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City Manager Office <br />www.santa-ana.org/cm <br />Item # 21 <br />City of Santa Ana <br />20 Civic Center Plaza, Santa Ana, CA 92701 <br /> Staff Report <br />October 19, 2021 <br />TOPIC: Resolution Denouncing COVID-19 Misinformation <br />AGENDA TITLE: <br />Resolution Denouncing COVID-19 Misinformation and its Detrimental Effects on Public <br />Health <br />RECOMMENDED ACTION <br />Adopt a resolution denouncing COVID-19 misinformation and declaring the detrimental <br />effects that COVID-19 misinformation has on public health. <br />DISCUSSION <br />The Coronavirus (“SARS-CoV-2” or “COVID-19”) was first reported in December 2019 <br />and was declared a worldwide pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, <br />2020. Soon thereafter, in-person activities ceased and business and government <br />operations shut down to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. As of October 12, 2021, <br />the total worldwide COVID-19 cases have surpassed 237 million, with the worldwide <br />death total exceeding 4.8 million. As public health and safety measures were put into <br />place and governments began allowing in-person activities, work was simultaneously <br />being done on a worldwide collaborative effort to create a vaccine to combat COVID-19. <br />On December 11, 2020, the COVID-19 vaccine created by Pfizer-BioNTech was granted <br />an emergency use authorization (“EUA”) to be administered to individuals 16 years of age <br />or older. EUAs are used by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration during public health <br />emergencies to provide access to medical products that may be effective in preventing, <br />diagnosing, or treating a disease, provided that the FDA determines that the known and <br />potential benefits of a product, when used to prevent, diagnose, or treat the disease, <br />outweigh the known and potential risks of the products. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was <br />the first to receive this EUA authorization, with the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson <br />vaccines following shortly thereafter. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was fully approved by <br />the FDA on August 23, 2021 and is currently the only vaccine to receive that approval. It <br />is important that all eligible individuals receive the COVID-19 vaccine to minimize the <br />spread of COVID-19.