Just over one year ago, the Bay Area went into lockdown for the first time as the coronavirus continued to spread. The person many see as the face of that decision is Santa Clara County Public Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody.
At the time, she said the pandemic posed too many unanswered questions and they were hoping a three-week lockdown would help answer some of those and save lives. Now, one year later, Cody sat down with NBC Bay Area to talk about the past year and what lies ahead.
NBC Bay Area: "Is there anything that you would have done differently than what you did?"
Cody: "Well, over the last year, I think each and every time when faced with a decision, I always tried to make the best decision that I could at the time. I don’t think I probably would have done anything differently."
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NBC Bay Area: "Masks, do you think they’re a way of life for the next year, if not longer?"
Cody: "I do. I think that we are going to all be wearing masks for at least another year. Many, many, many months."
NBC Bay Area: On the topic of the San Francisco 49ers exploring how to welcome fans back to Levi's Stadium – "Do you foresee a quarter-stadium filled? Half a stadium full?"
Cody: "I can't look ahead and tell you what it's going to look like in September. I think that the big unknown right now is how all of these new variants are going to behave."
NBC Bay Area: “Should we have moved faster to equip the east side of San Jose and Gilroy and Alviso with a vaccination site?"
Cody: "The fairgrounds was initially set up to serve the east side. Some people came, but many didn’t. We learned very quickly that we needed to be much closer to community and have smaller sites – more of them but smaller sites – to give people options, really meet people where they are."
To hear more from Cody, check out both videos below.
