Eden Health District COVID-19 Bulletin
|
|
"COVID-19 has existed for less than six months, and it is easy to forget how little we know about it."
Ed Yong, science writer, The Atlantic,
6/4/20
|
|
A group of full juniors,
Olivia Ciaravino, Sophia Qin, Jennifer Song and Kristin Chang all juniors,
at Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough started an online jewelry story to raise funds for the purchase of personal protective equipment for workers at Mills-Peninsula Medical Center in Burlingame. The girls sell necklaces with a heart charm and heart drop earrings through
an Instagram page
for their new business, Hearts4Covid.
|
|
So far, the young entrepreneurs have raised almost $3,000 to support the center’s COVID-19 response efforts.
|
|
|
Alameda County:
3,725
Contra Costa County:
1,547
California:
123,065
U.S.:
1,880,703
|
|
Alameda County:
101
Contra Costa County:
38
California:
4,458
U.S.:
108,664
|
|
 |
SFist, June 4, 2020
On Thursday, June 4, the Bay Area added about 250 new confirmed Covid-19 cases today, a 1.7% uptick from Wednesday, but saw no new deaths from Covid-19 for the first time in three weeks. [Note: 8 new Bay Area deaths have so far been reported on June 5.]
KQED, Jun 5, 2020
The Oakland Police Department has come under increasing scrutiny from city officials, civil rights lawyers and even public health experts for shooting tear gas and rubber bullets into crowds during recent protests ignited by the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.
East Bay Times, June 5, 2020
Citing violations of the state’s Public Records Act, the Bay Area News Group has sued Alameda County, seeking information about coronavirus cases and deaths at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. The Bay Area News Group, which publishes The Mercury News and the East Bay Times, filed requests with the county health department in April asking for basic data about confirmed COVID-19 cases and death among the staff and patients at long-term health care facilities, or nursing homes. But the county denied the request. Nursing homes in Alameda County have been hit hard by the coronavirus. Three facilities, Gateway Rehabilitation and Care Center in Hayward, East Bay Post Acute in Castro Valley and Excel Care Center in Oakland, have had at least 35 deaths and almost 200 infections of patients and staff combined.
Mercury News, June 4, 2020
Eager buyers and reluctant sellers pushed Bay Area homes prices higher again in April, fueling quick sales and a robust market despite coronavirus restrictions. Many cities in Contra Costa and Alameda counties saw houses sell weeks faster than in spring the previous year, according to data from Bay East Association of Realtors. Homes in Union City and Moraga spent an average of just 7 days on the market and 9 days in San Leandro. Houses in Hayward last April typically took 36 days to sell; this year, sales took just 11 days.
Mercury News, June 5, 2020
A widow is suing Safeway in Alameda County Superior Court for wrongful death after her husband contracted Covid-19. Pedro Zuniga, 52, was a longtime employee of the produce division of Safeway’s Distribution Center in Tracy, a large warehouse that employs 1,700 workers and distributes food for Safeway throughout the Bay Area and beyond. Zuniga, a father of five who lived in Turlock, contracted the virus, and
died from complications
on April 13. The lawsuit alleges Zuniga’s tragic death could have been prevented if Safeway had followed state and federal guidelines as well as common sense.
Update on Shelter-in-Place Order
Contra Costa Health Services, June 4, 2020
East Bay Citizen, June 4, 2020
A decision by the Alameda County sheriff to rescind a countywide curfew one day earlier than scheduled set off a rush of cities to remove their own more stringent orders on Thursday. Fremont, which faced limited criminal activity during last weekend’s protests across the East Bay, chose, instead, to keep its curfew in place. The order, however, expires Friday at 5 a.m.
KQED, June 4, 2020
San Mateo County public health officials have revised shelter-in-place rules to allow for outdoor dining, charter boats and for funerals to resume there this week.
According to the new order
, restaurants that have been closed since the shelter-in-place order took effect will be allowed to open for outdoor dining, so long as "all equipment, plumbing and ventilation systems are operational." A supervisor or employee must also be designated to maintain health, safety and proper social distancing protocols, and must be on-site during all open hours.
|
|
|
|
NY Times, June 4, 2020
Of the many things we miss from our pre-pandemic lives, hugging may top the list. We asked scientists who study airborne viruses to teach us the safest way to hug:
- Wearing masks, hug facing opposite directions
- Don't hug face to face
- Don't hug cheeks together, facing the same direction
Ed Yong, science writer, The Atlantic, June 4, 2020
The standard view of Covid-19 is that a minority of infected people, who are typically elderly or have preexisting health problems, end up in critical care, requiring oxygen or a ventilator. About 80 percent of infections, according to the World Health Organization, “
are mild or asymptomatic
,” and patients recover
after two weeks, on average
. Yet support groups on
Slack
and
Facebook
host thousands of people who say they have been wrestling with serious COVID-19 symptoms for at least a month, if not two or three. Some call themselves “long-termers” or “long-haulers.” Most have never been admitted to an ICU or gone on a ventilator, so their cases technically count as “mild.” But their lives have nonetheless been flattened by relentless and rolling waves of symptoms that make it hard to concentrate, exercise, or perform simple physical tasks. Most are young. Most were previously fit and healthy.
