City Council Special Called Meeting (Joint Meeting with Travis County Commissioners Court) Transcript – 08/10/2021 Title: City of Austin Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 8/10/2021 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 8/10/2021 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [9:07:09 AM] >> Judge Brown: It's 9:06 A.M., and we're meeting here at 700 lavaca street. And I will hand it off to mayor Adler to call to order your meeting. >> Mayor Adler: Good evening, judge, commissioners. We'll go ahead and convene the city council part of this all-joint session. It is August 10, 2021, time, 9:07. And we have a quorum present and we're ready to proceed. >> Judge Brown: Thanks. So I'll call to order the Travis county commissioners court and the Austin city council, and check in, Larry, if we have any callers? >> Good morning, judge. We do. We have Anthony Healey standing by when you're ready. >> Judge Brown: Okay, go ahead. >> Anthony? >> Thank you, judge, and mayor, and thank you for a couple of minutes to address this [9:08:10 AM] honorable body of commissioners court and the city council. I just wanted to make a couple of personal comments on what's going on in covid in our city and our county, and thank both of you and all of the members for the work that you are doing to keep our community safe. It's admirable. I love it. And this is a level of attention that we need to this issue to make sure that we are safe. The P.S.A. That started running this weekend was wonderful and gave the basic message that our community needs to get, which is basically -- stay home, wear your mask, get vaccinated. Those three things are pretty clear and easy and I'm so glad that you're putting them out there. Because I think that at this point it's a communications campaign as much as a veaksz campaign. I wanted to ask and suggest that you be very aggressive in speaking to us and not worry whether people can take the information or not. [9:09:10 AM] I'm a parent of two kids in aid and we received letters and automated messages that are pretty clear and even scary, um, from the school district. And I think that those communications would be very helpful for communities that are failing to get vaccinated at the rates that we'd like to see. Um, and I'd also wanted to ask if -- if you might dedicate additional resources to kind of our lead spokesperson on these issues whose -- who, um, needs to mainly be focused on getting the message out and -- and has been doing a great job of that, Dr. WAPT. But we want to make sure that those individuals who are lead people kind of our Dr. Fauci has the resources to be free, to be the communicator, and to be able to get those messages out as well as possible. [9:10:12 AM] Um, essentially those were my only comments here. I'd like to see my own community of African- Americans make greater effort as well as Latinos to get vaccinated. I think that at this point it's pretty clear that that is the key, and you all that put the resources out there, you're putting them in the community and there are mobile units that will come to people, so with the numbers so bad in our communities, specifically black and Latino, I would like to see more, um, more uptake on the part of my own people to take advantage of the vaccine that is out there, especially with school about to start. I can think of nothing more important than anything y'all can do to get that message out, and I truly appreciate. >> Judge Brown: Thank you, thank you very much, Anthony. Any other callers, Larry? [9:11:15 AM] >> No, sir, judge, that was it. >> Judge Brown: All right, so we'll go ahead and get started. And I just -- I think that we're going to hear first from I believe Dr. Walkes if you're all ready to go and then from aph and get some other updates and I just want to first thank you, Dr. Walkes, for everything -- all of the work that you've been doing this last week. And a thanks to the school district for the actions they're taking to keep kids in Travis county and in our region safe. So, thank you very much. And I think that the last thing is -- well, I'll turn it over to you, doctor -- Dr. Walkes, before I start talking too much. Thank you very much. We'll hear from commissioner Travillion then. >> Thank you, judge, I appreciate it. Good morning, everyone. We are going to talk about where [9:12:17 AM] we are right now as far as our covid response. Next slide, please. This is where we were on Sunday with regards to case counts. Next slide, please. And here is where we were yesterday. We had 445 confirmed cases, an average of 83. 551 patients in our hospitals with covid. 191 in I.C.U. 116 on ventilators. And we had 74 admissions and 56 discharges. And yesterday we were down to [9:13:18 AM] two I.C.U. Beds. We're a day behind on the dshs reporting on I.C.U. Bed availability. So next slide, please. That looks at our overall TSAs in the major metropolitan areas and this is based on the day before. Austin TSA had 14.58% covid hospitalization. And Houston had 60.2%, and Dallas at 14.37%. And San Antonio at 16.95%. And El Paso at 4.4%. And you can see the corresponding number of I.C.U. Beds that were available in each of these areas. I want to point out if you look at the metropolitan area served and the populations, that number [9:14:19 AM] of beds that you see corresponding to each of our areas is very small. And at this point, transfer between areas is difficult, if not impossible. So this was the genesis and the reason why we asked for our community to take all precautions, stay home, um, just go out for essential functions, wear masks and get vaccinated. Next slide, please. We see that we're still lower than the other counties that are listed here with regards to the number of cases per 100,000. Next slide, please. Next slide, please. And if we look at our hospital admissions by age group, we see [9:15:19 AM] that we're having a steady increase in the numbers of cases. With the highest percent change and increase occurring in the 30-49 year old age group at 450% increase. Next slide, please. This is showing, again, that admissions have increased across age groups. Next slide, please. This slide is showing our admissions by race and ethnicity and we see that 76% of admissions have been whites, 40% of that is represented by hispanics. Next slide, please. And we looked at the county of [9:16:19 AM] residence from which our admissions are coming, 54% of our admissions are from Travis county. And the next highest county that's supplying patients to our hospital systems is Williamson county at 22%. The 579 reported admissions were in the last 14 days. Next slide, please. We see that almost all of our admissions have been due to people who are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated and, therefore, unprotected from covid-19. We know that we have 88% prediction from the delta variant by being vaccinated and over 90% protection from the [9:17:20 AM] severe disease, I.C.U. Admissions and death, by getting vaccinated. Next slide, please. To look closer at what's happening in our pediatric population, this slide looks at the numbers of pediatric cases that occurred since the beginning of the pandemic to the present. We see that there were increases in pediatric admissions during the two spikes or surges that we've had in the past, back in June and July of last year, and earlier this year in January and December time frame. We're seeing that similarly occurring at this point. We can look at our next slide, please. Hospital admissions have increased and our pediatric population during July over June, we had a total of 11 admissions to hospital in June, and that's risen to 34 in July. [9:18:23 AM] Next slide, please. This looks at our I.C.U. Admissions and similarly, there were -- there were 12 admissions in July, higher than those that we saw in June, representing over 1,000% increase. Next slide, please. This looks at our admissions since the pandemic began. Our numbers in 2020 were 139, and since January of this year next slide, please. If we look at our admissions by age, in 2020 to date, 2021, we're already tracking to a higher number of admissions. Right now we're at 7,400, and [9:19:28 AM] March to December we had 7,000. So we're starting to see that increase. We are also seeing that the numbers of admissions that have occurred from ages 10 to 18-year-old age group has historically been higher, and that's privy to material, again, this year. Next slide, please. We're looking at the percent positivity rate broken down by age group, and remembering that when we're at 10% positivity rate, we're in a period of high transmission. And for the 3to 5-year-old age group we start at 10% and work up from there. There are higher positivity rates that we've seen in the past, and higher case numbers in our teenaged population, and that's what