Eden Health District COVID-19 Bulletin
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“We’ve never had such an important clinical trial — or series of clinical trials — in recent history. Everything should be transparent.”
Dr. Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, 9/13/20
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Cardboard cutouts, a quirk of pandemic baseball, let grieving fans honor loved ones |
Channing Coy was watching a baseball game on television recently when she noticed the cardboard cutouts in the stands: photos of fans filling an otherwise empty stadium, a now-normal sight in an anything-but-normal season.
“At first, the idea seemed a little silly, all these cardboard cutouts in the background,” she said. “But then it hit me: Oh my goodness, I could have Ryan and Dad at a game together again.”
Oracle Park, the bayside stadium of her beloved San Francisco Giants, had always been somewhat sacred to her family. It was the site of big wins and important milestones for the team, of course, but also for the family.
And when Coy’s brother, Ryan Bartlett, died 8 years ago of testicular cancer at 22, it surprised no one that he wanted his ashes spread in McCovey Cove, the stretch of San Francisco Bay located just beyond the right field wall.
In the years since, her father, Tom Bartlett, couldn’t bring himself to enter the stadium. There were too many memories there with his baseball-loving son. But now father and son are seated side by side again at Oracle Park for every Giants home game. Or at least their three-foot facsimiles are. “I would never have thought of something like this, but Channing really made something special happen here,” said Tom.
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Alameda County: 19,991
Contra Costa County: 15,424
Bay Area: 95,033
California: 761,921
U.S.: 6,535,105
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Alameda County: 332
Contra Costa County: 192
Bay Area: 1,305
California: 14,391
U.S.: 194,252
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Berkeleyside, September 14, 2020
The City Council is considering adding another tool to its COVID-19 enforcement arsenal: an ordinance that could pack the sting of a $100 fine for those who don’t follow city safety mandates. The Council will discuss the proposed urgency ordinance, which would allow Berkeley’s public health officer or her designees to fine people who repeatedly violate the city’s mask and social distancing mandates, at its Sept. 15 meeting. Nearby jurisdictions, including Contra Costa, Napa and Sonoma counties have all passed similar urgency ordinances since the pandemic began in March.
Press Release, September 11, 2020
Effective today, September 14th, Alameda County’s updated Vehicle-Based Gathering Order will permit live performances including entertainment like musical, theatrical, and artistic performances, lectures, presentations, movie showings, as well as religious and cultural ceremonies. The Order will also increase the maximum number of vehicles allowed from 200 to 400 and will permit the sale of concessions at events with restrictions, including requirements that concessions be purchased in advance and for pick-up during assigned times to avoid gathering in lines.
County Resources
- Where to get a Covid-19 Test
- Alameda County
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Contra Costa County: The county reports that the turnaround time for test results in the county is now down to two to four days.
SF Chronicle, September 14, 2020
Thousands of beleaguered Bay Area restaurant owners used the federal loans to survive the pandemic’s initial shut down orders. At the time, the loans were a glimmer of hope. But for many, that money is gone, and now the industry appears as though it’s coming back full-circle to the precarious position it was in during March and April, when the local food scene was quickly collapsing.
Most local restaurants that applied for PPP right away received their loans at the end of April, meaning they’ll run out by November. The vast majority of those were small loans — $150,000 or less. Stipulations for the money were that it would primarily be used for payroll and various other expenses within 24 weeks, if restaurants wanted to have 100% of the loan forgiven.
Restaurateurs and industry advocates say that businesses will likely close this fall until there’s more government funding or the pandemic ends. Some closures will be temporary, but other restaurants will likely never reopen.
Lisa Krieger, science reporter, East Bay Times, September 13, 2020
Shocked by the sight of New York’s makeshift morgues, Californians engaged. The result has been a shift in the Bay Area’s cultural herd behavior. Just as yoga is stylish and smoking uncool, mask-wearing has become de rigueur. Social distancing is expected, not asked.
