COVID-19
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La Familia's Skywest Clinic Offering Bivalent Boosters
Eden Health District Board Vice Chairperson Pam Russo (second from right) was the first bivalent booster recipient at La Familia’s Skywest Clinic on Wednesday. Vaccines are administered Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Testing is still available Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The clinic is located at the Skywest Golf Course, 1401 Golf
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Contra Costa County Sees Drop In COVID-19 Deaths After Officials Adjust Response
Contra Costa County health officials say COVID-19 numbers have been declining, with deaths, case numbers and presence of the virus in county wastewater dropping in recent weeks. No COVID-19 related deaths have been reported yet in September, down from 22 in August, according to the county's COVID-19 data summary on the Contra Costa Health Services website. Hospitalizations have hit a plateau, with a daily average of 61 patients countywide over the past two weeks, slightly up from 59 the two weeks prior. County tests the past two weeks are turning up 6.82% positive. That number was 8.64% in the previous two weeks. CBS News Read more
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COVID-19 Is Waning In Sonoma County, But Wildfire Smoke Could Aggravate Symptoms For Those Who Still Get Sick
Sonoma County’s local pandemic outlook continues to improve, with infection rates dropping below the state threshold that once indicated “widespread transmission.” But don’t put those face masks away just yet. Local health experts say the start of wildfire season brings all-too familiar smoky skies, which could make viral illness worse. What’s more, health officials still strongly recommend their use indoors. “We don't know if smoke has an impact on transmission, but we do know that smoke does have an impact on developing a symptomatic illness, even severe symptomatic illness,” said Dr. Gary Green, an infectious disease specialist with Sutter Health. The Press Democrat
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HIV Infections Rose In S.F. For First Time In A Decade, Perhaps Due To Pandemic
San Francisco recorded its first year-over-year increase in new HIV infections in nearly a decade in 2021, though at least some of those cases likely were in people who became infected in 2020 and only tested positive last year due to pandemic lockdowns and other restrictions that led to testing delays. According to the city’s annual HIV/AIDS report released on Tuesday, 160 people tested positive for HIV in San Francisco last year, a 16% increase from 2020, when 138 new cases were recorded, and the first time that number has climbed since 2012. That was still fewer new infections than 2019, when 173 cases were reported, before the COVID pandemic caused major disruptions in access to testing and treatment. SF Chronicle Read more
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COVID Vaccine/Treatment News |
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Get The New Booster Shot By Halloween, White House Urges
Those deliberating when to get the updated bivalent booster against COVID-19 shouldn't wait too long, according to the White House COVID-19 response coordinator, Dr. Ashish Jha. He added that high-risk individuals should get the new shots right away and everyone else should get it in early fall. “I think it’s really important for people to get it by Halloween,” he said. “Why Halloween? Because three weeks after Halloween is Thanksgiving, and there’s a lot of travel, and you’re seeing family, and you’re seeing friends. And few weeks later, it’s the holidays.” SF Chronicle Read more
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Here Are The Side Effects To Expect From Your Omicron-Specific COVID Booster Shot
If you’re thinking of getting an Omicron-specific COVID booster shot, you might be wondering what its side effects are — and how severe they might be. Rest assured: They’re not expected to be much different from what you may have experienced with previous vaccine and booster doses. “We just don’t have any data on this [yet], essentially giving two vaccines in one shot — but biologically, I just wouldn’t expect the side effects, severity or the safety profile of the shots to be different from the current mRNA vaccines and boosters,” Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and member of an independent advisory group to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, tells CNBC Make It. CNBC Read more
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Complexity Of COVID Vaccine Program Leads To Concerns About Potential For Error
