San Mateo County released its post-pandemic “after-action report” in two parts: Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.
BY ELAINE GOODMAN
Daily Post Correspondent
More than 18 months after California officially ended its Covid-19 state of emergency, San Mateo County has finally released an “after-action report” on its response to the pandemic.
The report rates the county’s actions in areas such as communication with the public, mass vaccinations and functioning of the emergency operations center.
It addresses the incident in which more than $7 million worth of personal protective equipment, or PPE, was left outside in the rain at the county event center.
The county provided the report to the Post after multiple requests. The report, written by consultant Constant Associates, was released in two parts. Chapter 1 covers the county’s Covid-19 response from January 2020 to August 2021; Chapter 2 covers the response from September 2021 to February 2023.
Chapter 1 was finalized in December 2022 and Chapter 2 is dated Aug. 30, 2023. It’s not clear why the county delayed the report’s release.
“I’m not sure why (San Mateo County) doesn’t have more ‘transparency,’ around both of these reports,” said former Menlo Park Fire District Chief Harold Schapelhouman, who retired in July 2021.
State law requires cities, counties and other local agencies to prepare after-action reports anytime they declare an emergency. In April 2023, Schapelhouman noticed that many had not released after-action reports on the Covid-19 pandemic. He sent out emails reminding them to do so.
Schapelhouman said the county “overall did a very good job in meeting the moment” in its Covid-19 response. Although the report starts out by noting the county’s “heroism” in the Covid-19 response, Schapelhouman said that might be going too far.
“I tend to stay away from words like ‘heroic’ because, in many ways, we were lucky, too,” he said. “This wasn’t LA or New York.”
The report acknowledged that “health equity was not consistent throughout vaccine distribution.” One employee interviewed for the report said “every decision made about vaccine prioritization was anti-equity.”
As the Post reported in March 2021, East Palo Alto council members gathered with other officials to urge state and federal agencies to distribute more Covid vaccines to poorer communities such as East Palo Alto.
At the time, only 10% of East Palo Alto’s 30,499 residents had been vaccinated, compared to 20% of residents in most other cities in the county, according to county data.
The county was later able to catch up. In February 2023, the county’s vaccination rate was 94%, compared to 73% statewide.
Another issue with vaccinations was inconsistent staffing levels. One employee interviewed for the report said there was an expectation that retired physicians and others would volunteer to give the Covid shots. That didn’t turn out to be the case. Many volunteers showed up so they could get their own vaccine and then stopped coming, some employees reported.
One of Schapelhouman’s concerns after reading the report was an apparent disconnect between the county-run emergency operations center, or EOC, and the health department’s operations center, or Health DOC. The health department is run by the county health officer, who is appointed by the Board of Supervisors rather than being hired by the county manager.
That set up “silos” between the EOC and the Health DOC during the pandemic, Schapelhouman said.
“They’re doing their own thing,” he said of the Health DOC. “They’re in their own command post. … You don’t want to have a disjointed system.”
And while the county ran its emergency operations center using an incident command system, the health department did not consistently do so. ICS is a standardized management system used for responding to an emergency. For example, the system sets up a chain of command so workers aren’t confused about who they should report to.
“This was met with considerable frustration by personnel within the Health DOC and the EOC, in addition to causing structural inefficiencies,” the after-action report said.
San Mateo County’s health officer was Dr. Scott Morrow until August 2023, when Dr. Kismet Baldwin-Santana took over.
Schapelhouman commended Morrow for “operating off of what he was actually seeing in San Mateo County versus just following along with his fellow regional health officials.”
He said it took Morrow courage to make his own decisions on mask mandates, vaccination requirements and allowing businesses to reopen.
During the pandemic, the county benefited by being able to use the San Mateo County event center as a mass vaccination and testing site. The county was able to store supplies for the drive-through clinic in the event center’s warehouse.
But in September 2021, supplies were moved outside because the event center needed the warehouse space. The following month, rainy weather damaged personal protective equipment and other supplies that were left outside, with early reports of $7.7 million in damages.
The after-action report seems to downplay the incident. Because much of the PPE was vacuum-wrapped, the county’s losses were “minimal,” the report said.
“Hospitals and SNFs (skilled nursing facilities) were already well-stocked with PPE, leading to limited demand for additional supplies,” the report said.
The incident did cause “several hundred thousand dollars of damages,” the report said, as well as “negative media attention.” In addition, extra workers had to be hired to assess the damage, and the county had to pay a vendor to store the PPE and supplies in its own warehouses.
“They tried to gloss it over a little bit,” Schapelhouman said of the report’s section on the PPE incident.
Santa Clara County released its Covid-19 after-action report in June. Schapelhouman said he preferred that report, which incorporated more feedback and had more data and details.
The Santa Clara County report included residents’ reactions to the county’s pandemic response – which some described as “lockdown,” “over-reach” or “scary” – as well as the number of businesses fined for breaking pandemic rules.
Reports from both counties discuss the sense of “burnout” experienced by county workers, but neither looked at the mental health impacts of stay-at-home orders on residents.
To read Santa Clara County’s report, open this link and go to Item 6. Click “a. Attachment A – OEM COVID-19 AAR.”
From the news reports, it seemed only Supervisor David Canepa actually wanted to do something to prevent this from happening twice. Or endlessly, as the case may be.