we're seeing here on [9:20:29 AM] this slide as well. Next slide, please. Looking at another vulnerable population group that we've been tracking over time is our senior citizens groups and nursing homes. We are seeing that there are higher - - there are cases developing in that group. There are 66 cases in the last 14 days, 128 in the last 28 days. The good news is that there have been fewer hospitalizations that have been needed in this age group because they've been fully vaccinated. So that -- they're experiencing milder symptoms that can be managed in the nursing homes. Next slide, please. I want to go back to our children, which is top of mind for many of us. This looks at school reopening [9:21:33 AM] with taking into account what would happen if we were dealing with our previous numbers of covid -- next slide, please -- that shows where we for we look at the delta variant as it's much more infectious. I want to take a minute to talk about the infectiousness and how infectious this virus is and the variant going with delta. It has higher viral roads and presymptomatic phase which means that people who may not know that they're yet sick are carrying high viral loads, which means that they can be spreading the illness before they know that they're sick, which is why we've asked people to wear masks, whether they're vaccinated or unvaccinated. This becomes particularly important in our school systems [9:22:33 AM] because children who are identified as positive cases and their close contacts are both important, because the close contacts, if they're not identified and isolated, will, in fact, be carrying the virus and not know that they're sick. And so the importance of contact tracing cannot be overstated. This graph talks about our I.C.U. Capacity. The one that you see across the bottom with the I.C.U. Capacity written on it marks our 200 bed mark, which is what our current I.C.U. Capacity is based upon the staffing that we have available. Our hospital systems are doing an excellent job of adjusting patient volumes and capacities, [9:23:40 AM] moving staff from their usual positions to positions to help to balance. And they are also not performing a lot of elective surgeries, they are performing surgeries that are needed because patients are sick -- acutely sick. So they're doing everything they can to make our capacity work for our community. But it is imperative that we improve compliance, which you will see written on the top bars at the top of this graph. And compliance includes wearing masks and getting vaccinated, staying home, just getting out for essential things, and if you do have to go out, wear a mask. Everything that we can do at this juncture to bend this curve downward is going to be important for our community, and particularly for our children. So masking is important. [9:24:42 AM] And I stand in support of both masking and contact tracing. Next slide, please. And this is the delta variant and we see that it's more infectious with projected outcomes of much higher numbers of cases. Next slide, please. This is a slide that I showed you a few weeks ago, and I'm just showing it again to reiterate the importance of what we've done so far. Looking at the vaccinated and unvaccinated and the cases rising, we have high transmission rates in our community, and unvaccinated people should stay home so that they can protect themselves from becoming ill. We have wear masks to prevent the spread of covid-19 from people -- between people. [9:25:43 AM] And those who may be asymptomatic and, therefore, spreading. Next slide, please. Just to give you a little information on where we stand right now with our progress toward herd immunity, we've delivered 600 -- we have 698,666 people who are fully vaccinated, and based on our overall population numbers, not just the people that are eligible for vaccination, which we have a large segment of our population under the age of 12 unprotected and until we have a vaccine available for them, we now have 55% of our population protected fully by vaccination. 7% of our population are people [9:26:45 AM] who are confirmed covid-19. 14% is our estimated value of the number of people who are undiagnosed in our community with covid-19 and have some level of protection. And we need to stop and provide the caveat that that 21% of the individuals have what we think is immunity to the delta variant because they -- the antibodies that are produced by those who have had covid are thought to last for a limited amount of time. So it is important for those who have had covid and have not had antibody therapy to get vaccinated. If we look at our partially vaccinated group, it's important for them to complete those vaccinations. [9:27:45 AM] We have 15% of the people who are vulnerable and it is my fervent prayer that they will go and to be vaccinated so they can be protected against covid-19 and we can get to the other side of this -- this surge. Next slide. With that I will end my report. Thank you. >> Thank you, Dr. Walkes. Adrienne Sturrup, interim director Austin public health. And I will give a brief update on our vaccine operations. So the staff at Austin public health continue to respond to [9:28:45 AM] the surge. In terms of media last week, as you're all aware, we held a ktxn town hall with Dr. Walkes and area doctors to answer questions and to talk about the current stage that we are in. We also made our announcement of moving into stage five on the 5th and had a media availability following that announcement. We have worked to increase our epi response staffing and working on increasing our call center capacity. We're expanding our testing options. One good thing about this that folks are listening and they are getting tested if they feel sick so right now we have mobile testing available as well as operations at the dove springs rec and the St. John's old home Depot for drive-thru. We opened our larger isolation facility and we have a 50 bed capacity that will come online [9:29:46 AM] pretty soon here. Recently we respect received support from the state to help to establish our regional infusion center. And before I move to our next slide, I just want to take a moment to thank the staff at Austin public health. In the media there's a lot of talk about the need to protect doctors and nurses and medical staff because they're tired -- and I am fully in support of that, but I know that the folks at public health have worked tirelessly since February. And to see us going into surge, there was that look of despair, but then right after that was the resolve and the determination to continue to go full tilt to serve our county. And I just want to publicly say that I see you, I appreciate you, and I feel honored to work alongside of you. As we talk about how we need our [9:30:49 AM] community to respond to the surge, the recommendations are clear. We want you to follow the guidance on the chart, and to break it down even further, get vaccinated for the long-term protection of yourself and your family. Wear your mask, because while vaccination is important, it is not what is going to get us out of this surge. We need people to wear their mask, whether you're vaccinated or unvaccinated, and if you're not fully inoculated we need to you stay home and wear your mask when you go out for those essential activities. As I mentioned earlier we're continuing to ramp up our testing options. We have the two static sites that are already established at the dove springs rec and at St. John's. We have in-home testing that is available if you call 311 or [9:31:53 AM] 512-974-2000 to get an appointment if you are homebound or unable to access the testing site. And we're also continuing to support our long-term care facilities and shelters and other congregate living situations that need testing. When we take a look at operations for the last period, the last week, we see that our weekly dose count is continuing to improve. We were reaching -- we were really having low numbers over the past month, and have, but now we're seeing an uptick in that in terms of people seeking out vaccinations. When we look at the data for the county broken out by race and ethnicity, incremental improvements, but still seeing gaps in our black and hispanic communities, much in line with what our caller referenced. [9:32:54 AM] We will continue to use this data as well as the data represented on this map to fine tune and to expand our options or operations, rather, for vaccine in community. And, again, the pie chart show the information a little bit differently when you compare the eligible population, which is 12 and over, with the population that has received at least one dose. You see the disparities represented by the gray shaded area for the hispanic community, and then by the Orange shaded area for the black and African- American community. And those gaps