But that’s not everyone’s experience. While an earthquake is a shared trauma, a virus — especially one transmitted with no symptoms — is an abstract threat, affecting different people in different ways. While the danger is clear of collapsed bridges or crushed schoolhouses, it is hard to imagine the lethality of a family barbecue. Covid-19 cases and death rates also are disproportionately high among some people, such as Latinos, many of them “essential workers” in low-income neighborhoods. And the worst of the pandemic has shifted to agricultural areas, clustered in Central Valley counties with the highest per capita case counts in the state.
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NY Times, September 13, 2020
The morning after the world learned that a closely watched clinical trial of a coronavirus vaccine had been halted last week over safety concerns, the company’s chief executive disclosed that a person given the vaccine had experienced serious neurological symptoms. But the remarks weren’t public. Instead, the chief executive, Pascal Soriot of AstraZeneca, spoke at a closed meeting organized by J.P. Morgan, the investment bank.
None of the three companies with coronavirus vaccines in advanced clinical trials in the United States have made public the protocols and statistical analysis plans for those trials — the detailed road maps that could help the independent scientists better understand how the trials were designed, and hold the companies accountable if they were to deviate from their plans.
Mercury News, September 14, 2020
The Pac-12’s return to competition depends on one unexpected development solving two momentous problems. The expected late September arrival of rapid-response antigen tests — two months earlier than anticipated — will allow football teams to test players for Covid-19 immediately before practice and games, thereby preventing on-field transmission by pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic players.
Those same antigen tests, courtesy of a partnership with San Diego-based Quidel Corp., are central to clearing the other hurdle: Convincing health officials in Oregon and California to lift state restrictions and allow the six teams to move forward with practice and competition. The antigen tests made by Quidel are not as sensitive as the PCR tests — they don’t detect the virus until higher loads levels have been reached. But they may be more effective in reducing infectiousness because of the 15-minute turnaround time.
Elizabeth Yuko, bioethicist, Lifehacker, September 13, 2020
Before hopping on a bus or entering a subway station, consider which mode of transportation poses the least risk to yourself and others. This means taking things into account like whether you’ll be waiting indoors or outdoors, and the travel time (i.e. the amount of time you have to spend in an enclosed space with other passengers).
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CDC Morbidity and Mortality Report, September 11, 2020
To better understand transmission from young children, contact tracing data collected from three COVID-19 outbreaks in child care facilities in Salt Lake County, Utah, were reviewed. A total of 184 persons, including 110 (60%) children had a known ink to one of these three facilities. Twelve children acquired Covid-19 in the child care facilities. In turn, transmission was documented from these children to at least 12 (26%) of 46 nonfacility contacts (confirmed or probable cases). One parent was hospitalized.
Nature, September 14, 2020
Doctors are now concerned that the pandemic will lead to a significant surge of people battling lasting illnesses and disabilities. Because the disease is so new, no one knows yet what the long-term impacts will be. People with more severe infections might experience long-term damage not just in their lungs, but in their heart, immune system, brain and elsewhere. Evidence from previous coronavirus outbreaks, especially the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic, suggests that these effects can last for years.
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Mercury News, September 14, 2020
Californians are starting to breathe a sigh of relief as the state continues to beat back a wave of infections that began in June after government officials began lifting lockdown orders and some social activities to resume. Across California, public health officials reported 3,125 new cases and 71 new deaths on Sunday. That brings the 7-day case average to 3,304 and the 7-day death rate to about 9, both averages that have been falling since their peak in August. The total number of cases recorded in California was 758,679 as of Sunday, with a total of 14,332 deaths from the virus.
Case and death data are based on when each county publicly reported new numbers, not necessarily when those infections or fatalities occurred.
CalMatters, September 12, 2020
Gov. Newsom could arm California’s vast agricultural workforce and local public health officers with more information about workplace coronavirus outbreaks under a bill that’s now on his desk. The “Right to Know” bill, AB 685, would require California employers to notify their employees of Covid-19 cases, as well as alert county public health departments. Companies haven’t always notified public health officials — or even their own employees — of outbreaks even as positive cases spike across poultry plants, food processing facilities and fruit and vegetable farms.
