COVID-19
breaking news & updates
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No Internet Access? You Can Order Your Free COVID Tests By Phone
Now Americans who don’t have easy access to the internet can order free at-home COVID-19 tests over the phone. The Biden administration on Friday launched a hotline: 1-800-232-0233 (TTY 1-888-720-7489). It will operate from 8 am to midnight Eastern time. Callers can place orders in multiple languages, including English, Spanish and Chinese. East Bay Times Read more
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Vacancy On The Eden Health District Board of Directors
Due to the resignation of Varsha Chauhan, there is a vacancy on the Board of Directors of Eden Health District. Eligibility requirements to be appointed to the Eden Health District Board stipulate a person must be a resident of, and registered to vote in, the District, which comprises the communities of Castro Valley, Hayward, San Leandro, San Lorenzo, and the unincorporated areas of Ashland, Cherryland and Fairview. The term for the person appointed to the Eden Health District board due to this vacancy runs until the November, 2022 election. Persons interested in being considered for appointment to the District Board of Directors should contact Barbara Adranly, District Clerk, Eden Health District, by email or at (510) 538-2031 ext. 201, for details on submitting an application and statement of interest/qualifications. Applications must be received no later than Friday, January 28, 2022. Get more details
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COVID Test Resources
Food Pantries
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Nearly 14K COVID Tests Left "Untouched For A Week" In Bay Area Lab; Customers Still Wait For Results
Nearly 14,000 coronavirus tests were left sitting in bags in a Pleasanton-based lab. Now, customers are still waiting for their results nearly two weeks later. Here's what went wrong. Bay Area-based bio-health technology company Virus Geeks told the ABC7 News I-Team roughly 30 bags full of specimens were left stacked on the floor for seven days - all untouched. The tests were sent from the company's test sites at the San Mateo County Event Center and the Monterey airport. "For all you folks out there who are mad, I'm terribly sorry," said Frank Lee, the company's CEO. "They have a right to be mad." ABC7 News Read more
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More Bay Area Families Are Opting For Independent Study Programs Instead Of Sending Kids Back Into Classrooms
Bay Area families worried about the surge of COVID-19 Omicron cases are clamoring for remote learning options for their children, but school leaders can’t easily or legally pivot back to the same online models they used last year without losing state funds. Last year, California lawmakers allowed an exception for school districts to offer online classes and still receive state funds for student attendance as a way to avoid mass outbreaks, but that option has expired. Now, public schools must again provide in-person instruction to receive attendance funding. And there is little appetite among state leaders to change that. East Bay Times Read more
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OpenTable Data Shows San Francisco Restaurants Are Starting their Comeback From Omicron
After a downturn due to the Omicron coronavirus surge, restaurant reservations in San Francisco are beginning to rebound despite continuing high case rates. Reservations are still down an average of 63% from pre-pandemic levels in 2019, but data from OpenTable shows an 8 percentage point increase in reservations from Jan. 12, 2021 to Jan. 20. In addition, the percentage of San Francisco restaurants taking reservations on OpenTable rose 15 percentage points in the week of Jan. 5 to the week of Jan. 19.