CNN, June 4, 2020
Coronavirus patients with high blood pressure have twice the risk of dying from the infection, an international study has found.
High blood pressure has been known to worsen the risk of serious symptoms, but the study, published Thursday in the
European Heart Journal
,
shows just how bad the risk is.
NY Times, June 3, 2020
A study by European scientists is the first to document a strong statistical link between
genetic variations and Covid-19
, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Variations at two spots in the human genome are associated with an increased risk of respiratory failure in patients with Covid-19, the researchers found. One of these spots includes the gene that determines blood types. Having Type A blood was linked to a 50 percent increase in the likelihood that a patient would need to get oxygen or to go on a ventilator, according to the new study.
UCLA Health, June 2, 2020
Guides and resources for helping you process your emotions and reducing anxiety during this challenging period and beyond.
Reuters, June 5, 2020
British scientists halted a large trial on Friday that had been exploring the use of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine in patients with the pandemic disease COVID-19 after initial results showed no evidence of benefit. Martin Landray, an Oxford University professor, who led the randomized trial said, "there is no evidence of a beneficial effect of hydroxychloroquine in patients hospitalized with Covid."
STAT, June 4, 2020
The Lancet, one of the world’s top medical journals,
retracted an influential study
that raised alarms about the safety of hydroxychloroquine amid scrutiny of the data underlying the paper. The Lancet study gained attention because it went further than other observational studies that had similarly found the drug was not associated with improved outcomes for patients. The Lancet study reported the drug also corresponded to higher mortality.
|
|
|
|
East Bay Coronavirus Cases
|
|
Alameda County
: 1,032 n
ew cases have been recorded over the last two weeks. The number of confirmed infections is currently doubling every 33.5 days.
|
|
Contra Costa County
: 313 new cases have been recorded over last 2 weeks. The number of confirmed infections is currently doubling every 43.4 days.
|
|
|
Top 8 Locations of Cases in Alameda County
, data as of 6/4/20
|
Oakland:
1,391
Hayward: 708
Eden MAC:
231
Fremont:
181
San Leandro:
161
Union City:
132
Castro Valley:
125
Newark:
111
|
|
Top 8 Locations of Cases in Contra Costa County
, data as of 6/4/20
|
Richmond:
334
Concord:
163
Antioch:
131
San Pablo:
119
Pittsburgh:
106
Bay Point:
80
Pleasant Hill:
71
Brentwood:
68
|
|
|
|
LA Times, June 5, 2020
To figure out how many people in L.A. County had evidence of past infection to the coronavirus, researchers aimed to test a representative sample of the county’s 7.9 million adults to see if they had antibodies to the virus. The presence of antibodies indicates that the body has been infected with the coronavirus before, and that the body’s immune system responded to it. The
original study
in April found that 4.1% tested positive for coronavirus antibodies. Then in May, the same researchers repeated the study with different people and the results were dramatically different: Only 2.1% tested positive for antibodies.
The new results may mean that the coronavirus might be deadlier than previously suggested by the first survey in L.A. County, said Neeraj Sood, the L.A. County study’s leader and a professor at USC. One thing is clear: L.A. County is nowhere near most of its population being immune to the virus, and the region will have to think of policies that can protect the population in the next two years or so before a vaccine might become widely available. If you take the average of the two study results, “that still means we probably have 97% of the people still susceptible,” said Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, medical epidemiologist and infectious-diseases expert at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
Kaiser Health News, June 5, 2020
Even as most California hospitals have avoided an incapacitating surge in coronavirus patients, some facilities near the Mexican border have been overwhelmed. They include El Centro Regional Medical Center in Imperial County and Scripps Mercy Hospital Chula Vista in San Diego County, which link the spike in Covid-19 patients to their communities’ cross-border lifestyle. Hospital officials say most of the infected patients are U.S. citizens or legal residents who live in, or recently traveled to, Mexico and came to the U.S. for care.