persist with the percentage of the population that's fully vaccinated. When we look at our geographic data or our top eight zip codes, again, seeing some incremental change in the data. [9:33:56 AM] Of note is 24, you know, we had -- that was our highest percentage of change over the last week, so we will continue to persist, partnering with the Travis county collaborative and other community organizations to pushing vaccine wherever we can. Here our slide shows our static operations at southeast library. Little walnut creek and the Anna lark center as well as the del valle opportunity center that we operate in partnership with the county. This week we'll also be at turner Roberts. And if you visit us at www.austintexas.gov you can find out where else we'll be, in addition to the operations listed here on the screen, and our mobile team is scheduled to be at 21 events, providing vaccine in different places. [9:34:57 AM] Berkstrom tech, and Austin couch potato, and Gardner, and del valle middle school and Cedars high school, L.B.J., so you can see that we're in a variety of different places, so if you want more specific information about any of those locations, please visit us at www.austintexas.gov. And it continues with messaging on. The screen you can see a nice screenshot of Dr. Walkes at the ktxn studio and her colleagues on the screen and we push out messaging via social media. Why do you wear your mask? You can see it there represented in different languages. In terms of upcoming events, on the 13th we'll have another [9:35:59 AM] encarnacionyed so of a Facebook event targeted for the Asian pacific islander community to have candid conversations about covid. On the 14th we'll have a P.P.E. And food distribution at the montopolis community center. And what's all the buzz these days is the soft launch of our gift card incentive program. And so right now the gift cards are available at -- through vaccinations administered by our mobile vaccine program. This weekend we expect a full rollout with gift cards available at any of the A.P.H. Locations. It's $50 per shot, and all we're asking the public to do is to fill out a short survey after each appointment to be eligible to receive that vaccine. Thank you. [9:37:00 AM] >> Judge Brown: Thank you, Dr. Sturrup. Do we have the Travis county collective team -- chuck? >> Judges yes, chuck Brotherton, county executive for emergency services. This morning, y'all, we'll hear as usual from esd fire chief Ken Bailey and precinct four, constable George morales. I will turn it over to chief Bailey. >> Good morning. This time I'm going to try and actually share my slides. Fire rescue representing the collaborative. We will be brief, along with constable morales will follow. As of last night, the vaccine collaborative for the county has delivered over 25,000 shots, that includes about 7,200 of those shots occurred at the expo center. And the remainder are in these mobile pop-up events. We currently have performed or have planned through the month [9:38:01 AM] of August 287 mobile events. The total to include the work at coda with the community care is now in excess of 100,000. We are seeing an increase in interest in first doses. In fact, the first eight days of August represents about 40% of all of the first doses that we did for the month of July. And for the commissioners, I know that there's some discussion about the expo and chuck Brotherton has this slide - - I think that it's been forwarded to you breaking down what has occurred at expo. And I think that is a topic for another discussion -- or a discussion for another time. We have also broken down by location, the expo represents about 28% of what we've done outside of coda. [9:39:02 AM] Manor is the second largest event hammered with the mayor and Dr. Smith and del valle independent school district has also played an important role with us in trying to address some of the issues on the southeast corner of the county. I'll turn it over to constable morales. >> Good morning, commissioners, judge, councilmembers and mayors. We continue to focus on our outreach and education, doing work that will ensure that our strike teams are successful. This last week, the first week of August, we did about 1,900 phone calls and 1100 fliers to homes in our communities. Our mobile vaccine teams did a combined shots of about 1,650 shots this last week. We were able to identify some locations that we provided for from our outreach folks that we kind of made sure that we had [9:40:05 AM] coordinated -- like, for restaurants and businesses. And we encourage a lot of folks to call our office. Our number is -- let me say this right 512-854-shot, and this is for home vaccine requests. And what we're going to do is to get on the ground, we have teams on the ground now. They encourage our shot locations, they start at 8:30 in the morning, when it is cooler, and we're talking to people and getting to the locations where the shots are available. The 854 shot number is because this came up in several conversations with our outreach folks is that there are families who can't get to the location, there are residents -- people that are homebound or due to disability or something other than that, people who want to keep themselves safe due to having multiple family members around them. And then the big one for me was [9:41:05 AM] people who would like to keep their vaccine private. So that was very important for us. So as we continue on moving forward for this week, we do have shot locations like Langford elementary, and Travis crisis ministries and the catholic high school, wells branch community center, working with the commissioner Shea, and river city youth foundation, the Mexican consulate and that is still pending for dates and times, Houston university. And we had a successful weekend this weekend. Like I do every week, I want to give shout-outs with people who were boots on the ground. Park staff was amazing this weekend. With the additional help, we were able to funnel 20 people at a time, utilize social distancing with masking, gave out 3,200 bottles of sanitizer, almost 12,000 masks to families. County judge Andy brown, commissioner gómez, and [9:42:06 AM] councilmember Fuentes, and commissioner Travillion and commissioner Ann Howard and other elected officials, and the trustee Julie mensh, and if I forget anyone, I apologize. I mean, a lot of people put in a lot of work this weekend to keep a lot of people safe and I want to wholeheartedly thank you for that. We pushed forward with our collaborative. We have over 200 clinics set up this month and we'll continue to try to serve as best as we can. I'll take any questions. >> And, judge, I'd like to just follow up and add a little bit more information as I did last week about where folks can look to find vaccinations in their neighborhood. I just want to share a couple of websites, I will share my screen. [9:43:09 AM] Stand by, please, I apologize. So we've got websites Travis county's website traviscountytx.gov or Google search for Travis county vaccination will lead you to this page that show you a day-by-day calendar for all of the various pop-up locations that we have scheduled. Hopefully you can see that. But today August 10th, you can see how many we've got. You click on any one of these, most of -- this is really a combination of both county collaborative and Austin public health but you can also see some others in here, HEB pharmacy and Walgreens and you click on any one of these and you come up with the details and the details of the vaccine available and hours of operation. The same calendar is also linked through austintexas.gov/covid19 and you can find the information [9:44:09 AM] that director Sturrup pointed out and it also links back to that daily calendar. For folks who would like to get a vaccine at a private pharmacy or grocery stores, vaccines.gov is another great resource for just finding locations for where vaccines are. Click on the "Find covid-19 vaccines" and enter your zip code and you will quickly come up with a number of CVS and HEB and other private locations for vaccinations. As you have heard from director Sturrup as well as chief Bailey, aph has been averaging about 1,300 doses a week at their pop-ups since April 1st and the collaboratives, starting with pop-up operations, we, likes did wise have had 1,300 vaccinations per week. So we're continuing to do good work and working to expand our efforts and we want everybody to [9:45:09 AM] be aware that these opportunities are easily and readily available every day of the week. We would like to point all of our residents to get vaccine. And I'll stop there and we're prepared to take any questions, judge. >> Judge Brown: Awesome. Thank you, everybody. So we'll do the normal thing. So we're going to any first to the commissioner court members and then the