportunities, that there are Spanish speakers at all of our vaccination events, that there’s information going out through channels that they trust and have confidence in. And so, the latest numbers I was just looking at these yesterday, of the percent eligible in the Latinx community here in Humboldt county, 68% have gotten at least one shot. 

So that’s you know, again really encouraging. We had seen that be really low 30, 40 percent, you know five, six months ago.  So, we’re clearly making really good progress in those and it just takes time it takes time for the…message to get out it takes time for people to you know build their trust and confidence and and I think when people look around and see that three quarters of our community has gotten a shot and they’re doing good, and it’s working, it’s protecting them from the hospital, it’s protecting them from severe disease. That confidence is building and so I think that’s what we see. It reflected in…those numbers for the Latinx community as well.

JIC: Austin, do you have another question?

29 mins 15 secs in:

NCN:  Yes, I do. I know a big thing with this month being the holidays, is travel, and so of course with the Omicron variant, should people be reconsidering out of town travel this holiday season, and likewise should people be hesitant about having family coming from out of town, coming into Humboldt County?

Hoffman: That’s a great question. I don’t think there’s any reason to panic over this. This is another variant, and we will learn more about it. But all the tools that we need to deal with it are already in place. We have the tools here in our country, in our county, and they’re the same – they’re masking, they’re testing, and they’re getting vaccinated. And if you’re already vaccinated, getting a booster. 

So, yes anyone who’s going to be traveling – if you haven’t got your vaccine, definitely start now so you’ve you know got it before you do your holiday travels. If you’re fully vaccinated, go get a booster. That’s definitely going to be helpful. you know, wearing your mask while traveling and then yeah, I mean considering what kind of gathering you’re going to, you know, uh obviously things like testing… Everyone at the gathering would be really, you know, helpful to reduce the risk doing things outdoors. You know, we were really blessed with great weather here in Humboldt for Thanksgiving, so I know many people had their Thanksgivings outdoors and so hopefully we’ll see the same for other holidays coming up, where people can you know do their traditional things get together, see people you haven’t seen in you know a year or two, and do it more safely with the tools that we’ve learned over the course of the pandemic. 

Certainly, you know international travel is something that people may be reconsidering at this point if they are,  if they do have those plans, but Ithink otherwise – you know we’re not seeing Omicron really circulating widely in the U.S., so I don’t think there’s any reason for alarm.

We know that it’s going to be here. We’ve caught the first case. There’s got to be other cases, we know that it’s just not circulating like it is in other parts of Africa and Europe. 

So, we’ll see what happens here in the coming weeks, but at this point I don’t think…, it’s not a reason to throw out your plans and change everything.

NCJ:  Great, thank you so much.

JIC: I see that Isabella from the Times-Standard just joined us. Isabella, would you like to ask a question?

32 mins 30 secs in: 

T-S:  It has been reported that the Omicron variant has a theoretical advantage, and so I would ask, why the county is choosing to essentially stay on the course as it has when that didn’t work to curb the spread of the Delta variant in our community?

Hoffman: It’s a great question, as well, and I don’t think we really specifically covered that one. So it definitely has an advantage based on the theoretical mutations, and how they interplay. It looks to have some support data-wise for that advantage, in the …data coming out of South Africa.  So, you know we’re we’re taking the right precautions, though, I mean we already have a mask mandate in our county that many places in our country don’t have, so we’re actually taking more precautions than um, and are well-prepared for this…

Testing is widespread in our community, it’s easy to come by. And vaccines are also widespread and easy to come by and those are all the same things that are going to work against Omicron, as they are going to work against all the variants. 

We, even if we see a spike in cases here, I think given our level of vaccination, our masking order that’s still in place and everything we’ve learned about COVID over the past 20 months we’re in a better place than we were before Delta. You have to remember when Delta hit us, we did not have a masking order in place other than the state’s masking order for unvaccinated people, and our vaccination rates were much, much lower at that point.

JIC: Do you want to ask a follow-up question, Isabella?

34 mins 10 secs in:

T-S: It’s not totally a follow-up with that, I was also wondering about getting booster shots in our community. I guess I would ask about the efficacy with the Omicron variant, if there’s any evidence that is necessary at this point?  And then also, whether there is a shortage of boosters in our community?

Hoffman: So, we are still learning about vaccine efficacy, and natural immune response and the Omicron variant. So, that is still, you know jury’s out, but we have every reason to think that the vaccines will have you know some, and probably significant ability to protect us against the Omicron just like it did with Delta. 

I think that the older age groups and those who are immunocompromised, I mean that’s who we’ve seen with Delta really get very sick, hospitalized and even some deaths among those who are fully vaccinated with Delta. We are seeing a shift, now that we are getting a lot of those folks boosted, we haven’t seen that as much. 

