COVID-19
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A 2nd Wave Of COVID Through One Bay Area Family Underscores Why Getting Vaccinated Is Critical
COVID-19 has twice struck a Latino family living in a multi-generational setting in the San Francisco Bay Area, underscoring the importance of vaccination for the sake of all household members. Recovering from one bout with COVID-19 does not necessarily mean it's over. Some people are catching the virus twice. Lesley McClurg from member station KQED has the story of a Bay Area family that just recovered from their second round, underscoring why vaccines are critical for the whole family. NPR Read more
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How Much of A Risk is "Long COVID" In The Highly Vaccinated Bay Area
Among the coronavirus pandemic’s most frightening features is that a brush with COVID-19, however mild, pushes survivors into a dangerous lottery: They recover within weeks or stay ill, perhaps for a very long time. Unpredictable to doctors and confounding to researchers, “long COVID” syndrome can saddle patients with deep fatigue, scramble their thinking and rob them of breath or the sense of smell. Those are just the most common long-term complaints. The National Institutes of Health calls the syndrome a public health priority and is pouring millions of research dollars into learning more about this medical mystery. What’s missing, eight months after vaccines became widely available, is good data about how people with breakthrough infections experience long COVID, said Dr. Linda Geng, co-medical director of Stanford Medicine’s long COVID clinic. SF Chronicle Read more
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San Francisco Police Officer Dies Of COVID While On Leave For Missing Vaccination Deadline
A San Francisco police officer who was on leave for missing the city's COVID vaccination deadline has died after testing positive for the coronavirus, a police union representative and the officer's wife said. Officer Jack Nyce was a 17-year veteran of the force, the police department said in a statement on its Facebook page announcing his death. At the time of his death, Nyce was on administrative leave because he was not fully vaccinated by Nov. 1 as required by the city, according to Lt. Tracy McCray, vice president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, the Chronicle reported. San Francisco requires all employees of the city be vaccinated against COVID-19.
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Santa Returns To Stanford Shopping Center Without Pandemic Restrictions
For the first time since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Santa Claus is back in Palo Alto the way most of us remember him. Old St. Nick was well received on his first day on the job at a Palo Alto mall on Friday. This year, there’s no mask and no social distancing needed when seeing Santa at Stanford Shopping Center. Kris Kringle is vaccinated and getting up close and personal as he has in pre-pandemic years past. Children sat on Santa’s lap and even played games with him. KPIX5
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Is The Remote Work Revolution Here To Stay In The Bay Area?
Phillip Parent, a tech worker, used to get miffed when colleagues had work-from-home schedules. Why, he thought, should they get special treatment? The Bay Area native worked the Silicon Valley office grind: “We got in early, we left late.” Then COVID-19 struck, offices snapped shut and Parent began managing IT support work from his San Mateo apartment. After more than a year-and-a-half at home, and major life changes and milestones - switching jobs, starting a family, working on the couch in pajamas with his daughter - he’s changed his mind about where he works.
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What We Know So Far About Waning Vaccine Effectiveness
As tens of millions who are eligible in the United States consider signing up for a COVID-19 booster shot, a growing body of early global research shows that the vaccines authorized in the United States remain highly protective against the disease’s worst outcomes over time, with some exceptions among older people and those with weakened immune systems. But while the vaccines’ effectiveness against severe disease and hospitalization has mostly held steady, even through the summer surge of the highly transmissible Delta variant, a number of published studies show that their protection against infection, with or without symptoms, has fallen. Public health experts say this decline does not mean that the vaccines are not working. NY Times Read more
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WHO Calls Distribution Of COVID Boosters A "Scandal" As Poor Nations Struggle To Get First Shots
The disparity between the global distribution of Covid-19 boosters and first shots to people in developing nations is a “scandal,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a briefing Friday. Inequitable vaccine distribution has hit Africa particularly hard, where just 6% of the continent’s population is fully vaccinated against Covid, the WHO’s Regional Office for Africa reported as of Oct. 28. WHO officials have for weeks criticized the distribution of boosters to healthy adults, calling on high-income countries to reallocate their surplus doses to immunize health-care personnel, the elderly and other high-risk adults across poorer nations. CNBC
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COVID Vaccine Holdouts Are Caving To Mandates - Then Scrambling To "Undo" Their Shots
In a TikTok video that has garnered hundreds of thousands of views, Dr. Carrie Madej outlined the ingredients for a bath she said will “detox the vax” for people who have given into COVID-19 vaccine mandates. The ingredients in the bath are mostly not harmful, although the supposed benefits attached to them are entirely fictional. Baking soda and epsom salts, she falsely claims, will provide a “radiation detox” to remove radiation Madej falsely believes is activated by the vaccine. Bentonite clay will add a “major pull of poison,” she says, based on a mistaken idea in anti-vaccine communities that toxins can be removed from the body with certain therapies. NBC News Read more
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I Just Got A Booster. Can I ... Go Crazy?