The rollout of the COVID-19 vaccination program has reached new heights of complexity with the start of the bivalent booster program, leading to concerns about the potential for more errors in the administration of vaccines. Even before the addition of the new booster shots, more than 5,300 errors in vaccine dose delivery in children alone were reported, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those errors included giving the wrong dose or the wrong product for a recipient’s age, using undiluted vaccine when dilution was called for, or administering vaccine that was past its expiration date. STAT Read more
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mRNA Flu Shot Moves Forward As Pfizer Launches Late-Stage Trial, Builds On COVID Vaccine Success
Pfizer announced on Wednesday it has launched a late-stage clinical trial to test a flu vaccine built using the same mRNA technology behind its COVID-19 shot, one of the most advanced studies for this kind of vaccine as firms push to expand beyond COVID and build upon the successes of the pandemic. Pfizer said it had dosed the first participants in the Phase 3 clinical trial designed to test an mRNA-based influenza vaccine designed using the same technology used in its widely-used COVID-19 vaccine, which it developed with German firm BioNTech. Forbes Read more
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State/National/International News |
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Burning Man Revelers Returning From The Desert With Lifelong Memories, And COVID
Burning Man’s annual gathering in the Nevada desert has never been easy on people’s lungs. The fine dust and sand coats every surface and enters every crevice, often causing respiratory symptoms attendees refer to as “playa lung.” But COVID was also present on the playa this year, and just how much is just becoming clear now, as the cleanup begins. Many of those dusty revelers who returned over the past week from the festival, which officially ended on Labor Day, are discovering their sore throats and slight coughs are not just the the normal symptoms after a particularly hot and dusty week of partying — it is also COVID in many cases. “The party is over, and now the cleanup has begun,” said Dan Abbott, a former Bay Area resident and long-time Burning Man participant, “and people are getting sick.” East Bay Times Read more
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California One Of 10 States That Still Have COVID Emergency Orders In Place
While the COVID-19 pandemic has faded as a major concern for much of the American public, there are still 10 states across the U.S. with emergency orders in place. States first declared public emergencies in March 2020 and governors kept renewing them until around the spring of 2022, when the pandemic eased after a brutal winter surge driven by the omicron variant. Unless renewed, nearly all of the emergency declarations in the remaining 10 states will expire by the beginning of 2023. The Hill Read more
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California To Give $2,500 Training Grant To Workers Who Lost Jobs During Pandemic
Living through a pandemic sucks, but for Diana McLaughlin, early 2020 was especially bad: A divorce in February 2020, societal shut-down in March, and as part of the COVID-19 economic fallout, she lost her job in April of that year, returning to full-time work only 18 months later. California lawmakers had economically distressed folks like McLaughlin in mind when last year they approved half a billion dollars on education grants worth $2,500 to help workers displaced by the pandemic acquire new job-related skills. McLaughlin is among the first 3,000 or so recipients of this grant, adult learners who were issued checks in a pilot program this spring and summer. Now the state is opening the grant to a wide range of adults with low incomes who lost their jobs or saw their hours severely cut during the pandemic. Half of the grant funds are reserved for displaced workers with children under 18. CalMatters Read more
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Gavin Newsom Rewards Law Enforcement, Fire, Health Care Workers With COVID Pay. Not Others
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, California state department leaders decided which of their employees were essential and which weren’t under guidelines issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration. Those deemed essential had to keep reporting in-person to prisons, state hospitals, fire stations and office buildings while others could work from home. Now the administration is issuing $1,500 pandemic bonuses to state law enforcement officers, health care facility employees and firefighters, but not other employees. That’s drawing claims of unfairness from some union representatives. “It’s just blatantly disrespectful that they will not acknowledge the work and the risk that these two units did,” said Brandy Johnson, an International Union of Operating Engineers representative. Sacramento Bee Read more
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New Zealand Drops Mask And Vaccine Mandates In Sweeping COVID Changes
