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Seattle becomes first major U.S.city with 70% fully vaccinated

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan joined Yahoo Finance to break down how her city has been so sucsseful in distrubting vaccines.

Video transcript

- We talk a lot about the race to vaccinate citizens in the United States. And the first American city to vaccinate 70%, and that's fully vaccinated, double dose if you get those two shots or one of the J&J, 70% of its residents is the city of Seattle. We welcome the Mayor Jenny Durkan right now into the stream. And congratulations on that. Still a way to go. But how did you get to 70% of your population before everyone else?

JENNY DURKAN: Thanks for having me. It is such an important milestone for the city of Seattle, and I think for the nation because it shows we can do this to have 70% of 12 and older of our residents fully vaccinated, and almost 80% 12 and older have gotten at least their first dose. We did it by building great coalitions and partnerships and by making sure that it was a priority for the city of Seattle. It was an all of government approach together with our health care providers, our labs, thousands of volunteers, community-based organizations to really set that goal to get us to this place. Now we can begin to focus on reopening and recovery. We're not done. We're not out of the woods yet. And there's still a ways to go, even on vaccinations. But having this turning point is going to be significant for our city.

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- And Mary, And I want to ask you about that. The percentage of your residents who haven't gotten vaccinated yet, it's going to be challenging to reach these residents. What is your plan look like in order to do so so you could hopefully get to what I think everyone is hoping for, 100%.

JENNY DURKAN: So we have a multiphase. We just are going to be shut down a really large facility, which was a key to reaching this target. But we will continue with two community fixed based operations for vaccinations. And we're going to do a whole bunch of innovative ways to bring vaccinations to where people are. We've relied on community-based organizations, we've been at the baseball games, the soccer games, we've been at people's favorite breweries. We will continue to have innovative approaches to make sure that everybody has access to this vaccine and we make it convenient and easy.

- Whatever happened to the notion of civic responsibility? I mean, many of us are old enough we could not go to public school without verifying that we had had a vaccine for smallpox or measles. And now governors in different states, from my own state here in New York, it's almost as if we have to bribe people to do what is your responsibility as a citizen. What do you think of these efforts?

JENNY DURKAN: So first I, again, have to just thank the people of Seattle because I think our numbers show how seriously they took their civic responsibility, and not just with vaccinations, but throughout this pandemic. It has been the hardest 14 months in the history of our city and I think in the history of our nation, in terms of domestic challenges. Record unemployment, number of small businesses losing. But time after time people stepped up and did what we asked them to do. They stayed home. They wore masks. They kept their physical distance. And now they got vaccinated. And they have 70% of 12 and older fully vaccinated and 80% of 12 and older at least their first dose. I think it shows how seriously the people of Seattle have taken this challenge and how much they care about us as a community.

- This will certainly help the re-opening efforts underway in your city. How is your city faring right now business-wise, and also how your residents are feeling?

JENNY DURKAN: So, you know, we're coming out of a very hard time. And there is not going to be flipping a switch. It's going to changing a dial. And we have challenges. But we're starting to see the recovery and the resurgence. There's a pent up demand for people coming together. We're seeing our restaurants and bars being more busy, our hotels are filling up, more people are traveling with tourism.

And so now restarting that economy is really listening to our businesses, our residents, and making sure we do it in a really equitably-based way. We saw that the impacts of this pandemic did not hit everyone equally. Our communities of color were hit harder by both the health and the economic impacts. And as we build back, we really will do build back better, not just equitably, but today I broke ground on a zero net emissions high rise for housing, the first in the nation. We will continue to move forward on projects like that to show that Seattle's here and we're coming back.

- Mayor, I want to switch to something because Amazon announced today that they're going to offer hybrid work to their employees. Corporate employees have the option to return to the office for three days a week and work remotely for the other two days. What's going to happen to cities like yours, like ours, the city financing and revenue as the hybrid models, or perhaps the permanent work from home as people who used to maybe work in Seattle now work in a totally different state?

JENNY DURKAN: You know, we've been anticipating this throughout the pandemic and having conversations with our large employers because we as an employer saw that our employees wanted to continue working from home in certain circumstances. And the days of just brick and mortar places of business, I think that was shattered by the pandemic. So I think three days a week. We have to show that we are a great place to live, to work, and to play, and that we're a city that welcomes the kind of work.

I think that it will take time for all large cities to adjust to this new economic reality. But the way you do it is by building that vibrant downtown. And you build that vibrant downtown by making sure that you have it filled with small businesses, restaurants, great employers. Seattle led the nation in many ways before the pandemic. And I feel as we come out of the pandemic we can continue to do that. But it's a challenge for every major city.

- Yeah. We love your city. Was there. I have cousins who live there and had a burger-- I can't remember the place. But it was a burger shack, and it was near the water. It was wonderful. But there's a real issue. I mean, you're a tech hub. I mean, you are the center in so many ways. But what happens to revenue if people don't come back?

JENNY DURKAN: I think that that's why we have to be really focused during this next nine months of building back and building back better. Like every major city-- for example, we have a number of storefronts where small businesses used to be that failed during the pandemic. How do we fill up those storefronts but do it in a way that makes the downtown and neighborhood environment even more attractive?

I think you will see that in the new economy that the neighborhood business commercial districts are going to thrive more because people are used to staying home. They want to be able to walk to businesses. And then we have to pair it with all the other innovations. We have to have great transit so people come. Great parks. We're building a new 40 acre park right on the waterfront of Seattle. I think the more you continue to innovate and make sure you're both climate friendly but thinking about this is really the welcoming place for all of the Northwest. And we want it to really be strong.

- Mayor, we've talked to a number of small business owners here in Yahoo Finance telling us that it's very, very tough to find the workers right now. We're seeing that reflected in the recent data. Is this something that your city is struggling with? And what do you think needs to be done in order to address this?

JENNY DURKAN: So we are seeing-- I talked to a number of small business owners in particular in getting people back into the work environment. But it's one reason why vaccinations have been so critical. You know, talking to the workers and talking to small businesses, people were leery to come back unless they could be fully vaccinated because they're on that front line. I think having this push on vaccinations is going to actually help there. Obviously, we also have to look nationwide at wages. Seattle adopted the $15 minimum wage a couple of years ago. It's gone up now where it's a little over $16 an hour. And I think that those are so connected to-- you have to be able to track the workers back to the businesses. And I'm hopeful and confident that we can do that.

- Quick follow up and wrap up with you, mayor. But before the pandemic, there were the protest over tax breaks for companies and there were the issues over how much it costs to live in a city like yours. Has the pandemic reversed some of that? Has it brought down the cost of rent or housing?

JENNY DURKAN: You know, it has temporarily. We've seen some of the commercial residential buildings that were built that the rent doesn't pencil anymore. And so we've taken advantage of that as a city and actually just purchased one of those to provide affordable housing and permanent supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness. So taking advantage of these dips in the real estate market to improve those places and infrastructure where we had real gaps before.

I think if you look at the cycles of cities, it will come back. I think it was reported by Yahoo just a few weeks ago that Seattle now outstrips New York in terms of attracting foreign capital for commercial real estate. So I expect that we'll see an uptick again. And the real question is, how do we take advantage of what may be just a short break in the rising costs?

- We appreciate your being here. All the best to you and the people in Seattle, Mayor Jenny Durkan. And congratulations. 70% of the population there fully vaccinated.