LA Times, September 13, 2020
About 800 people were hospitalized with the virus in Los Angeles county, 35% of them in an ICU, marking a significant decline from just a few weeks earlier. The new numbers are similar to April, before the summer surge. Hospitalization is an important metric for charting the course of the pandemic, because it captures how many people are seriously ill with the virus, health officials wrote in a statement. The virus remains widespread across L.A. County, although the percent of positive tests has declined steadily, to about 3% this week.
Kaiser Health News, September 14, 2020
Since March, Californians have scrambled to comply with public health orders that required most office and school work to occur at home. But in one of the most iconic office spaces in the state — the Capitol building in Sacramento — most lawmakers and their staffers have gathered in large numbers for months (except when Covid-19 infections forced them to take unplanned recesses). And as the end-of-session frenzy gripped them in late August, pandemic no-nos spiked: Lawmakers huddled closely, let their masks slip below their noses, smooshed together for photos and shouted “Aye!” and “No!” when voting in the Senate, potentially spraying virus-laden particles at their colleagues.
Mercury News, September 13, 2020
Most of the hardest hit nursing homes in Southern California, as to resident deaths for their average daily population, had a below-average rating on staffing, according to a review of such facilities in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Staffing shortages have been made even worse by the dangers posed by having staff working in multiple facilities, which had been a common practice before the pandemic. Many factors can contribute to how severely the virus strikes a nursing home, including its location and size. But having enough staff is vital, especially during a pandemic, experts say. New research backs that up.
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CNBC, September 13, 2020
Coronavirus cases continued to grow over the weekend in nearly a dozen U.S. states as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, warns about the nation’s worrying level of new infections. Covid-19 cases were growing by 5% or more, based on a weekly average to smooth out daily reporting, in 11 states as of Sunday, according to a CNBC analysis of data collected by Johns Hopkins University, an increase from eight states on Friday. The states were Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Wisconsin hit a record high in its average of daily new cases, reporting 1,353 new infections, a roughly 32% increase from a week ago, the Hopkins data shows. Kansas and Montana both hit record highs for new deaths.
USA Today, September 14, 2020
Scientists and physicians reacted with words such as “aghast,” “despicable” and “outrageous” over the weekend as news spread that White House appointees interfered with a basic national public health report when it conflicted with President Donald Trump's coronavirus messaging. Michael Caputo, the Health and Human Services assistant secretary for public affairs, acknowledged Saturday that since June, he and an adviser have scrutinized and at times pushed for changes to a weekly health report distributed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
NY Times, September 14, 2020
In recent weeks, a new cadre of gatekeepers armed with thermometer guns has appeared at the entrances of hospitals, office buildings and manufacturing plants to screen out feverish individuals who may carry the coronavirus. But while health officials have endorsed masks and social distancing as effective measures for curbing the spread of the coronavirus, some experts scoff at fever checks. Taking temperatures at entry points is nothing more than theater, they say, a gesture that is unlikely to screen out many infected individuals, and one that offers little more than the illusion of safety.
ABC News, September 12, 2020
Coronavirus infections in the Dakotas are growing faster than anywhere else in the nation over the past two weeks, fueling impassioned debates over masks and personal freedom after months in which the two states avoided the worst of the pandemic. The Republican governors of both states have eschewed mask requirements, tapping into a spirit of independence hewn from enduring the winters and storms of the Great Plains. The Dakotas were not always a hot spot. For months, the states appeared to avoid the worst of the pandemics. But spiking infection rates have fanned out across the nation, from the East Coast to the Sun Belt and now into the Midwest, where states like Iowa and Kansas are also dealing with surges.
NPR, September 14, 2020
The CDC announced a new eviction moratorium earlier this month. The ban is nationwide — but it's not automatic. And many renters facing eviction still don't know about the ban or understand the rules or their rights.
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Mercury News, September 13, 2020
As California’s summer surge of coronavirus cases fades and more schools transition from online distance learning to in-class instruction, it’s likely some students and teachers will be infected. And there’s no guarantee the public will find out about it.
Weeks after classrooms began reopening across the country, there’s been little comprehensive information about how many have had outbreaks — and California is one of a number of states saying they aren’t planning to release such information. Instead, parents are being left to rely on scattered news accounts that give little sense of how prevalent clusters of infections are among students and teachers.