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SF Extends Program Providing Financial Support For Workers Recovering From COVID-19
San Francisco city officials announced Friday they will provide an additional $5.4 million to extend through June 2022 the local Right to Recover program, which provides financial support for people who have tested positive for COVID-19 and need monetary assistance as they get tested, quarantine, and recover. According to city officials, the extension of the program established in July 2020 is urgently needed amid a recent, unprecedented surge of COVID-19 cases related to the highly contagious Omicron variant. As a result, the city has seen an increase in Right to Recover program applications. NBC News Read more
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Santa Clara County Starts Handing Out Free At-Home COVID Test Kits To Residents
If you’ve struggled to buy a COVID-19 home test kit the last few weeks, you now have another option as Santa Clara County started to hand out thousands of free kits at three different parks Saturday. About 1,800 people in Santa Clara County finally got their hands on coveted COVID-19 home test kits during a drive-thru event at several locations. Santa Clara County officials said they plan to give away a total of 60,000 COVID-19 antigen tests through next week. “We still see an incredibly high rate of COVID in our community and we know with the scarcity of testing there is a great need for at home antigen tests,” said Megan Doyle, Santa Clara County’s Deputy County Executive. NBC Bay Area Read more
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Booster Shots Are Instrumental In Protecting Against Omicron, New C.D.C. Data Suggest
Booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines aren’t just preventing infections with the highly contagious Omicron variant — they’re also keeping infected Americans from ending up in the hospital, according to data published on Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The extra doses are 90 percent effective against hospitalization with the variant, the agency reported. Booster shots also reduced the likelihood of a visit to an emergency department or urgent care clinic. The extra doses were most effective against infection and death among Americans aged 50 and older, the data showed. NY Times Read more
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Booster Longevity: Data Reveals How Long A Third Shot Protects
We've known for about a month now that a third shot of the vaccine is critical for protecting against infection with the omicron variant — and for keeping people out of the hospital. Now researchers in the U.K. have the first estimates for how long a third shot of the Pfizer vaccine will last. And the findings are mixed. Protection against infection is likely short-term, lasting less than six months, but protection against severe disease appears more robust, researchers with the U.K. Health Security Agency reported Friday. NPR Read more
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Unvaccinated Seniors Nearly 50 Times More Likely To Be Hospitalized Than Boosted Peers
Unvaccinated adults age 65 or older who contracted the coronavirus were 49 times more likely to require hospitalization than seniors who had received booster vaccine doses, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Unimmunized adults in that age group were also 17 times more likely to be admitted to a hospital than those who had received either two shots of an mRNA vaccine or one Johnson & Johnson dose. Meanwhile, unvaccinated people between 50 and 64 years old were 44 times more likely to need hospitalization compared with their boosted counterparts. Washington Post Read more
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Proposed California Bill To Allow Teens To Get Vaccine Without Parental Consent Gains Momentum
If very young Californians want to get a COVID vaccination without their parents' approvals, should they be able to get them? The answer to that is likely to be yes and soon. A Kaiser Family Foundation study released in December found 30% of parents say they definitely will not vaccinate their kids. State Senator Scott Wiener says about 1 million Californians, ages 12 to 17, are not yet vaccinated against COVID, which is why he's proposing a new law. "Senate Bill 866, which will lower the age of consent for receiving a vaccine from 18 to 12, to allow our teenagers to be able to protect their health, whether COVID or other serious diseases, to ensure that our schools are safe," said Sen. Wiener, San Francisco Democrat. KTVU Read more
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New Vaccine Requirements At U.S. Borders Now In Effect
New vaccine requirements went into effect on Saturday for non-U.S. citizens at the nation’s land border crossings. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will be requiring all non-U.S. citizens entering the country to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19.
This includes all land ports and ferry terminals along both the Canadian and Mexican borders. These new changes will include everyone except U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, and lawful permanent residents. DHS said travelers must verbally attest to their COVID-19 status and provide proof of a CDC approved vaccination. KPBS
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How One Person’s Cells Led To Our Only Antibody Treatment For Omicron
Years ago, a survivor of a previous deadly pandemic gave a gift that is helping save desperately ill COVID-19 patients today. The donation – a blood sample holding infection-fighting cells from the deadly 2003 SARS outbreak – is the basis of a new Bay Area-designed therapy that is now the sole monoclonal antibody that can fend off the Omicron variant, preventing serious illness or death, as traditional treatments fail “Currently it’s the only monoclonal therapy that works,” said Dr. Warner Greene, director of Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology at UC San Francisco. Mercury News Read more
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State/National/International News |
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COVID-Infected Nurses Working At Short-Staffed Nursing Homes
Four days after Celine started working as a nursing assistant in the COVID-19 unit at a Placerville nursing home, she tested positive for the virus. She was fatigued, weak and had a dry cough — but she kept working. She said she has worked 13 days in the last two weeks, frequently taking care of more than a dozen patients at a time or working a double shift when asked. “I’d have to sit down at least 10 minutes because I just get tired, and I’m still tired honestly,” said Celine, who asked not to be fully identified because she fears losing her job. Severe worker shortages — worsened by the Omicron surge — have forced some of California’s long-term care facilities to rely on COVID-positive staff for patient care. CalMatters Read more
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At California Hospitals, Many Children Are Coming In With COVID — Not For COVID
A unicorn stuffed animal kept the little girl company in the special infectious-disease unit at Rady Children’s Hospital. The pink sign on Rachel Ward’s door warned that extra precautions were needed and that the door should remain closed. The 6-year-old could have one visitor in the room with her. Rachel was one of 28 coronavirus-positive children in the San Diego hospital on a recent Wednesday. They ranged in age from 2 weeks to 17 years old. The number of COVID-19 patients at Rady Children’s Hospital rose from a weekly average of five in the first week of December to 28 in the first week of January.
