 You're tuned into the COVID-19 community report here on KDRT 95.7 FM in Davis, California. I'm your host, Autumn LeBae-Renaud, and today is Friday, March 27th. We're sharing local news and resources, not focusing on what everyone else can read out there in the world, but really on what's impacting Davis and nearby cities in Yolo County during the COVID-19 pandemic. My call-in guests today are Yolo County Supervisor for District 2, Don Saylor, and Dr. Mary Ann Limbos, who is the Deputy Public Health Officer for Yolo County, and we'll have that first interview in just a few minutes. The show airs live at noon on Tuesdays and Fridays, and repeats at 5 p.m. both days. You can also listen online at kdrt.org, and you'll find a compilation of resources there as well that we have compiled from all the shows we've done so far. This Tuesday I'll speak with Heidi Kellison of Downtown NorCal about local businesses, and Jessica Hubbard of Yolo Community Foundation regarding the impact of the pandemic on nonprofit organizations. And on April 3rd, I'll interview Congressman John Garamendi. So here we are, folks, week two of shelter in place, and the United States hit an unwelcome milestone this week as it became the country with the most COVID-19 cases. And in Yolo County, as of this morning, the news is that there have been 13 confirmed cases and one death. I'll take a moment here to thank our medical professionals and our first responders, public servants, and all involved in our food supply train, from farmers and farm workers to transportation workers and grocery clerks for their work out there while most of us are doing our best to adapt to social distancing. We appreciate you. As always, I'm going to share a few announcements before we get to our first call. So despite some welcome news this week that SEIU union representatives found two huge domestic face mask stores in this country, there are still massive shortages of masks for healthcare providers, first responders, and other essential workers. In response, grassroots groups devoted to sewing protective face masks are popping up everywhere. Peter Davis Hospital wants us to know that they have a PPE donation line, and that stands for Personal Protective Equipment, and you can call that at 530-759-7477. They're accepting donations of N95 and surgical masks, any model, including homemade, isolation gowns, reusable face shields, goggles, latex free gloves, disinfecting wipes, and more. So please call that number again, that's 530-759-7477 to schedule donations. Davis High School newspaper, The Hub, and community newspaper, The Davis Enterprise, collaborate on a weekly podcast. Their most recent episode looks at some of the ways healthcare operations are forced to be modified as COVID-19 continues to spread. A Davis orthodontist, pediatric, physical therapist, and family physician each share their perspective. Find the podcast online at bluedevilhubhub.com, that's H-U-B. We all know businesses are taking hard hits right now. With all our local breweries, wine tasting rooms, and bar shutdowns, no surprise sales of off-premise alcoholic beverages have soared. Earlier this week, the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, known as ABC, issued a wide-ranging notice of regulatory relief dramatically increasing the options for selling alcoholic beverages in the state. The notice expands options for delivery of beverages, as well as addresses the legality of selling alcoholic beverages to go. And you can learn more at abc.ca.gov. And thank you to Joe Denizio of Davis Chamber of Commerce for that tip. And I'm particularly thinking here of Sudwork Brewing Company, Parkside Bar and Lounge, Woodstock's Pizza and Blue Note Brewery, all of whom are strong supporters of KDRT. All right, please enjoy a little music while we get set up to talk to Supervisor Saylor. Something I've learned from years of producing local election coverage is just how many services are routed through our county-level government. With an annual budget of nearly $500 million, there's much that happens in Yolo County, including efforts to improve access to health care and address food insecurity, as well as voter registration, tax collection and more. Here to give us some insight into the county and how it's managing during the pandemic is Yolo County Supervisor for District 2, Don Saylor. Thanks for joining us today. Autumn, thank you so much for this series. Really, it's a very important service to get the message out. Well, we are happy to do it. So I really want to do a little bit of a deep dive here with you in the 10 minutes we have. I know some county offices are closed. I know that, like many of us, you're working remotely. And also that, on any given day, your office feels a lot of public inquiries. So what are you hearing from your constituents right now? Well, Autumn, I think I'm delighted you're going to have Mary Ann Lembos come on later in the hour or two in the show to give an update on some of the health issues. I'm sorry to tell you that we just added two more confirmed cases that we now in Yolo County have 13 confirmed cases. And one of those has passed away, sadly. So what's happening with Yolo County is that we are 100% devoted to an emergency operation center. That is, I think a lot of people don't know what that means. The emergency operation centers are activated when there's a disaster, emergency fire, earthquake, flood, or in this case, a public health emergency. So many of the county staff might be trained as a financial analyst or as a code enforcement officer or a child support director. All those folks have been