We haven’t seen the hospitalizations and deaths in that fully vaccinated, boosted, high-risk  group, so that’s very encouraging and that fits with what we’re hearing from across the state with you know boosters in skilled nursing facilities, in high risk settings. Really showing that  protection against Delta. 

So we expect there to be significant protection, and so yes, it’s a reason to go get the booster.  You know, I think some people are saying ‘well should I wait until there’s a specific booster for Omicron’ and it’s no, you shouldn’t, because you don’t wait to put your seatbelt on until you’re 20 miles down the road. You put your seatbelt on now, because you don’t know when you’re gonna get hit, right?  

We don’t know when that, or if that might even be necessary, so they are working on it. The vaccine manufacturers are working very quickly to try to create a booster specific for this new variant. It could be three to six months, so, before we see that, so we get boosted now. you get this vaccine now, and if it’s necessary, we’ll look at that in the future. We just don’t know right now just because they’re working on it, doesn’t mean it’s even going to be necessary. 

JIC: Ali, do you have another question? Ryan, would you like to ask another question?

37 minutes in:

RHBB: Yes, thanks. I’ll try to keep it quick. So, Dr. Hoffman, considering that, you know, we know no vaccine is without some side effects or adverse reactions in some percentage of people who are inoculated, and this goes for all vaccines. So, considering the novel nature of the virus and mutations and all, I’m wondering what type of protocol is in place for health care staff, for example emergency room staff or an attending doctor, in a situation where a person does actually show an adverse reaction to the vaccine, if that should occur, what kind of protocol or reporting procedures are in place for reporting this, and would that then be reported to public health?  Thank you.

Hoffman: Yeah, great question. So, you know, you’re absolutely right, Ryan. Every vaccine has potential for side effects, ranging from the vast majority of which are very mild to a very small number of high-risk, you know, bad outcomes – those are, you know, again, the same as every vaccine, a risk-benefit that that we, as the scientists and the doctors who decide – should we move on with a vaccine, versus not, have weighed out. And I’ll just say the risks of COVID and this deadly pandemic that we were living through are much, much greater for everyone, all ages than the vaccine. 

The vaccine is by far the safest route to go. So, what …kind of things do we deal with? You know, minor things. Most, you know,I mean as many, as you know, 10 to 20 percent of people will have some chills and some headache, and some you know sore arm things that are common. And they’re easy to deal with, and everyone gets those instructions. We have had a few cases locally, in our own clinics and other places where people might have a reaction where they pass out. Again, something very common with many vaccines. We are all trained to deal with these when they happen, and they happen with a lot of vaccines, they happen with blood draws, they happen with people sometimes even just getting their blood pressure taken in a doctor’s office. These are common things that happen, in you know, our body’s response to medical procedures.

So, you know, as far as true serious adverse reactions, we have not heard of really any. Those should be elevated to us at Public Health, when they occur. You know, like an anaphylaxis reaction or some other severe reaction those are supposed to be reported locally, and to the CDC through the VAERS surveillance. And so we haven’t really, you know, we haven’t been alerted to any of these really severe reactions that have led, rise to the level of true anaphylaxis, or you know, someone really, you know, being severely injured by the vaccine itself.

RHBB: Okay, thank you.

JIC: Kim, would you like to ask one more question? 

40 mins 40 secs in:

NCJ: I was just curious if maybe you could talk a little bit about, you put out an advisory in the last 24 hours or so on that Omicron… Can you maybe just expand a little bit about sort of what advice you’ve given to local physicians, about what to look for, and what to be cautious about?

Hoffman: Yeah, so, it’s very centralized on international travelers, and just trying to get those folks tested. I don’t think we know enough about anything else with this, other than we just want to try to detect it, all the kind of reporting around the symptom of symptomology and you know, yes, it does look like it spreads faster that is also in that report but otherwise that’s all we know. Probably spreads faster, good evidence for that. We want to detect it. 

It’s probably going to be found in international travelers at this point, and so we’re going to focus on that. That’s really what the the update was about and encouraging local providers to send those those PCR tests – to get them a PCR test, if they test positive on an antigen or if they’re seeking out care after international travel – to go ahead and get them a PCR test, and send those to us so we can expedite them up to the folks who can get those sequenced quickly. 

And one thing, sorry, just going back to Ryan’s comments about the adverse reactions in the vaccines – you know, I just want to point out, we’ve given hundreds of thousands of vaccines alone, here in Humboldt County, and you know, millions and millions of vaccines across our country. so, we know a lot about this vaccine, and we know that the side effects are mild in most people and it’s very rare to have a severe side effect.

JIC: Well, thank you guys, all for joining us. Thanks to the panelists, and to the media representatives. That’s about it, on time. We will send the links out to the reporting as soon as we have them, and have a great day everyone.