Cal Matters, June 4, 2020
While the coronavirus pandemic sent overall workers’ compensation claims plummeting as California workplaces shut down and fewer employees were injured on the job, Californians stricken with Covid-19 took the first step in filing more than 5,000 workers’ compensation claims from January through May. More than 1,000 of those claims were denied, most of them before Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a May 6
executive order
extending protections for essential workers infected on the job on or after March 19, the day California’s lockdown order went into effect. The order presumes that essential workers, including nurses, first responders, farmworkers and grocery workers who contracted Covid-19, were infected on the job, and puts the burden on employers to prove otherwise. At the same time, overall workers’ compensation claims plummeted during California’s lockdown as workplaces shut down and fewer employees were injured at work. Only 1,098 claims were filed in May, compared with more than 50,000 in January.
|
|
|
|
Associated Press, June 5, 2020
The U.S. unemployment rate fell unexpectedly in May to 13.3%, still on par with what the nation witnessed during the Great Depression, as states loosened their coronavirus lockdowns and businesses began recalling workers. The government said Friday that the economy added 2.5 million jobs last month, driving unemployment down from 14.7% in April. The May job gain, which confounded economists’ expectations of another round of severe losses, suggests that thousands of stores, restaurants, gyms and other companies reopened and rehired more quickly than many analysts had forecast.
The overall job cuts have widened economic disparities: While the unemployment rate for white Americans was 12.4% May, it was 17.6% for Hispanics and 16.8% for African-Americans.
Washington Post, June 4, 2020
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told a House panel Thursday that demonstrators protesting racial injustice need to get tested for the
coronavirus
and that crowds at a Missouri tourist hot spot and the SpaceX launch showed that public health messages on masks and social distancing are not resonating with the public. Referring to
mass protests
against police violence that have taken place throughout the country, CDC Director Robert Redfield said demonstrators in regions that have not yet controlled the outbreak should “highly consider” getting tested. He noted that Minneapolis and the District of Columbia are two metropolitan areas where significant transmission of the virus is still taking place.
NY Daily News, June 4, 2020
For the first day in months, New York City witnessed zero confirmed deaths due to coronavirus, current records show. The first confirmed COVID-19 death in the Big Apple occurred on March 11 with the death toll reaching its horrible peak at 590 on April 7, according to records put out by the city. Those same records show that there were zero confirmed coronavirus deaths Wednesday, with three deaths listed as having a “probable” connection to COVID-19. Those probable deaths could later be reclassified as confirmed as more information emerges. Despite that caveat, the news offers a glimmer of hope to New Yorkers who’ve been awash in tragedy for months.
NPR, June 4, 2020
All laboratories will now be required to include detailed demographic data when they report the results of coronavirus tests to the federal government, including the age, sex, race and ethnicity of the person tested, the Trump administration announced Thursday. The
new requirement
,
which will go into effect Aug. 1, is designed to help provide long-sought, crucial information needed to monitor and fight the pandemic nationally.
|
|
|
|
Oldest Covid Survivors Give Clues to Longevity
|
|
|
Some of the oldest survivors of Covid-19 are providing valuable clues to what might help a person live a long life. Tips from former patients such as 104-year-old Lilian Menendez include stay strong and independent, don’t stop moving, and have faith.
Menendez
’s family thinks that the fact that she worked for most of her life has helped too. She retired from her job at the local fish market at age 95, but only “because the fish market closed,” said her son, who she tries to see several times a week.
|
|
“She says to me, ‘When this is all over, we have a dinner date, right?’”
|
|
|
Mercury News, June 5, 2020
As schools prepare to reopen their doors, researchers are racing to understand the mysterious ways the novel coronavirus affects children. Being back in school will offer a big boost to children’s mental health, experts say. But what about risks to their physical health, as
millions of youngsters
share classrooms, bathrooms and playgrounds? Recent evidence of an unusual complication affecting children is driving new concerns. “Schools should reopen,” said Dr. George Rutherford, an epidemiologist at UC San Francisco. “But keep mixing to a minimum to maintain social distancing.
While school re-openings, with updates to safety practices, make sense from a public health perspective, teachers worry that the expected state budget cuts will prevent smaller classes and increased testing. “We can’t reduce class sizes with fewer teachers. We can’t clean more with fewer (support staff),” said Jeff Freitas, president of the California Federation of Teachers. “We can’t do more with less.”