repurposed. And many of them are, many county employees are furloughed. But many of them are engaged in the activities that are otherwise going on. So what's happening around the counties, people have, by and large, have accepted the public health order that was issued on March 18 by our health officer Ron Chapman. And the health order is effective from March 19 to April 7. And when you travel through our communities, you're seeing empty streets that are typically pretty congested or at least busy. Most people are staying home. That's really appropriate. We're getting questions from folks about the interpretation of the order. And if any of the listeners want to follow that up, the YoloCounty.org website has a page devoted to a shelter in place 101 and there's a survey online that you can access and kind of drill down and see what's going on. But initially we were having a lot of questions. What does this mean for my business or can I do this physical activity or can my children come and visit and those kind of things? That's kind of tapered off as people have kind of buckled down to doing each of us doing our part to reduce the rate of infection. Right. And should we expect that the order will be extended past April 7? I think it's it's undoubtedly going to be extended. We realize that when we first step in, we needed to just get it in place. And as we're as this is all unfolding, we're continuing to see cases rise. And of course, we all know that the United States is now with about 86,000 cases confirmed is the leader in the world. Over 1200 people have died in our country. So we're seeing this going to continue in California. It's doubling every three to four days and we're over 3000 now. So, yes, I expected it'll it'll be extended. Some of the just amazing things that are happening. The food bank has picked up the has really picked up their their efforts. They're with Rob Davis, former Davis mayor, he's doing an incredible job of coordinating the food banks, COVID-19 efforts. This they're doing three major new food distributions every week. This this week they've served 1500 and 36 households, including 3600 family members. And they're not just doing that by going to a single location and waiting for people to line up because they've got to be very careful with the social distancing, the physical distance. They're delivering food boxes to individual households. So that has kept 180 volunteers busy. Farm fresh to you has even pitched in and done some driving in West Sacramento. There's just a lot of creative energies going in. And one of the things I wanted to be sure to say is that if people are the listeners want to know how to volunteer, well, one of the things they can do is is sign on to the Yolo Food Bank's volunteer website. So that's YoloFoodBank.org and that would be a really good place for you. Yeah, I've been mentioning them on each show. They're really doing Yeoman's work out there. And Rob Davis, if you're listening, we were in touch about this early on, but I'm planning to reach out to you to come on the show as well. So how does, Don, how does the county coordinate with the various cities in Yolo County during a time of emergency? Well, it's a hand in glove. Actually, there's there's not a there's not a sliver of paper between the efforts of Yolo County and the four cities in the county. So the city managers are all involved with the county administrative officer, ongoing communications between elected officials and at the and at the and on the ground level, the the an example here would be the city of Davis. Police chief is responsible for enforcing the public health order. So the county health officer issues an order that's enforceable by law enforcement. That means there's got to be a lot of coordination with law enforcement. The four city police chiefs and the sheriff are all in contact with the emergency operations center. And if you're in Davis and have a question, some of the questions that are coming up now out of our things like, well, my employer doesn't seem to agree that that since we're not an essential business, that I need to come into work. And so what do I do about that? Or I see that across the street, there's some kind of an active gathering going on, isn't that a violation? Or I just am curious about how I'm puzzled with how I can get my medication or something like that. So you need to there's another website inside the city of Davis, police web at cityofdavis.org. That's police web at cityofdavis.org that people can send in a question or a comment or a concern and then get a direct response. So that's the direct involvement Another another activity that's under way that is I think very exciting and necessary is something that the Board of Supervisors approved on our our March 24th meeting, the creation of a YOLO community benefit fund. And this this is in the works, but it's the this is a collaboration among the YOLO Community Foundation, Yochita He tribe, several of the larger health systems and the four cities and the chambers of commerce and the idea in the county and the county dedicated two hundred and fifty thousand dollars as a seed money. So the cities are each participating in the steering committee discussions to create this benefit fund that will be dedicated toward stabilizing the nonprofits that are struggling as as businesses are as well. So there are other needs as well. But this this is another area that the cities and the county and nonprofits and the business community are working together on. Yeah, and I was very excited to hear that news, obviously, running a nonprofit here. And I'm very engaged with other