LA Times, September 14, 2020
Although students and parents will not be returning to their Los Angeles public school anytime soon, when campuses do reopen, L.A. Unified plans to operate a website that will provide detailed information about coronavirus outbreaks at an individual campus and even each classroom.
Under the plan — part of the district’s ambitious testing and contact tracing plan for all students, staff and their families — anyone could learn the number of positive cases to date and the number of active cases broken down by school, grade and by the small “cohorts” of students who will spend the day together once campuses are able to reopen.
LA Times, September 14, 2020
The recent decline of new coronavirus cases in California has freed 25 counties to reopen schools in the weeks ahead. On Sept. 1, San Diego County — home to the second-largest school district in the state — got the go-ahead. Orange County is on track to reopen schools on Sept. 22. San Francisco, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz are also cleared to soon open.
But state and county clearance are only the first steps.
In sprawling and diverse Orange and San Diego counties — and in the future Los Angeles County — school district leaders face disparate situations and complicated decisions that must take into account neighborhood Covid-19 rates, the size of the district, parent opinions and negotiations with employee unions.
Districts such as Santa Ana and San Diego County’s National Elementary — and others serving low-income majority-Latino neighborhoods hard hit by the coronavirus — say it’s still unsafe to reopen, adding yet another blow to the disproportionate hardship of the Covid-19 pandemic on communities of color.
Politico, September 11, 2020
Gov. Newsom declined to say Friday whether he will send his children back to class after several Sacramento County private elementary schools received waivers this week to resume in-person instruction, including one that sources say his own children attend. “I’ll let you know after I process that with my wife,” Newsom laughed when asked during a visit to a fire-damaged area near Oroville.
California currently prohibits schools from reopening in the counties hardest hit by coronavirus, where more than 90 percent of the state's 6 million students live. But Newsom introduced a path in July that allows elementary schools to request a waiver to open their doors even if located in counties where schools can't reopen. Sacramento County remains in the purple tier with general restrictions against school reopening without a waiver, but some private schools received the go-ahead this week. Politico is not naming the school where Newsom's children attend for privacy reasons.
Mercury News, September 13, 2020
The state of coronavirus planning in higher education in California this fall is a scattered, confusing, infuriating mess. And absent a vaccine, experts agree, there is just one way out: Cheap, quick, plentiful tests would allow universities to reclaim their pre-coronavirus lives, with full dormitories, crowded dining halls and free-spending students. Mitigation strategies such as masks and social distancing will help, Carl Bergstrom, a professor at the University of Washington, said, but they won’t prevent outbreaks.
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US & International Education News |
USA Today, September 14, 2020
While some students are returning to classrooms around the country, others remain at home and could stay in the virtual classroom for the next year or even longer because of health concerns. School districts have responded by launching online programs at an unprecedented scale. But parents, caregivers and educators say they're dismayed by online class sizes as high as 100 students in some school districts.
Those organizing these virtual programs have said larger class sizes are acceptable, in part because students often work at their own pace in virtual classes. Some programs require a few hours of live instruction a day or even just a few check-ins every week. Experts say some instruction should be live, so that kids can see their friends and feel a part of the class.
Wall Street Journal, September 14, 2020
The Big Ten’s Council of Presidents and Chancellors met remotely on Sunday to revisit the conference’s decision to postpone college football and other fall sports seasons until 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic, raising the possibility of a dramatic reversal by one of the nation’s most prominent leagues. The council didn’t take a vote, people familiar with the matter said, and it wasn’t clear when it might. But the mere chance that it could jump start the 2020 season is an indicator of the powerful role that lucrative college sports play on major university campuses.
One rationale for changing course is improved testing capability. People familiar with the Big Ten’s internal negotiations said the conference is exploring partnerships with providers of newer coronavirus antigen tests that can produce results within hours and relatively cheaply.
Axios, September 13, 2020
Universities that brought students back to campus have already seen a rough start to the fall, with more than 50,000 infections across the country. But a number of schools have managed to open up while quelling or even preventing outbreaks, either because they’re effectively testing and tracing or because they’ve got smaller student bodies and more rural locations. While many bigger universities in cities decided to start off with remote learning, smaller campuses in smaller towns — like Colby College in Waterville, Maine, and Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont — welcomed students with negative test results back, betting that the relative isolation could keep infections at bay. So far, that seems to be working, says Joshua Salomon, a professor of medicine at Stanford. These success stories show that reopening can work, but typically only at small, rural campuses.
