Today, local city elected officials including the 15 mayors of Santa Clara County and Councilmember Liz Kniss of Palo Alto thanked the County for their swift action regarding COVID 19. ” Dr. Sara Cody and her team’s swift action undoubtedly saved thousands of lives in Santa Clara County and the region,” praised Liz Kniss.
As the County navigates the next phases, the letter respectfully requests accelerated action to ramp up testing, a critical pre-requisite for economic re-opening. We believe that we can work together to support your important work and leadership in this regard. Specifically, we seek that the County:
- Identify a clear goal or threshold—in unambiguous, quantitative terms—for testing frequency sufficient to safely re-open schools and most businesses in our County.
- Make a comprehensive list of testing sites available to the public, including a description of the specific tests offered;
- Identify the specific needs with regard to identification of testing sites, so that cities might help.
- Identify the number of persons sufficient to deploy ample contact-tracing teams for a safe reopening of the economy.
- Specify whether it needs cities to assist in lending their staff or identifying unemployed residents able to undergo training to support testing or contact tracing activities, and the number of persons needed for those tasks.
The Governor’s Covid-19 Testing Task Force is asking for partnership and more testing sites for our communities but have not yet offered specific details. We encourage you to consider forming a Santa Cities Association of Santa Clara County Clara County Covid-19 Testing Task Force. Without dramatic scaling of testing from the current levels of approximately 600 tests per day to several thousand tests per day, we cannot reopen our county. To read the letter, click here.