nonprofit leaders in the community. And just last week before the supervisors met, we were having a conversation online that we're hearing about a lot of support for businesses and support for this and that. And the one thread that wasn't coming through was nonprofits. And yet many of us who shore up, you know, many social services, many basic needs in the community may not make it through this without without some assistance. So thanks to the board of supervisors for that action. And I'm really looking forward to being involved and seeing how that plays out before we run out of time here, Don, because we're almost there. How can people reach you and and what's one takeaway you'd like to leave us with? Well, I really encourage folks to check out the county's website, YOLO County dot org to reach me is very simple. Don Saylor at YOLO County dot org, or you can you can reach me on Facebook, on my personal Facebook page. There's a lot of activity going on with the COVID-19 YOLO Community Response Facebook group. Indeed. I encourage people to to access that because they've done a really good job of curating issues. One thing I want to show mention to folks is that you got your census forms in the mail in the last couple of weeks. This is a good opportunity. You're sitting home doing nothing, looking for what to put to keep yourself busy. So fill out your census form and make sure you send that in. And the other thing is there's a suicide, we're just one last point out of the suicide prevention for YOLO County, typically has about 500 or 600 calls in a given month. In March, they're going to they're they're running on a pace to get 900 calls. That's just an indication of some of the concerns that individuals are having. So we are at a time now, we need to be patient and calm with each other and with ourselves that YOLO County Health and Human Service Director Karen Larson has done a public service announcement that that folks can access on the YOLO County Facebook page that gives some tips and tidbits on how to keep your own mental health at a good even pace during this challenging time. So be kind to each other and yourself and keep in touch. And we'll we'll make it through this together and it'll be soon. It'll be history. All right, that's a great note to end on. Thank you so much for making time for us today. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Take care. Bye bye. All right, I actually watched that PSA from Dr. Larson this morning and we'll bring that forward on DMA social media so it can get a little bit more attraction. All right, let's share just a couple more resources before we take our next call. We've been talking about county government and this week, the Davis City Council voted unanimously at its March 24th meeting to adopt an urgency ordinance, which states that residential and commercial landlords cannot evict renters impacted by COVID-19 during a local emergency period. This is consistent with information from the county and the state. But in addition, the council voted to approve a resolution suspending water shutoffs for residential and commercial customers. And if you've been reading the news about the continued situation in Detroit, there are people left without water for hand washing during this time. And no one wants to see that happen here. So and the they'll also waive late fees through the end of May of this year. And the city also asked me to direct people to these additional resources. They're on Facebook, Facebook dot com slash city of Davis. They also have a page at their website cityofdavis.org slash coronavirus that's devoted to all of their resources. And you can sign up to receive emergency notifications at yolo dash alert dot org yolo dash alert dot org. All right, the Davis Night Market. I talked about them recently, but they've changed their hours. They provide free food for people suffering from food insecurity and hunger. And they're even even mapping locations of those in need. The night market is open Tuesdays and Thursdays now from 8 30 to 10 30 p.m. In Central Park, if you need food, please head on down. Just be sure to observe social distancing guidelines. And once again, Yolo County Jury Services has announced all jury panels have been canceled through April 30th. So if you were scheduled for jury doing that during that time, you are off the hook. You don't need to do anything. You may be called at a later date. In fact, I think you can probably count on that as they deal with their backlog. And I'm I'm I'm in that group. All right, the Davis Joint Unified School District continues to make breakfast and lunch service available to children under the age of 18, Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the following school sites. Marguerite Montgomery Elementary, which is on Danbury Street. Harper Junior High on East Covell Boulevard. Davis Senior High on West 14th and Patwin Elementary on Shasta Drive. Meal packages include lunch for the current day and breakfast for the night for the next morning. And you can learn more about that at DJUSD.net. And if you've lost income due to COVID-19 or shelter in place, you may be eligible for paid sick leave, family leave or unemployment insurance. Find out more from the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency's website labor.ca.gov. All right, we'll take just a brief break as we get ready for our next caller. As Supervisor Saylor mentioned, I want to keep steering people listeners to the Yellow Public Health COVID-19 resources, which you'll find spotlighted at yellowcounty.org. And with us today is Dr. Mary Ann Limbos, who serves as the Deputy Public Health Officer. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me, Autumn. Well, there's a lot of messaging and directive that comes from the state and federal governments, although perhaps not as much as we'd like to see from the CDC at present. Can you help us understand public health's role at the county during this time? Well, we are trying to provide a consistent message. And like you say, there's a lot of different information coming from the federal government and the state. And as much as possible, we try to distill that information into ways that are useful for our community. And we try as much as possible to keep that our community updated. We host a weekly call with community partners to provide them the latest information on what is going on with locally as well as nationally. And it sounds like you spoke with Supervisor Saylor about our Yellow County website, which we update daily. So, you know, there are a lot of sources of information. We try, you know, through different media to reach as many people in our community as possible. And we really rely on our community partners and TV and radio programs, such as yourself, to try to reach those folks that we might not be reaching, perhaps with our website. And we're more than happy to help out with that. This morning, I read that the county announced it would begin allowing home delivery on non-essential services in an effort to help boost the local economy. I'm hoping you can give us more information about that. And what kinds of businesses are we talking about? You realize that this can be a really difficult time for our local businesses. And it's going to be a struggle for some of the smaller ones. So, many of them don't fall under the category of essential businesses, but we'd like to support them as much as possible. And at the same time, try to keep our residents from going out as much as possible. It's really trying to encourage them to stay home. And so, the way we were hoping to accomplish both of these goals is to still allow our non-essential local businesses to continue to provide some of their services to the community by delivery, but still keeping their storefronts closed. So, in that way, we're not having our residents go out. They're still staying home. But then our businesses can still provide at least some level of service. So, would that include things? I'm trying to get an idea of what sorts of businesses. So, for example, one of the businesses that was, I can floor stay open. Well, they're not an essential business, but they can still deliver. So, a member of the community can't go into a florist to buy their flowers or products, but they can still call and the florist can still make that delivery to the home. Great. I'm sure that's really welcome news out there for a lot of business owners. And before we run out of time, the question I'm hearing most frequently is when will testing be more widely available? So, what can you tell us about that? Sure. You know, over the past couple of weeks, we've gotten some commercial labs up and running. So, our testing capacity has increased over the past couple of weeks. And because of that, our case counts will continue to go up. And, you know, we've heard, we're hearing that people want more testing, but the message we want to get across is we want our testing to make sense. And what I mean by that is, you know, when COVID-19 isn't in the community, it's good to have this widespread testing so we can isolate our cases and keep them from spreading disease to the rest of the community, but we're not there anymore. You know, we know COVID-19 is in our community. And it doesn't make sense to test people with mild symptoms and fever because we would give them the same recommendation, whether we know that they're COVID-19 possible or whether we don't know that. And that would be to stay home and self-isolate. And honestly, we would have the same recommendations for people who are asymptomatic. And that recommendation is still to stay home. And wash your hands. Wash your hands, absolutely. All right. I just want to remind people, again, that you can visit yolocounty.org. And right on the front page, there's a big spotlight with all of the county's resources. And Dr. Limbos, thank you for joining us. And please pass along thanks to Dr. Ron Chapman, too, because before we were isolated, he came in here and did some important programming on this. I certainly will. I'll pass it on to our team. Thank you so much for helping us get the message out. All right. Appreciate your time. Thanks. Well, you know, it's actually a pleasure to talk to people who are really boots on the ground and making things happen here in the community. And I want to thank everyone who's tuning in. I'm getting some nice comments and feedback on social media. And putting together a local radio show on the COVID-19 crisis was really the most expedient way that we here at Davis Media Access and KDRT could make locally relevant content available. Again, I'm not getting into politics here, and I'm not covering the news that the national news outlets are sharing. I'm really trying to focus on how this impacts our community and what our local resources are. So our staff here at Davis Media Access is hard at work developing options to bring some fresh new local radio and TV programming to our community soon. Some of them will be interactive, all with remote capability. I'll share more soon, and I'll continue connecting with community groups and non-profits. I'll be back next Tuesday. And from the KDRT studio, I'm Autumn Labirino, and this has been the COVID-19 community report.