Associated Press, September 14, 2020
While the reopening of Italian schools marks an important step in a return to pre-lockdown routine, the step bears more symbolic weight in the 11 towns in Lombardy and Veneto that were the first to be sealed off as coronavirus red zones. In Codogno, nursery school children must have their temperatures taken at drop-off but are not required to wear masks. In elementary school and middle school, parents are asked to monitor temperatures at home and masks are required, though they may be lowered during lessons. In schools where distance cannot be maintained, older students will have to keep masks on all day.
Washington Post, September 12, 2020
From picket lines to Zoom calls and even jail cells, the pandemic has thrust teachers unions to the forefront of the debate over education during the coronavirus pandemic. How to safely reopen schools has become a central question, with school closures affecting well over a billion students, according to the United Nations, in addition to economies and daily life for working families. There has been “a lot of brinkmanship” with governments, said David Edwards, the general secretary of Education International, a Brussels-based international federation of teachers unions. “Teachers unions are trying to find a way to get their kids safely back to school.”
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Covid-19 survivor says she didn't take restrictions seriously |
There was a time, in the spring, when Sarah Bolles, 34, of Honolulu thought she was going to die. Diagnosed in the early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic, she credits excellent health care, her faith, and the support of her family for her survival.
Sarah is not sure how she was infected, but she thinks it was probably in Waikīkī, prior to widespread lockdowns and restrictions. Her first symptom was a headache, quickly followed by a fever of 104.3 degrees. She was tested for Covid-19 and got the results back five days later. Her respiratory results were normal, but while she waited for her test results, she started experiencing shortness of breath. “I just remember being at home and being scared and not being able to breathe. I thought, I have to call 911,” Bolles said.
She was at the hospital within 10 minutes, where she had another coronavirus test. “It was a surreal time for me because I thought, I’ll never get to see my family again. They’re going to sedate me; they’re going to put me in a coma. It happened so fast.”
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Altogether Bolles spent about a month and a half in the hospital. “When I first got sick, I wasn’t thinking Covid-19. I’d heard about the virus and that it was going around," Bolles stated, "Now, when you actually experience this disease yourself or know someone who has it, you realize just how severe it is.”
Bolles implores everyone to wear masks and to physically distance. “Just think about the lives that you are saving when you are thinking about others and not just yourself,” she said.
Bolles fully supports emergency rules and restrictions as necessary to stop the spread of Covid-19 as quickly and effectively as possible. She commented, “We need to keep our hospital beds available for those who have other urgent health issues.”
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Reuters, September 11, 2020
Canada reported zero COVID-19 deaths in the past 24 hours for the first time since March 15, according to public health agency data released late on Friday. Canada’s death toll from the pandemic stood at 9,163 as of Sept. 11, the same as the number of the deaths reported on Sept. 10, government data showed. With most provinces easing lockdown restrictions and as schools reopen for in-person classes, Canada’s infections have seen a mild pick-up in recent days. Authorities have been on high alert to avoid fresh outbreaks, and provinces including British Columbia have imposed new curbs to tackle the spread of the virus.
Washington Post, September 13, 2020
Israel will head into a second coronavirus lockdown, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced in a televised news conference Sunday night, following a sharp escalation in the number of new Covid-19 infections in the country in recent weeks. The lockdown, which requires schools, stores, malls and hotels to close and reinstates restrictions on people’s movements for at least three weeks starting Friday, marks an attempt to halt the trajectory that saw more than 4,000 new cases in a single day last week in a country of some 9 million.
Although the number of critical cases appears low, medical centers in Israel have said they are approaching full capacity and fear that the number of sick will increase dramatically as Israel heads into winter and begins a month of Jewish holy festivals starting Friday.