Cal Matters, June 3, 2020
The majority of children who do get infected with coronavirus experience mild to no symptoms. Until recently, the biggest concern had been that they could be vectors, or carriers, of the virus to more vulnerable populations. However, a rare but serious syndrome linked to coronavirus is striking California children, with cases rising across the country. Discovery of the syndrome comes as California wrestles with how and when children can return to group settings like child care,
school
or camp. While inflammatory syndrome cases are still rare, some fear the number could rise as more children come in close contact again and begin getting coronavirus.
SF Chronicle, June 3, 2020
Napa’s St. John the Baptist Catholic School closed permanently this week, ending 108 years of providing Catholic education to a diverse range of families. The pandemic delivered the final blow, squashing fundraising and new enrollment and wiping out a $100,000 parish subsidy. The closure reflects a wider nationwide trend of private schools struggling to survive the crisis. Across the country, 51 schools have announced they will close, per the Cato Institute, a libertarian public policy organization in Washington, D.C., but that number could rise significantly this summer.
Washington Post, June 5, 2020
School districts across the country are sharing rough drafts of what the fall could look like. They are under increasing pressure, from parents and politicians, for those plans to include at least some in-person learning. But teachers, especially ones who are older or medically compromised, worry those plans do to little to protect them. The plans are also just unrealistic, teachers say. They can’t envision students maintaining social distance, keeping masks on, or walking in the same directions in hallways, all things health officials are recommending.
|
|
Washington Post, June 4, 2020
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on infectious disease, said opening schools “depends on the level of viral activity” in a particular area and it is time to be “creative” in reconfiguring classrooms to ensure students are not seated too close together. “In some situations, there will be no problem for children to go back to school,” he said. “In others, you may need to do some modifications. You know, modifications could be breaking up the class so you don’t have a crowded classroom, maybe half in the morning, half in the afternoon, having children doing alternate schedules.”
News Service of Florida, June 3, 2020
Florida’s top teachers union on Tuesday unveiled its proposal for reopening public-school campuses in the fall as districts wait for final direction from the state Department of Education. The recommendations include widespread testing of students, staff and visitors for the virus, adjustments to class sizes and student transportation, changes to the school calendar, promoting hybrid instruction and pushing to hire more school counselors and psychologists to help students’ social and emotional well-being. The teachers also recommend changes to school lunch plans, which could mean bringing food to classrooms to reduce foot traffic in schools.
Helsinki Times, June 5, 2020
The re-opening of schools appears not to have resulted in an up-tick in coronavirus infections in Helsinki. Nine pupils and two staff members from eight schools in Helsinki tested positive for the new coronavirus during the roughly two-and-a-half-week period between 14 and 30 May. All but one of the infections, however, have been traced to a source outside the school , namely to a family member. Even the only exception has been traced to small-group teaching organized prior to the re-opening of schools. The City of Helsinki operates primary schools with a total of 44,260 pupils and 4,602 employees. In Finland, only 57 persons are currently hospitalized with Covid-19 in the nation of 5.5 million people.
Mercury News, June 4, 2020
Stanford University students will be allowed to return to campus in the fall, but most classes will still remain online as officials on Wednesday gave the first substantive glimpse at what the fall semester is expected to look like. Top school officials announced Wednesday that the university will be starting the fall quarter with online-only classes one week early on Monday, Sept. 14, a move that will keep the university mostly empty and students at home.
BBC, June 3, 2020
Taking a gap year between high school and university is fairly
common
in many parts of Europe, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. In the US, the practice is less common. However, as some universities announce plans to hold classes online from September to maintain social distancing, new students face a tough choice, should they delay?
|
|
|
|
Financial Times, June 4, 2020
Combined with its six-week shutdown, Germany’s “track and trace” system has been instrumental in stalling the spread of Covid-19 and preventing it from overwhelming the health system. It has also helped that the country has a well-oiled government, led by Angela Merkel, a physicist, that has avoided the screeching policy zigzags seen elsewhere. On April 17, authorities announced that the pandemic was under control, less than six weeks after Germany’s first deaths from Covid-19.
Reuters, June 5, 2020
Ireland will accelerate the cautious reopening of its economy, with the fourth and final phase of easing restrictions to start on July 20, three weeks earlier than scheduled, acting Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Friday. Ireland has reported 1,664 deaths related to 25,000 cases of COVID-19. Anyone entering Ireland is required to self-isolate for 14 days and the government’s advice against non-essential overseas travel will remain in place for at least a number of weeks, Varadkar has said.