judge -- >> Travillion: Judge, one question. My office has gotten several calls that say that evidently they had called into the wrong line. And we've now reached out with the right line. Is it possible to let the public comments occur before we start the questions? Or it could be after, but I just want to make sure that we hear some of the folks who are wanting to partner with us and help us along the way. >> Judge Brown: Sure. Larry, how many callers do we [9:46:09 AM] have on right now? >> Judge, at the moment just one. >> Judge Brown: Okay, yeah, let's do that. Because I think that we closed the period but it sounds like the caller had the wrong number so we could open it back up for this one caller. Larry, if you could go to the caller. >> Janice is on the line. >> Thank you so much for including me. I really appreciate it. I just wanted to say, first, I wanted to start with a huge thank you to Travis county. When you look at the map of the vaccine, all of the dots on the vaccine map on the Travis county page, they're all in east Austin. I want to just say thank you. That's a remarkable change and it's very -- I just really appreciate it. And also I just want to acknowledge the bold leadership at aid who yesterday passed a [9:47:11 AM] mask mandate. They did the right thing for our children, even though it wasn't the easy thing, and they took a big risk. They wanted to go on the record as saying those two thank you. And a great job in 77819 because 77819 has been rising in vaccinations and having increasing -- increasing cases, but they are now the fastest increasing in vaccinations throughout the county. And then I -- two more things. I just wanted to say right now 77821, and 17 have very high rates since July 1st. And they have very low vaccination rates, the lowest vaccination rates of all of the zip codes. So I'm concerned about those in particular. And I also just wanted to say that I think that it might make a real difference if we [9:48:14 AM] considered allowing clubs like music venues to have music late. Like, to change the sound ordinance, so that people could be outside with music until 1:00 A.M. Instead of having to go inside to play music at clubs at 10:00 P.M. I have discussed it with some of our scientists on our team and they feel that that might make a real difference in -- in our rates. So I wanted to offer that as a potential -- as a potential option for policy change. Thanks so much for all of your hard work, and keep it up. Thank you. >> Judge Brown: Awesome. Thank you, Janice. Thanks, commissioner. All right, so we'll go ahead to the question - - >> Judge, pardon me, I'm sorry to interrupt you -- excuse me -- sorry to interrupt you. We have a second covid caller if you want to take it. >> Judge Brown: Sure. >> This is William Kirkendall. William? >> Yes, it is. [9:49:15 AM] >> Please, go ahead, sir. >> Good morning, thank you for the opportunity to visit with this group this morning. I'm calling in support of your efforts and the request that we increase our outreach to young citizens, and those who are tepid in receiving the vaccination. We don't want another shutdown but the risk or apparently it is quite high. And allocate the resources that you deem appropriate in order to protect our citizens and your constituents. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. Continue the hard work. >> Judge Brown: Right on. Thank you very much. All right, okay, I think that [9:50:17 AM] we'll go on to the question part. So we'll do commissioners and then the county judge and then councilmembers and the mayor. And that will be the order of the questions. And I know that we'll all have lots of questions but if you can try to limit it to one so we can get through this. So I'll start with commissioner gómez, do you have any questions. >> Gómez: Judge, not any question. I think that it is pretty clear what it is that we have to do to kind of, um, to cut this off. However, I don't know what we're going to do with those folks who just refuse to take the shot. And I -- I guess we're going to have to be satisfied that there's going to be a certain number who will never do it, because we certainly have gone out. I know that the constable and the esd team have gone out and talked to people face to face. And, I mean, those are people [9:51:18 AM] that you could trust, and yet we still have resistance. I don't know -- I don't know what the answer is to that, except I guess that somebody told me that we probably would have to just require it of everybody. And I don't know that we're going to go there. But I just think that we have to keep -- keep plugging it, I guess, and try to -- try to turn things around, but, thanks very much. >> Judge Brown: Thank you, commissioner -- commissioner Travillion? >> Travillion: I'll start off by thanking the public health departments and also the constables office and our esds who have been creative about getting out and talking to people that sometimes have difficulty talking with government. I think it needs to be said again that a lot of the issues [9:52:18 AM] that we are experiencing are structural issues. We're dealing with communities that, unfortunately, have not been served well over the years, and even when we started off we were a -- it was sketchy. You know, the first -- it was 10 weeks before we actually started getting into community and testing. And then when we had vaccinations initially -- I'll say this is ironic -- we had to get shots at the Round Rock express center because they couldn't get into the Delco center. It seems crazy on its face. So we have to understand that some of the issues that we are addressing are structural, and we have got to find a way to continue reaching inward and outward as well to our trusted [9:53:20 AM] partners. I think one of the reasons that the constables program is so effective is that he is a trusted community partner. He grew up in the community. People know him. They come to the gym in his neighborhood. That creates a -- it's not just -- it is competence, but it is also trust. It is also -- I know you, and I know that whatever you're telling me that I ought to do, that I should participate in. We have to continue to make that type of outreach across the communities, particularly in the eastern crescent. I think that as we have worked with churches, we have worked with [no audio] So I -- [no [9:54:22 AM] audio] -- But a whole lot of effort to get that response. And the only way that we'll get that response is to give the tools that are necessary to our trusted community leaders, and have them work in the communities that trust them. And I think, you know, when we talk about having those leaders identify spaces that we should be working, and then to have other trusted community members [no audio] But we have to continue to work there. It seems that -- it might seem like we are at a diminishing marginal effort, but I think that what we have found over the last couple of weeks is our numbers have begun to rise a little bit. People are beginning to trust a little more as we create community events, as we focus on things that are going to be coming up -- back-to-school days and days when we're giving out [9:55:24 AM] backpacks. When the season starts, football games, basketball games. We've got to go where people are [no audio] Because they have a lot of reasons not to trust us and they're not recent. They are historic and structural. So it might seem frustrating, it might seem not to go as fast as we want it to, but it will be absolutely necessary to get to the point that we ultimately get the herd immunity. So thank you for what you are doing. The question that I'll ask is how close have we gotten to getting the personnel into the budget that the constable asked for so that we can actually start calling and knocking on doors? >> Judge Brown: It's a great point. Chuck, I know that we added I think six people to the team last week. I think we may be discussing that in our separate meeting under the covid item more today, [9:56:25 AM] but any updates there? >> The hiring process is underway for those sick, identifying the appropriate candidates and bringing those folks in, but that is all in the works. And we're working it as fast as we can. >> Travillion: I appreciate that. I just want -- wanted to continue to encourage the staff because we're dealing with structural problems. And the only way to address that is continuously letting people see you do the right thing for them in their neighborhoods. And then they'll begin to trust us more and participate with us. >> Judge Brown: Right on. Thank you. Commissioner Howard? >> Howard: Thank you. And I wanted to just appreciate Dr. Walkes. When I saw her busy last week and taking the time to give high school physicals to young ladies and men out at lbj, it was -- you're doing the right thing, and I appreciate