Coronavirus: Garcetti Announces 5 Pillars Guiding City's Response To Reopening
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — In his Wednesday briefing, Mayor Eric Garcetti announced five pillars that the city has been monitoring to guide its response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The first of those was increased testing for everyone with COVID-19 symptoms as well as asymptomatic people who have significant risks for transmission.
"There should be strong national standards for the quality and the reliability of tests and federal support to guarantee supplies are affordable and available at the local level," Garcetti said.
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The mayor also announced Wednesday that the county now has 30 testing facilities with the capacity to test more than 10,000 people per day and encouraged anyone with symptoms — even mild — to sign up online to get a test.
The second was real-time surveillance that would allow the city to quickly detect and prevent new outbreaks.
"We need to link test results to a surveillance network so COVID-19 can be tracked in real time," Garcetti said. "We can quickly detect new hotspots, maybe quicker than a human eye can see them, for instance an outbreak in a neighborhood or senior care facility."
Following real-time surveillance, the mayor said the city needed to be able to respond immediately to those outbreaks more aggressively — the third pillar.
"Doing this means some workers will need to be trained for urgently needed new jobs to supplement the incredible work being done by our public health professionals," Garcetti said.
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The fourth was the question of hospital capacity, which Garcetti said has been laid bare by the crisis.
"We need a national push to grow the capacity in [intensive care units], emergency rooms and supplies like [personal protective equipment] now before the next wave hits," Garcetti said.
The final pillar was the ability for ongoing research and development into treatments, cures and possible vaccines for the virus.
"These five principles are the principles guiding us here in Los Angeles," Garcetti said. "As we will make those decisions about how and when we can get back to work and back to school, back to fun and the life we had before all of this."