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After The Omicron Wave, Here's What Experts Say Could Come Next In 2022
Picture a not-too-distant future when you can book that summer trip to Italy or you don't have to remember to take off your mask for graduation photos. After the past 25 months, forgetting the pandemic for even a little while may sound like a fantasy - after all, the coronavirus has gotten our hopes up before. But infectious disease experts say there just may be an end in sight. Maybe. Well, let's say it's not outside the realm of possibility for 2022. CNN Read more
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Latina Mothers Carry Extra Burden During COVID Era
Maria Vega made the financially tough choice to leave her fast-food job and become a stay-at-home mother in October 2020, in the middle of a global health pandemic and the parallel economic crises it unleashed. The fact that Vega was pregnant with her third child helped make her decision a little easier. “I found out I was pregnant in August of 2020,” the 33-year-old Half Moon Bay resident said through a Spanish translator. “As an essential worker, I’m happy I made the decision to stay home because I wanted to limit my interactions with people and be healthy.” SF Chronicle Read more
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Cerebrospinal Fluid Offers Clues to Post-COVID "Brain Fog"
Some patients who develop new cognitive symptoms after a mild bout of COVID-19 have abnormalities in their cerebrospinal fluid similar to those found in people with other infectious diseases. The finding may provide insights into how SARS-CoV-2 impacts the brain. In a small study with 32 adults, comprising 22 with cognitive symptoms and 10 control participants without, researchers from UC San Francisco and Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, analyzed the cerebrospinal fluid of 17 of the participants who consented to lumbar puncture. All participants had had COVID-19 but had not required hospitalization. They found that 10 of 13 participants with cognitive symptoms had anomalies in their cerebrospinal fluid. But all four of the cerebrospinal samples from participants with no post-COVID cognitive symptoms were normal. UCSF Read more
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"Endemic" Doesn't Mean What You Think It Does
Health officials have been warning for months that COVID-19 isn’t going away; instead, it’s much more likely to become endemic here in the United States and abroad. Many also believe the highly contagious Omicron variant, which continues to drive up case counts around much of the country, could get us there. While moving from our current pandemic to an endemic state certainly sounds like a move in the right direction, health experts also caution that it doesn’t necessarily mean what people think it does. It’s certainly not the “normal” reality people lived up until 2019. Nor is our path to endemicity clear cut. Huff Post Read more
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Worker Shortages, Flight Delays Contributing To Slow Delivery Of Rapid Tests
Rebeca Andrade had been waiting days for a shipment of COVID-19 rapid tests to help keep her school open. The superintendent of a school in Salinas, California, Andrade said she wanted to be testing kids once a week to slow the spread of the Omicron variant and protect the community. But even as rapid testing to keep schools open was being pushed at the highest levels of government, Andrade was coming up short. That's because 350 miles away, some 17 million tests - including some earmarked by the California Department of Public Health for schools like Andrade's, plus nursing homes, homeless shelters and childcare centers - sat backlogged on a giant pallet for days. ABC News Read more
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LAUSD To Require Students To Wear Non-Cloth Face Masks Starting Today
Students in Los Angeles Unified School District will now be prohibited from wearing cloth masks, according to an announcement distributed Saturday by the district. Starting Monday, students must wear “well-fitted, non-cloth masks with a nose wire” at all times, including outdoors. District officials said surgical masks or higher-grade masks were acceptable, and that such masks would be available to students upon request. “Our in-school [coronavirus infection] rates have dropped but we are continuing to be diligent and agile in creating the safest learning environment,” said Shannon Haber, a spokesperson for LAUSD. LA Times Read more
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New Zealand Prime Minister Cancels Her Wedding Amid Omicron Outbreak
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand has canceled her wedding celebrations as the Pacific nation grapples with an emerging outbreak of the highly transmissible Omicron coronavirus variant.