Jacinda Ardern has declared it “time to safely turn the page” on New Zealand’s COVID-19 restrictions, scrapping all but a handful of remaining rules. New Zealand, which once eliminated the virus through the toughest pandemic rules in the world, has made relaxations similar to Australian or European conditions. Mask-wearing will no longer be mandatory in public places, and the last vaccine mandates will be ditched in two weeks under sweeping changes announced by the prime minister on Monday. The Guardian Read more
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Johns Hopkins Slows Frequency Of COVID-19 Data Publication
Johns Hopkins University is scaling back its comprehensive efforts to track the course of the Covid-19 pandemic. The data dashboard the university introduced in January 2020 has notched more than 800 million page views as government officials, researchers and the general public have scanned for context on cases, deaths and other metrics. But the dashboard has been increasingly hampered by a reduction in data reporting in the U.S. and beyond, according to university officials who run the project. Starting Sept. 21, the platform will update global case, death and vaccine data daily rather than every hour, project officials said. Wall Street Journal Read more
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L.A. County Reports Nation’s First Confirmed MPX Death
A Los Angeles County resident has died from MPX — the nation’s first confirmed fatality linked to the disease, public health officials said Monday. Officials first publicly reported the death Thursday but said the precise cause was still being probed at that point. Further investigation from the county Department of Public Health and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined the death was from MPX, also known as monkeypox, according to a statement. Another death — of an adult who was severely immunocompromised and had been diagnosed with MPX — was reported in Texas in late August. However, officials there have yet to definitively state whether that fatality was caused by the disease. LA Times Read more
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Monkeypox Shots, Treatments And Tests Are Unavailable In Much Of The World
For the past month, a couple of patients a day have sat across from Dr. Alberto Mendoza at the H.I.V. clinic where he works in Lima, Peru, to hear him confirm what they had feared: They have monkeypox. The men are tormented by the painful lesions the virus causes. They’re also afraid, because the visible sores mark them as men who have sex with men, a dangerous identity in Peru, where there is intense discrimination against homosexuality. But Dr. Mendoza, an infectious disease specialist, has little to offer. “I have no options,” he said in an interview. Neither the antiviral drug nor the vaccine being used against monkeypox in the United States and Europe is available in Peru. NY Times Read more
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Total Confirmed Cases
Bay Area: 1,745,310
California: 11,172,712
U.S.: 95,441,727
Alameda County
Primary Vaccine Series and Boosted: 73.5%
Total Cases: 348,648
Total Deaths: 2,047
Test Positivity (7-day rate): 6.3%
Hospitalized Patients (as of 9/15): 118
ICU Beds Available (as of 9/15): 94
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Total Reported Deaths
Bay Area: 9,101
California: 95,365
U.S.: 1,051,606
Contra Costa County
Primary Vaccine Series and Boosted: 70.4%
Total Cases: 269,102
Total Deaths: 1,422
Test Positivity (7-day rate): 7.5%
Hospitalized Patients (as of 9/15): 62
ICU Beds Available (as of 9/15): 44
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What Are The 3 Main Types Of Long COVID?
As experts attempt to unravel the tangle of symptoms and long-term effects of what is collectively known as “long COVID,” a new study seeks to provide some clarity. Working with data collected in a health study app by personalized nutrition company ZOE, researchers from King’s College London in the U.K. have begun to discern some order in the chaos. The study finds that long COVID can be grouped into three symptom-cluster types: neurological symptoms, respiratory symptoms, and systemic/inflammatory and abdominal symptoms. Medical News Today 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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Top 10 Locations of Cases in
Alameda County, cumulative
as of 9/15/2022
Oakland: 99,097
Hayward: 42,496
Fremont: 38,262
San Leandro: 21,156
Berkeley: 20,188
Eden MAC: 18,550
Livermore: 16,811
Union City: 15,222
Alameda: 12,945
Pleasanton: 12,416
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Top 10 Locations of Cases in
Contra Costa County, cumulative
as of 9/15/2022
Richmond: 37,244
Antioch: 34,151
Concord: 28,096
Pittsburg: 21,168
Brentwood: 17,662
San Pablo: 15,633
Walnut Creek: 14,467
San Ramon: 13,977
Oakley: 13,044
Martinez: 9,719
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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 Ed Hernandez. 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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