it. [9:57:26 AM] Thanks for being out in the community. I would just echo the question is, you know, do we need more people? Are there any other partnerships? You know, that -- that we could put to work between now and the fall season and the basketball season to make sure that we're covering the ground. So as people are working in the community, if there are other partnerships we need to explore, please bring them forward. Thank you. >> Judge Brown: So, let's see -- I just wanted to see -- director -- or Adrienne, if you wouldn't mind looking back at the slide where you said how many shots I think that Austin community health and community care had given. It was like a thousand or something. Does that number include what George and his team are doing? [9:58:26 AM] And then separately, is there a way to see basically week-by-week, how many people are getting shots in Travis county, you know, overall, private providers as well as the efforts that we're doing? And it's probably somewhere really obvious that I'm not looking at, but is that something that we can track week-by-week, just how many vaccines are being given within Travis county or all of our efforts? >> So the information that I shared were shots specifically delivered by Austin public health and community care. I believe that through our partnership with Mr. Brotherton and the constable, we can give a collective presentation of those numbers week-over-week, and I believe that on the dshs website we should be able to get that information for the county. But if that is information that you would like to see the team and I can work to -- to provide that in future presentations. >> Judge Brown: Okay, yeah, that would be >> Judge Brown: That would be [9:59:27 AM] great. Everybody is doing great work. It seems like the things we're doing are working better and better. There's a lot of factors. Thank you so much. And mayor, I will pass it on over to you. >> Mayor Adler: Judge, thank you. Colleagues, I think today we're going district 1 through district 10. So we'll begin with the mayor pro tem. >> Harper-madison: Thank you, mayor. Thank you, judge, and commissioners. [ Clearing throat ] And everybody who's worked so hard. Constable morales, I am constantly in awe of you in the community doing good works. I couldn't be more grateful that we have a member of our community like you. A special shoutout to you. Dr. Walkes, I think you said something earlier that I'm [10:00:30 AM] wanting clarity on. When we talked about icu capability, I think it had, you know, capacity and it was two and several numbers. And you talked about, basically how -- I think you said transfer is virtually impossible. I'd like for you to elaborate on that some if you wouldn't mind. And I'd like to know, are we going to find ourselves like we were in that first surge where we're going to have to be looking at setting up secondary emergency medical facilities? >> Yes. So, right now, because we have -- we're maxing out our icu bed capacity, we are having to load balance. And there are people that are waiting for beds in emergency [10:01:31 AM] rooms because we don't have enough staff to expand our icu capacity. And this is a phenomenon that's come about because we have had people working on a response to a pandemic for 19 months now. And some people have retired. And some people have moved on to different careers. And it's difficult to find staffing. So this is not just happening here, it's happening all over the country. And we have in particular in Texas similar situations in our major metropolitan centers where tertiary care, icu care, services, high- level care is available. And we are -- we've been able in [10:02:33 AM] the past to accept transfers from other cities and out of state. And now because we're taking care of people in our community at this level, we don't have the ability to accept transfers. And the same is true in other cities. Occasionally we may have an opening, but for the most part we're all experiencing high surges in cases and so we're not able to transfer. [ Multiple voices ] >> As to whether we're going to have to open another facility, we could open another facility, but would we be able to staff it? And at that point we want to set that resource in place where it's best used. And that would be in our [10:03:36 AM] hospitals. So right now we're trying to support our hospitals and their ability to withstand the surge that we're experiencing. >> Harper-madison: Thank you very much. I appreciate that. >> You're welcome. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Councilmember Fuentes. >> Fuentes: Thank you. So, first I want to say thank you so much for sending the text alert and the phone call over the weekend discussing the severity of the situation that we're in right now with the surge. I think that was super helpful and I was really glad to see that come through. It certainly sparked a lot of conversations in my community. So I just wanted to reiterate my gratitude for utilizing our tools to get communication out to the community as quickly as possible. And thank you, Dr. Walkes, for joining the Austin Latino [10:04:36 AM] coalition meeting and discussing with our community members the process for testing for the delta variant and what that looked like, and how nuanced and complex it is. I really appreciate your participation in that meeting. So, my question is, I have a few questions. The first one I wanted to talk about is the social media efforts. Can you -- director Sturrup, can you share a little bit about if we're engaging in social media adds that are geotargetted to certain areas that we know are low vaccination rates, or at least sharing out our testing center information and testing process? Do we have social media ads running? >> So, I know in the past that we have used ads. So, all of our posts, anything that we put on social media as well as our testing platform [10:05:36 AM] uses geofencing to target specific populations. >> Fuentes: Thank you. And I would just like to encourage us to start running social media ads that are hyper-targeted as much as we can and putting -- it's an inexpensive way to get information out there and have it targeted to a population. So that might be a tactic that we employ with a sense of urgency, given the severity of the situation that we're in. The other question I had was around the incentives. Thank you for sharing about the H-E-B gift card. I'm happy to see that. I do think we should consider additional incentives. The scholarship -- full scholarship for students is a great way for us to target that demographic and particularly that age range where we know we have lower vaccination rates. And so I just want to encourage us to continue building on our incentive package. It's a good next step. But I do think we'll need to [10:06:41 AM] elevate it to reach the tipping point in getting more people encouraged to take the vaccine. My last question is around ppe. Knowing that we are encouraging everyone to mask up indoors and outdoors if possible, and we have -- you're shared the one ppe drive coming up in montopolis. Are there other efforts around our ppe distribution? How are we doing on our supply? Do we need to increase our stockpile? What more can we be doing when it comes to getting out masks to the community? >> So, in terms of supplies needed for community distribution, we have plenty. The team has worked on a calendar of events through the end of this month and I will be sure to share that in its totality at our next briefing. So, at one point we were standing those down, but with the recent surge and to support the messaging and the recommendations from the health authority, we are picking up [10:07:41 AM] those opportunities to distribute ppe to communities. >> Fuentes: Wonderful. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Councilmember Renteria. >> Renteria: Thank you, mayor. All I just want to say is thanks to all the people that have been out there working, getting people vaccinated. You know, it's getting to that point where it's real sad that we're seeing so many people in our hospitals which could have been prevented. But it is what it is. So I just hope that people really take this really serious and go out there and get their vaccination. I know I have a nephew that had a young boy. He's 11 years old and he refused to take that vaccination. And now he knows better. And he knows where to get it. And he still refuses it. So I just hope that he'll come to his senses and go out there and take that shot, not just for [10:08:43 AM] himself, but for his child, too. Thank you, mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Councilmember Casar. >> Casar: I want to thank Austin public health and the collaborative especially for what you have been able to pleasure in seven -- accomplish in 17 and 44 and 24 of getting -- here in the last week, more than double the number of vaccines in those communities as basically in the city as a whole. It goes to show that those targeted efforts can make a big difference. And I just want to offer my help in 53 and then obviously I think all of us also in the other zip codes where you're getting closer to doubling the amount of vaccine up-take there, but there's still a ways to go. So I think really 53 and 41 and 52, two of those are in my [10:09:44 AM] district, are kind of the next biggest low-income zip codes where we still are under 60% first dose. So, it goes to show that I think y'all can take this from a game of inches to a game of yards by really targeted those zip codes. I'm glad you're getting 2% or 2.5% of people every week. And I think it would be really %-@great if we could get to that 2% or 2.5% every week in those other really high-need zip codes. So please do let us know how we can help. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I do have one additional question. First, let me echo what everyone has being saying. And I'm very pleased to hear the efforts that are being made to reach out to people personally and appreciate the efforts the [10:10:45 AM] constables and everyone are making in this regard. I do want to circle back again and ask about the nursing homes. We had some conversation about this last time. Just wanting to understand if there's any update on that. And that's regarding any requirements that the nursing home facilities may be putting in place with regard to their workers being vaccinated. Can someone update me on that? >> I'm not aware at this point of that requirement being made. I actually have a meeting after this one to have an update on the long-term facilities. And if I get that information, I'll be sure to get it to you. >> Kitchen: Well, what I'm really wanting to understand is, what actions are the nursing facilities taking to encourage, [10:11:47 AM] incent, or require their workers to be vaccinated? So that's really what I'm trying to understand. So, perhaps after your meeting you can just provide us -- you can send us an email with update. I'd like to understand their latest thinking. I know it's an evolving question about the actions they may take. I'm curious about it because there was a special task force created at the national level last year to look at best practices for nursing facilities. And I'm not certain what came out of that with regard to best practices related to vaccination of staff. So, I'd just like an update on that. Does that make sense, the question I'm asking? >> Yes, ma'am. Thank you. >> And I would say that we should wait for Dr. Walkes' full report out, but what I'm hearing is that staff are being asked to [10:12:49 AM] voluntarily disclose if they are vaccinated and then if not, there's a certain type of mask. If they are, there's a certain type of mask that you wear. If you are not vaccinated, you have to test twice a week now because we're at stage five. So it was once a week and now it's twice a week. And then you have to wear that higher-level protection of mask. >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. I know you mentioned some aspect of that when we talked last time. I'm wondering if there's any data at the moment about the effectiveness of that kind of approach. So if there is, if you would share that, also. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Kelly. >> Kelly: Thank you. Thank you, Austin public health and Dr. Walkes for all the work that you're doing. I want to thank mayor pro tem [10:13:50 AM] for asking about staffing at hospitals earlier. I know that we're talking publicly about a surge in covid cases and icu bed capacity, but it sounds like staffing is a major factor in regards to the lack of available icu beds. Dr. Walkes, I'm wondering if you could help us understand what is being done at hospitals to ensure that we have the availability of staff. >> They're making inquiries across the country for staff to come and work at our local hospitals. They're trying to get staff from other areas in the country, but that's difficult at this juncture, since this surge is occurring across the country. >> Kelly: Okay. Thank you. And I'm not sure if I missed it, but were you able to answer the questions that I sent in last week? I didn't see an email from you about that. [10:14:51 AM] >> I forgot to do that. Sorry. >> Kelly: Thank you. That's okay. Thank you so much. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Councilmember pool. >> Pool: Good morning, everybody. I wanted to draw everybody's attention to the dashboard that shows the zip codes with the prevalence of the surge for delta and I'll note 78660, which is pflugerville. Could Dr. Walkes or director Sturrup speak to that? What's going on? >> Can you say it again? I was writing down to remind myself to answer Kelly's questions. >> Pool: Great. If y'all look at the dashboard, the weekly highest new cases by zip code and open up that map, you'll see that the highest prevalence of new cases is [10:15:52 AM] pflugerville. They're head and shoulders above everybody else. And I just wanted to point that out. Our pflugerville friends, is it that they need to go get vetted? Vaccinated? Do we know what's going on in 78660 and why the surge is so high? Because it's going to be affecting us in the other southern zip codes below that. And so I want to urge our pflugerville friends to take responsibility. >> I do know that dshs reached out to our vaccine teams last week to talk about zip codes of concern, and 78660 was one of them. Even though they're showing a high percentage of folks fully vaccinated, because it's so large, there were higher numbers of people who were not vaccinated. So they were kind of looking at the data on that granular level and they asked us to make sure that we thought about that in our efforts and make sure that we stepped up our presence there. So we are currently working with [10:16:53 AM] our partners in pflugerville to reestablish the vaccination site there. But if need be, additional testing resources. I can get back with the team to see if the folks at dshs pointed out or gave any insight to any other factors they thought were driving those numbers and either include that in the next presentation or respond to the council and commissioners via email. >> Pool: Thanks. And my appreciation to everyone in all the other zip codes who are doing what is socially and civically responsible in getting their vaccinations and wearing their masks. I would urge our friends in pflugerville to do the same. Get those numbers down. Thanks. >> Councilmember pool, real quick, I want to make a comment about pflugerville. Pflugerville ISD has already been working with us and our collaborative on trying to get that. And Adrienne, we'll share that responsibility together. [10:17:53 AM] Blackhawk community center is a focus in the pflugerville community along with esd2 and foothill farms, Travis county. >> Pool: All the more reason for pflugerville to dig in and do the work, because clearly we are supporting them in every possible way. Pflugerville, go get your jabs. It's your job. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Councilmember Ellis? >> Ellis: Could we get advice on outdoor activities? Blues on the green was cancelled, but a few more things may be happening as well as kids outdoors, playgrounds, sports. Can you speak about the need for masking outdoors if there is one, and what considerations people should have for that? >> I've been working under the assumption that transmission is [10:18:53 AM] not as high in outdoor settings. However, there have been some reports of transmission in large groups where people are unable to socially distance. And we also know now that there is some asymptomatic transmission that occurs from vaccinated individuals. So we are asking people to mask when they're in outdoor settings that don't allow for adequate social distancing from people that are not in your household. And we are looking at the impact of having large gatherings on our community's case numbers, given that we're in a situation right now of high transmission in our community. And we're evaluating events on [10:19:54 AM] that basis and making recommendations. As for playgrounds, again, masking is something that will protect particularly children who are unprotected under the age of 12. >> Ellis: I appreciate that. I still apply the same rules when I'm outdoors about social distancing and want to make sure I'm taking every precaution I can even though I'm fully vaccinated. I know it's possible to spread things. I hope folks take that to heart and provide for that distancing as much as possible. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. Councilmember tovo. We can't understand you, Kathie. It's doing that squeaky thing. [10:20:55 AM] Let's go around to the next one while you call in or something. Councilmember alter, we'll go to you. >> Alter: Good morning. I want to first you know acknowledge the important step that aid took last night to acquire masks. And I want to thank our staff and the county staff, because when I called one of the trustees to say how important a step I thought that was, the first thing out of their mouth was what a wonderful collaboration between the county, the city, and the school district to keep our children safe. So I'm really happy to see that coordination happening. And I know that Dr. Walkes played a big part in helping them to understand the science. So I wanted to acknowledge that. I think that is one of the key steps we can do for one of our most vulnerable populations is [10:21:56 AM] to require those masks in schools. And as a parent of a vaccinated child in school, I feel a lot more comfortable about the sort start of school next week with those precautions in mind. I wanted to ask if in future presentations for what's now slide 6 that has the covid-19 deaths per hundred thousand if you could move the key because we can't actually see where we're at to compare to each other because the key is over the lines. That would just be helpful to be able to see that. And then I wondered if you could speak a little bit more about the breakdown of hospital admissions sort of from out of the area and how much that is contributing. We have those numbers for hospital admissions. Is it the same breakdown roughly for icus, or is it skewed? [10:22:58 AM] Trying to understand given that we can't have transfers and other things going on and we have a larger hospital system, at what point would we understand if we are having more influx from outside or if this is all from our community? That's my first question. >> The slide that I showed showed 55% of the admissions are from Travis county. 22% from Williamson county and then it's broken down between all the other counties after that in smaller amounts, less than 10% from each one. And the same is true for icu admissions. I've shown that slide in the past. I didn't put that on this week's slides, but I can add that next time. And it's predominantly coming from our county. >> Alter: Okay. In terms of the way hospital [10:23:59 AM] systems function, 55% seems like it's -- that's a majority coming. But it's not 90% from our county. I don't know how the hospital systems are set up to function as to what is normal -- a normal breakdown across the counties. Part of the reason I'm asking is we don't control what our neighbors do, but inaction by the governor does affect our our -- other counties and I'm trying to understand if there is additional spill into our county that is present in the hospitalization numbers from that inaction. >> I don't know the answer to your question. I do know that we are a central Texas collaboration. We are part of the central Texas [10:25:00 AM] area and we provide care to people that present to hospital. And the rural areas do not have hospitals that can support and care for people at the level that we can in our county. So it's important that we continue to be able to maintain our structures and to provide the service to our neighbors in neighboring counties. >> Alter: And obviously we need to be able to provide the services to whoever presents themselves as best we can. But what I'm trying to understand, the degree to which the actions are happening in other counties are impacting our ability to provide the healthcare that's needed in our community, understanding that we, broadly speaking, have a particular role being more urban and having more hospitals. But we don't get to control the [10:26:01 AM] messaging. We don't get to control those things that are going out in those community. And we're all connected and we have to recognize that. And we have to understand the consequences from there. And my next question may be for director Sturrup. We've talked a lot about, sort of, the things that the state has made it difficult for us to do with respect to mask mandate or vaccine mandates or occupancy limits. In what ways is the state helping us to manage the situation, whether it's financial, or policy, or support? You know, I want to be positive about the things that they are helping with, but I'm not hearing about them. >> So, I know just over the weekend we did get support from them for the regional infusion center. And that will be huge for our [10:27:03 AM] community. The second thing, hot off the press yesterday is that they've pledged support for locals in terms of hospital staffing. We're still waiting to see how that's going to roll out. And so there has seemed to be a shift in the stance with respect to assisting with resources. >> Alter: Great. I'm really glad. >> Yes. >> Alter: Go ahead. >> I was going to say, glad and grateful, so, yes. >> Alter: Yeah well I'm glad and grateful that there's that shift. I wish it had come sooner so that we could have avoided the surge more, but I'm glad to see that is there now. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Thanks very much. How is this? >> Mayor Adler: Good. >> Tovo: Good. Thank you. You know, I didn't catch all of what you said, councilmember alter, but my guess is you were talking about the aisd board [10:28:03 AM] meeting in some of your comments and I wanted to also thank Dr. Walkes. I had an opportunity to catch some of your presentation last night and just concur with my colleague that the information you offered was extremely valuable to the conversation they had. And I, too, want to give a shoutout to aid for protecting our students throughout our district and our teachers and staff at schools by requiring masking and am very glad to see our schools take that stand and appreciate the work that our city staff and county staff have done to really collaborate and work with them. Thanks to all of our staff who continue to work on this critical situation. I have a variety of things I'm going to try to isolate down. You know, I've noticed there are differing messages about quarantining and when it's [10:29:04 AM] required, including for students in our schools. And so I think we're seeing some information coming out of aid, and then some individual aid programs have some slightly different information. So, to the extent that you are continuing to work with them, getting really clear information out to parents about what people should do when in terms of quarantining and other kinds of situations would be super helpful. To get back to what councilmember Ellis said, we have several large outdoor gatherings coming up. Dr. Walkes, you said you're evaluating them. Are there any intent -- is there any intent to encourage some of those large gatherings to do things differently, to consider not moving forward? What kind of messaging -- are you working clearly with them on messaging if those events go forward? And then the same question about [10:30:07 AM] messaging applies to our restaurants and bars, which have an ability to impose mask requirements. Are you working with them and reminding them of their ability to educate -- I'm sorry, and educating them and reminding them about their ability to impose such a requirement? Big events, and how you're working with some of our local businesses to remind them that they have an ability to require that. I happened to be in a store just last week and one of the customers was asked to put a mask on and he responded that it's against state law for them to ask him to do so, which, of course, is not true. So I think making sure that our businesses know that they have the ability to require customers to wear masks is really important. >> Yes. We've had conversations with the business community to ask them to support our efforts at [10:31:07 AM] improving mitigation strategies throughout our community, and particularly in our business settings and in restaurants. And they've been supportive and have pledged to help us get that done. As for large gatherings, we're in conversation with organizers for those various events and discussing mitigation strategies, and in some instances maybe making some changes as far as timing goes to ensure that we are not having a deleterious impact on the community spread that we have right now. >> Tovo: Thank you very much. And I hope it was clear I was saying I know you have worked with businesses throughout. I guess I was wondering whether you were doing -- have additional work with them right now, or do you feel that most [10:32:09 AM] have what they need and understand what their rights are at this point? >> The last time that I spoke with somebody from the chamber was on Saturday afternoon. So that's the most recent conversation I've had. >> Tovo: Great. Thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you, councilmember tovo. I want to reiterate, as everybody