The Guardian, September 14, 2020
Officials in French regions worst hit by a rise in coronavirus infections are poised to announce further restrictions on public gatherings. The French prime minister, Jean Castex, has instructed the authorities in Marseille, Bordeaux and the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe to detail extra measures to halt the spread of Covid-19 by the end of Monday. Before the weekend, Castex surprised the nation by failing to announce new national restrictions to deal with the worsening crisis; instead he delegated the task to regional officials, police and health bodies. This followed a decision by the president, Emmanuel Macron, to ignore advice from the government’s scientific advisory committee after new infections topped 10,000 in one 24-hour period on Friday, the highest since the pandemic broke out in France in early March.
CNN, September 14, 2020
Not everyone in China will need to get vaccinated against Covid-19, according to the country's top medical official, as Beijing looks to prioritize frontline workers and high-risk populations in a move that underscores rising confidence among policy-makers of their ability to contain the virus. The question of vaccinating the public was one of balancing "risks and benefits," Gao Fu, director of the Chinese CDC, said, pointing to factors like cost and potential side effects. There isn't currently a need for mass vaccination at this stage -- though that could change if another serious outbreak takes place, Gao said.
Reuters, September 14, 2020
The number of excess deaths in Russia between May and July was more than three times higher than the official coronavirus toll, recent government data show, a discrepancy some experts say raises questions about the accuracy of Moscow’s counting.
CNN, September 7, 2020
Australia and other countries in the Southern Hemisphere just finished their easiest flu seasons on record, and the United States and other nations in the Northern Hemisphere could have an easy time, too -- if people get flu shots, practice social distancing and wear masks.
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German Lopez, Vox, September 14, 2020
The U.S. has suffered one of the worst Covid-19 epidemics in the world. But here’s a bit of good news: Since late July, the number of new coronavirus cases has steadily declined across most of the country.
That’s not to say the US is beating the coronavirus. Reported cases are still higher than they were in the spring (partly, but likely not entirely, the result of more testing). More than 700 people are still dying from Covid-19 on average every day — more daily new Covid-19 deaths than in any other developed country in the world. There are still large epidemics in some states, especially in parts of the Midwest and South. Still, the decline in America’s Covid-19 cases is real and significant, translating to fewer illnesses and deaths in the next few weeks and, hopefully, months.
So what happened? The short of it: We can’t say for certain, but it seems as though the US’s overall reaction to the July resurgence of Covid-19 — in which much of the nation stepped up social distancing and masking — has tamed the spread of the virus.
“I think the decline is due to the combination of [government] measures taken,” Jaime Slaughter-Acey, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, stated. “The big outbreaks also led people to be more mindful about integrating social distancing and masks into their everyday norms.”
William Lie and Andrew von Eschenbach, Washington Post, September 14, 2020
New cases of covid-19 are declining across the country, so it's tempting to wonder whether the worst of the pandemic is behind us. Not by a long shot. Even as cases decline, it is possible we could soon be grappling with the burden of prolonged or permanent organ damage among the millions of people who have survived covid-19. There’s still a lot we don’t know about the long-term effects of this disease, but they could cripple not just these “survivors" but also our health-care system and our economy, too.
Harriet Blair Rowan, Mercury News, September 14, 2020
In the six months since the Bay Area locked down in response to the coronavirus, we have been overwhelmed by a ticker tape of numbers that illustrate how Covid-19 has fundamentally changed our world. The bench for statistics is deep, but here are 10 that we think sum up the stunning scope of the pandemic:
1. 912,242: Number of deaths worldwide
2. $81.8 billion: How much the state’s unemployment office has paid out to unemployed Californians since mid-March when the shutdown began.
3. 6,070,000,000: The phrase “Covid-19” didn’t exist a year ago, but a search in Google this past week returned more than 6 billion results.
4. 6,745: The number of businesses that have closed in the San Francisco and San Jose metro areas between March 1 and July 10, according to data from Yelp.
5. 8.6%: The year-over-year increase in median single-family home prices in the five-county Bay Area for the month of July.
6. -84%: Traffic at the Bay Area’s three major airports has nosedived this much in the first five months of the pandemic where records are available.
7. 178: The number of hand sanitizer products that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recommended you stop using right away.