She announced the cancellation during a news conference on Sunday in which she unveiled new public health measures and restrictions on public gatherings to limit the virus’s spread. “My wedding won’t be going ahead, but I just join many other New Zealanders who have had an experience like that as a result of the pandemic,” the 41-year-old prime minister told reporters. “Such is life.” Washington Post Read more
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Beijing's Olympic "Bubble" Will Be The Most Ambitious COVID Quarantine Ever Attempted. Will It Work?
The Winter Games is just two weeks away and outside Beijing's Olympic venues, the banners and decorations are up. But so too are long rows of metal fences and guard posts, dividing the Chinese capital and barring anyone without an official Covid-safe pass. Having been largely sealed off from the world for two years, Beijing is bracing itself for the arrival of thousands of foreign Olympians, officials, journalists and support staff - including from countries where the highly transmissible Omicron variant is raging. CNN Read more
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Total Confirmed Cases
Bay Area: 1,033,478
California: 7,691,930
U.S.: 70,700,678
Alameda County
Total Vaccines Administered: 3,356,803
Total Cases: 201,668
Total Deaths: 1,578
Test Positivity (7-day rate): 18.1%
Hospitalized Patients (as of 1/24): 448
ICU Beds Available (as of 1/24): 64
As of January 24, cases have increased recently and are extremely high. The number of hospitalized COVID patients has also risen in the Alameda County area. Deaths have remained at about the same level. The test positivity rate in Alameda County is very high, suggesting that cases are being significantly undercounted.
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Total Reported Deaths
Bay Area: 7,123
California: 78,616
U.S.: 866,541
Contra Costa County
Total Vaccines Administered: 2,339,067
Total Cases: 162,244
Total Deaths: 1,092
Test Positivity (7-day rate): 20.9%
Hospitalized Patients (as of 1/24): 333
ICU Beds Available (as of 1/24): 25
As of January 24, cases have increased recently and are extremely high. The number of hospitalized COVID patients has also risen in the Contra Costa County area. Deaths have remained at about the same level. The test positivity rate in Contra Costa County is very high, suggesting that cases are being significantly undercounted.
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Why Rapid COVID Tests Aren't More Accurate And How Scientists Hope To Improve Them
How much should you trust the results of a rapid antigen test? That's a question many people are asking these days, amid recent research and anecdotes suggesting these tests may be less sensitive to omicron. Researchers are working fast to figure out what's going on and how to improve the tests. NPR Read more
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- COVID-19 testing is a good idea, but keep in mind, people who test negative can still harbor the virus if they are early in their infection.
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A viral test tells you if you have a current infection.
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An antibody test might tell you if you had a past infection.
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Over the past week, Alameda County has averaged 3,849 new cases and 2 new death per day.
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Over the past week, Contra Costa County has averaged 2,395 new cases and 1.4 new deaths per day.
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Top 10 Locations of Cases in
Alameda County, cumulative
as of 1/24/2022
Oakland: 50,501
Hayward: 26,900
Fremont: 19,390
San Leandro: 12,462
Eden MAC: 11,606
Livermore: 10,253
Berkeley: 9,367
Union City: 8,803
Castro Valley: 6,845
Newark: 6,066
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Top 10 Locations of Cases in
Contra Costa County, cumulative
as of 1/24/2022
Richmond: 24,279
Antioch: 21,930
Concord: 17,437
Pittsburg: 14,268
San Pablo: 10,261
Brentwood: 9,899
Oakley: 8,122
Walnut Creek: 7,821
San Ramon: 6,770
Bay Point: 5,480
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About Eden Health District |
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The Eden Health District Board of Directors are Chair Mariellen Faria, Vice Chair Pam Russo, Secretary/Treasurer Roxann Lewis, Gordon Galvan and Varsha Chauhan. 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.
We welcome your feedback on our bulletin. Please contact editor Lisa Mahoney.
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