has, appreciation for the work that's been done by the city and county staff, constable, the chief. As we all know because we all see it and the community needs to understand, these are folks now that have been in this 24/7 drill now for such a long period of time. And the effort continues [10:33:09 AM] unabated. And it is just so appreciated, so incredibly necessary, unfortunately. But I just want to add my voice to the appreciation and thanks to everybody. I think with the work we're seeing right now on the numbers, director Sturrup, with respect to the zip codes, is encouraging. Those are all areas that were lagging significantly. There's still a lot more work to do, as we can see, in some of the zip codes. About half of the target ones still lagging, but doing so much better than they've done in the past. And some of them really show the focused and concentrated effort. And I know that it is harder as you get into this door-to-door campaign that you're doing, the constable and chief and everybody is working on, it's harder. But I think that you're finding the right formula now and the ability to be able to expand that if you need more resources to be able to do that as well, [10:34:10 AM] make sure you come back to the council, because it's working, even incrementally. I also want to add thanks and appreciation and kudos to the school district, aid, for stepping forward. You know, at some level, regardless of whatever else is happening, we've looked to our school boards and our elected officials that are trustees and superintendent to do what's necessary to protect our children. And now having seen the advice from the CDC, and the American academy of pediatrics and the renewed calls by Dr. Fauci and so many others to make sure that our children in our schools are masking, we expect our schools to take care of our kids and [10:35:10 AM] then figure the rest of it out later. And I appreciate what our school district did. And I hope Dr. Walkes -- and I know in talking to judge brown that we're going to do everything that we can to help support that kind of action and put our shoulder to that as well. Kudos to Dallas. They took that action, the aid. Kudos to Houston, who was considering it on Thursday of this week. I just think that it's just real important for local communities to be able to step forward and assert that kind of liberty and freedom interest that is associated with local communities doing what's necessary to protect themselves. I also want to thank the governor and appreciate the [10:36:11 AM] action that the governor has taken to help us stand up that model facility in our community. It's something our hospitals have been asking for, being able to move that facility out of hospitals and into a centralized space will help us with several of the staffing issues as we're able to take staff that was devoted to that in our hospitals to put them toward other patient care. So that is appreciated. That's something that we had last go-round that worked really well. That didn't look like it was going to happen again, but the decision was made for that to happen. We appreciate it. And then the news last night that after our hospitals had something like 20-some-odd S.T.A.R. Requests, the requests hospitals make at the state for assistance for staffing and they had all been turned down a week ago, Friday. We got word last night that the [10:37:15 AM] governor is apparently willing and offering to help in this regard with staffing. And just as I am critical when the governor's office puts up roadblocks for us being able to help get more of our community vaccinated or masked, I want to make sure that we're thanking him and his office when they are doing things that look like they're going to help. That all said, we need more people masking and we need a message to our community that's unequivocal about how effective it is to mask, that masking is the best way we can keep our businesses and our communities open. And the enablety or road blocks in terms of mandating that sends [10:38:15 AM] an ambiguous message to our community. It's critical that local communities have the ability to be able to do that. This is a pandemic right now of the unvaccinated. We need more poem to get people to get vaccinated. We need to get more trusted voices out in our community with the facts and data so that more people move in that direction. That's ultimately the way our society will be able to function in the future. But masking is critical right now because vaccines will not help us with this surge. People have to wear masks. They have to wear masks indoors and outdoors. Whenever you're around somebody that's not in your family group you should have a mask on. I probably have stared at these numbers like everybody else way too much. [10:39:16 AM] But -- on the medical call we had yesterday, if you squint, there is perhaps early evidence that behavior changes are in fact working and people are beginning to see, maybe indications of masking behavior changing. And you can look at some of the slides that you have presented here today that might indicate a trend that might be working in our favor. So I just really encourage the community to double down on that, triple and quadruple down on that because that's what it's going to take to change things in our community. The slide of the German study indicates if people mask we can flatten this out. And clearly that's what we need to do. I would add to the list of people that we are thanking those businesses in the community that are stepping [10:40:18 AM] forward and using the power that they have to be able to make decisions about their own enterprises and their customers, what is accepted behavior in their employees. Because right now that is our most effective measure. Kudos to blues on the green for stepping up and postponing the last two performances that they had. That is not an easy thing to do. Kudos to restaurants like the headliner's club that announced policies to only allow people that are vaccinated in their locations. Kudos to acl, whose concert this weekend was only for people that were vaccinated or could prove that they had a negative test. Kudos to organizations like good work Austin that is pulling together their collection of restaurants and merchants that are going the extra mile to help keep our community safe, with [10:41:23 AM] one of the leaders in that effort. Thank you to big employers and small employers, including Facebook Austin that are adopting policies to make sure that everybody in their workplace has to get vaccinated. And manager, I really do want us to figure out what we can do, and judge, what you can do with city and county employees as we're asking other employers in the city to set those rules and those expectations and to incentivize that work among employers. I think we need to lead by example. This is a critical period of time. Nobody wants to go back to the lockdowns that we had before and close our economy, but it is up to us at this point. A year ago the enemy was the virus. That's not true anymore because we have answers to the virus. [10:42:24 AM] Right now the enemy is the status quo and our inaction. And the good and the bad news of that is we can actually do something about this. And now is the time to do that. With that, judge, I'll turn it back over to you. >> Judge Brown: Thank you so much, mayor. And I very much want to thank the aisd board for their leadership, and governor abbot for what sounds like an agreement to increase staffing in our hospitals. I hope that does come through. That will obviously really help. All right. So with that I guess we're going to adjourn for about five minutes. We'll come back at how about 10:50, ten minutes to 11:00 we will come back. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. [10:43:24 AM] >> Travillion: Does something that is good, we should acknowledge it. He's done enough bad that has hurt our communities. So I do appreciate his beginning to understand that this affects families and children, and we need him on the right side of history, not the wrong side. >> Judge Brown: Absolutely. Right on. Okay. Thank you. So we will adjourn until 10:50 and mayor, I'll pass it over to you to do the same. >> Mayor Adler: Sounds good. Thank you. With that here on August 10th, 2021, time of 10:45, we're going to adjourn the city council portion of this meeting. Let's take a little bit of a break and we'll reconvene at 11:00. We're going to hold the city council meeting, the general session, we're going to convene there, but immediately go into executive session, which is the only thing that we'll be doing today, is executive session. [10:44:28 AM] So, it would be best if we had a quorum with me at 11:00 so that we could then move into executive session. But I'll see you there then. With that, our portion of this joint meeting is adjourned.