8. 11,500: How many inmates were set to be released from California prisons to relieve overcrowding as the virus swept through the state prison system.
9. 2,900%: Zoom, the now-omnipresent video-conferencing site grew 30-fold in the number of meeting participants using its platform each day, from 10 million in December to 300 million by April.
10. 2,085: The number of minutes Californians have watched Gov. Newsom “brief” us on the pandemic – nearly one and a half days in total.
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Over the last seven days, Alameda County officials have confirmed 859 new cases, which amounts to 7 cases per 100,000 residents. |
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Over the last seven days, Contra Costa County officials have confirmed 713 new cases, which amounts to 9 cases per 100,000 residents. |
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Top 8 Locations of Cases in Alameda County, as of 9/13/20. Alameda County does not publish cases per 100,000 in the last 14 days by city.
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Oakland: 7,954
Hayward: 2,857
Fremont: 1,355
Eden MAC: 1,253
San Leandro: 1,093
Livermore: 839
Union City: 722
Castro Valley: 502
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Top 8 Locations of Cases in Contra Costa County plus (in parentheses) cases per 100,000 in last 14 days, as of 9/14/20
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Richmond: 2,972 (206)
Antioch: 2,088 (206)
Concord: 2,044 (195)
Pittsburgh: 1,725 (226)
San Pablo: 1,349 (366)
Bay Point: 819 (463)
Walnut Creek: 560 (72)
Brentwood: 560 (58)
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Under the new monitoring system, a county will land in one of four color-coded tiers. The most restrictive, purple, indicates the county has a “widespread” coronavirus problem, with case rates and positive test rates too high to broadly reopen. Gyms, for example, can’t let customers inside, and schools can’t have in-person instruction.
The next, red, is for counties with a “substantial” problem. Gyms can open with 10% capacity, while, at schools, some labs can reopen. Less restrictive is orange, indicating a “moderate” problem. Gyms can open at 25% capacity. Yellow, for counties with a “minimal” problem, can have gyms at 50% capacity, as well as saunas, spas and steam rooms.
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We are proud to partner with the East Bay Community Foundation in publishing this bulletin. Through donations to its Covid-19 Response Fund, the EBCF provides grants to East Bay nonprofit organizations delivering essential services to those most impacted by the economic fallout from the pandemic.
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Public Education Covid-19 Flyers |
Contra Costa County Health Services has recently published highly informative flyers addressing the risks of becoming infected in certain settings and activities. |
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Working in collaboration with the Alameda County Public Health Department, the Cities of Hayward and San Leandro, and the Castro Valley and Eden Area Municipal Advisory Councils, the District has printed “Mask On” posters for each city and community in the Eden Health District area. The posters are free and intended for businesses, health clinics, schools, churches, public agencies and nonprofit organizations to display in their entrances.
“Wearing masks in public or any gatherings, including events with friends and extended families, is essential for slowing the spread of the virus,” stated Eden Health District Director Pam Russo. “We are seeing signs of progress in California, Alameda County remains a Covid-19 'hot spot' in the Bay Area. Please wear a mask to protect yourself while protecting others.”
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The public is welcome to download and print or share “Mask On” posters from the District’s website. Posters are available in English, Spanish and Chinese languages.
Posters may also be retrieved during business hours from the lobby of the Eden Health District office building located at 20400 Lake Chabot Road, Castro Valley. Posters for the City of Hayward are also available from the Hayward Chamber of Commerce located at 22561 Main Street, Hayward.
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We have posted information on food pantries and food services in the cities of Hayward and San Leandro and unincorporated Alameda County including Castro Valley and San Lorenzo. You can access the information here on our website. Alameda County has also released an interactive map listing food distributions and other social services.
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Your feedback is welcome. Please share the Bulletin. |
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The Eden Health District is committed to ensuring that policy makers and community members receive accurate and timely information to help make the best policy and personal choices to meet and overcome the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Each bulletin includes a summary of the top health, Bay Area, California, national, education and international news on the pandemic plus links to a diverse range of commentary and analysis. We publish the Bulletin on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, unless the day fall on a public holiday.
We welcome your feedback on our bulletin. Please contact editor Stephen Cassidy.
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