LA Times, June 4, 2020
Mexican authorities sought to calm an anxious public after the nation’s coronavirus death toll grew by 1,092 on Wednesday — more than doubling the daily record and for the first time exceeding the single-day total in the United States. “Let there not be psychosis, let there not be fear,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador told reporters Thursday. “This is not New York.” He hastened to clarify that many of the deaths reported Wednesday had occurred days or even weeks ago but was only now being added to the total. U.S. officials reported 988 deaths Wednesday. Mexico’s previous record of 501 deaths came on May 26.
Financial Times, June 4, 2020
This week Spain reported what should have been cause for huge celebrations: according to the official coronavirus statistics, there were no new deaths in the 48 hours to midday on Tuesday. Yet on the same day, at least two regions reported 17 deaths from the virus between them. The confusion, in one of the countries worst hit by the pandemic, underlines what experts say is a big challenge as Spain relaxes its lockdown: a misleading impression that the coronavirus threat is past, which could encourage people to behave recklessly.
LA Times, June 4, 2020
For months, officials reported only a few dozen infections and a handful of deaths, although in recent days they have updated those numbers, reporting 2,359 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 46 deaths. A group formed by health workers and activists, however, counts at least 4,217 cases and 980 deaths.
The Economist, June 6, 2020 edition
Over the past week Bangladesh, India and Pakistan have largely lifted nationwide lockdowns intended to curb the spread of Covid-19. With some 350,000 confirmed cases and fewer than 9,000 deaths so far, the region’s toll looks relatively modest. Yet those numbers disguise both widespread undercounting and a rate of growth that was frightening even before the lifting of restrictions.
|
|
|
|
NY Times, June 4, 2020
People who just last month were dutifully keeping behind doors and masks have turned out by the tens of thousands in the past week to gather in the streets and shout to be heard. The lurch between twin crises with opposing aims, isolation and assembly, has been jolting, and to many, positively liberating. People feeling penned for months, then pushed past a tipping point by images of a man’s life ending under an officer’s knee, have surged to the streets, for some, mask be damned, to be part of something. For those coming out day after day to protest, marching with friends and strangers under cheers from the open windows above feels something like normal. If sheltering at home was a reaction to a threat, this is the opposite, action.
Los Angeles Times, June 5, 2020
When thousands of people started crowding city streets across the nation last week to protest the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, where was the outcry about the risk of a new Covid-19 outbreak? Why weren’t the voices that were so quick to condemn the unmasked conservatives who protested pandemic shutdowns and the crowds of unmasked hikers and beachgoers speaking out again? The reality is that large gatherings of people, regardless of their ideological bent or cause, jeopardize the success that has come out of months of shared sacrifice to slow the spread of the coronavirus and protect those most vulnerable, including black Americans who are dying of Covid-19 at a higher rate than most anyone else.
STAT, June 5, 2020
Even as Americans fight (and even kill) over the country’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, there is no disagreement on one point: With 1.9 million cases and the death toll closing in on 110,000 as of June 5, for both economic and humanitarian reasons we absolutely cannot have a repeat of the tragedy that has unfolded since March. But with the current drop-off in cases, hospital admissions, and deaths likely to be followed sooner or later by local, regional, and possibly national resurgences, the implication is clear: If, or, more likely, when, those occur, we have to do better. Recommendations include: Prioritize early warnings, Don’t hide the truth, Do social distancing smarter and Do a way better job in minority and high-poverty communities.
Paige Winfield Cunningham, health care policy reporter,
Washington Post, June 5, 2020
The full picture of the coronavirus’s toll on U.S. nursing homes is finally becoming clear. It is enormous. Data updated yesterday by the federal government now show that nearly 32,000 American nursing home residents have died of the virus, a figure certain to grow, with 12 percent of all facilities yet to report their totals. Nearly 700 nursing home employees have also died. As of Thursday, more than 106,000 Americans overall had died of the disease.
Derek Thompson, staff writer, The Atlantic, June 4, 2020
The Covid-19 crisis is simultaneously thrusting Americans into the pre-urban homestead economy of the 1830s, re-creating the Depression-era joblessness of the 1930s, and pulling forward the virtual economy of the 2030s. We are living in the weirdest economy ever.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Eden Area Food Pantries
We have gathered 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.
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
Your feedback is welcome. Please share the Bulletin.
|
|
The
Eden Health District Board of Directors
are Gordon Galvan, Chair, Mariellen Faria, Vice Chair, Charles Gilcrest, Secretary, Roxann Lewis and Pam Russo. The Chief Executive Officer is Mark Friedman.
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 and international news on the pandemic please links to important commentary and analysis. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday the bulletin includes an education section.
We welcome your feedback on our bulletin. Please contact editor
Stephen Cassidy
.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