With more Americans getting COVID-19 boosters these days than first shots, and many more potentially becoming eligible as the FDA is currently considering Pfizer's request to approve its booster for the general population, the number of people enjoying boosted vaccine status is skyrocketing. But what does that new status buy you, exactly? We spoke to Charlotte Baker, assistant professor of epidemiology at Virginia Tech, and Abraar Karan, an infectious disease doctor at Stanford University, to find out. What a booster means, they say, is that you've got your best layer of protection - your vaccine - back in prime condition. NPR Read more
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The Big Questions About COVID-19 Booster Shots
All of a sudden, it seems a lot of people are getting COVID-19 booster shots. The additional doses of Moderna’s and Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccines have been approved in the U.S. for people 65 and up as well as at-risk populations, such as people with certain health conditions and front-line workers. Everyone who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine can now get a booster. Meanwhile, Pfizer is asking for approval of booster shots for all Americans who previously got its vaccine. Vox
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Here’s Why New COVID-19 Anti-Viral Pills Could Be Our "Penicillin Moment"
Until now, antiviral drug research has been a place of broken dreams and abandoned efforts, with few success stories to rival the miracle cures of antibiotics. But with the creation of pills to kill the COVID-19 virus, the field may be nearing its “penicillin moment.” Two new oral medicines made by Pfizer and Merck - convenient to take at home, for only five days - offer a remarkable 50% to 89% reduction in hospitalizations and deaths in high-risk people if given soon after infection takes hold, according to company data. Mercury News Read more
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State/National/International News |
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Ellume Recalls More Than 2 Million At-Home COVID-19 Tests Over False Positives
The Food and Drug Administration said more than 2 million at-home COVID-19 tests from Australia-based Ellume USA LLC have been recalled because of a number of false-positive results. The federal agency categorized the recall as a Class I, its most serious classification. It said false-positive test results could lead to serious health issues including unnecessary treatments and isolation, delayed treatments of the actual illness and spread of COVID-19 if those who received false-positive results are clustered with those who accurately tested positive. There have been 35 reported incidents where the Ellume tests falsely identified someone as positive for COVID-19, according to the FDA. There have been no reported deaths. Negative results from the COVID-19 tests weren’t affected by the issue, according to Ellume and the FDA. Wall Street Journal Read more
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As Infections Rise, The San Joaquin Valley Becomes The Land Of The Eternal COVID Surge
This is what the COVID-19 pandemic looks like in the part of California where the Delta variant surge refuses to let up. In Fresno County, understaffed hospitals have been so clogged that ambulance crews have stopped transporting people unless they have a life-threatening emergency. In Tulare County, a Visalia hospital - which has been treating more COVID-19 patient in recent days than any other medical facility in the state - declared an internal disaster last week on a day 51 patients in the emergency room waited for a bed to open up. LA Times Read more
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COVID-19 Cases Are Spiking In Europe. What Does That Mean For California?
As the winter holidays approach, COVID-19 cases are skyrocketing in Europe - an unwelcome reminder even thousands of miles away here in California that the pandemic is nowhere near an end point yet, and that more hard times may lie ahead. Last week, 2 million cases were reported in the continent - the highest number of cases in a single week in the region since the pandemic started, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, said in a news briefing on Friday. Deaths also rose by 10% across the region. Dr. John Swartzberg, an infectious disease and public health expert at UC Berkeley, said that what’s happening in Europe and the United Kingdom is “tragic,” and he fears it does not bode well for California.
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Austria Orders Lockdown For Unvaccinated People As COVID Cases Soar
The Austrian government has ordered a nationwide lockdown for unvaccinated people that started at midnight Sunday to combat rising coronavirus infections and deaths. The move prohibits unvaccinated people 12 and older from leaving their homes except for basic activities such as working, grocery shopping, going for a walk - or getting vaccinated. Authorities are concerned about rising infections and deaths and that soon hospital staff will no longer be able to handle the growing influx of COVID-19 patients. ABC7 Read more
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"They See Us As The Enemy": School Nurses Battle COVID-19, And Angry Parents
When a junior high school student in western Oregon tested positive for the coronavirus last month, Sherry McIntyre, a school nurse, quarantined two dozen of the student’s football teammates. The players had spent time together in the locker room unmasked, and, according to local guidelines, they could not return to school for at least 10 days. Some parents took the news poorly. They told Ms. McIntyre that she should lose her nursing license or accused her of violating their children’s educational rights. Another nurse in the district faced similar ire when she quarantined the volleyball team. This fall, after facing repeated hostility from parents, they started locking their office doors.
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A Texas Hospital Suspends A Doctor's Privileges For Spreading "Misinformation" About COVID-19
A Texas hospital says it has suspended the privileges of a doctor who spread misinformation about COVID-19 on her social media. Dr. Mary Bowden, an ear, nose and throat doctor at Houston Methodist Hospital, posted "harmful" and "dangerous misinformation" about COVID-19 and its treatments, according to the hospital. The doctor was a recent addition to Houston Methodist's medical staff and used her social media to "express her personal and political opinions about the COVID-19 vaccine and treatments," Houston Methodist said. Bowden's Twitter account shows a series of tweets praising the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin.
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New Clues To The Biology Of Long COVID Are Starting To Emerge
Kelly LaDue thought she was done with COVID-19 in the fall of 2020 after being tormented by the virus for a miserable couple of weeks. "And then I started with really bad heart-racing with any exertion. It was weird," says LaDue, 54, of Ontario, N.Y. "Walking up the stairs, I'd have to sit down and rest. And I was short of breath. I had to rest after everything I did." A year later, LaDue still feels like a wreck. She gets bad headaches and wakes up with pain all over her body on more days than not. She also experiences a sudden high-pitched whistling in her ears, bizarre phantom smells and vibrations in her legs. Her brain is so foggy most of the time that she had to quit her job as a nurse and is afraid to drive. NPR Read more
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Total Confirmed Cases
Bay Area: 607,251
California: 5,005,192
U.S.: 47,074,698
Alameda County
Total Vaccines Administered: 2,647,948
Total Cases: 120,405
Total Deaths: 1,467
Test Positivity (7-day rate): 1.3%
Hospitalized Patients (as of 11/15): 79
ICU Beds Available (as of 11/15): 116
As of November 15, cases have stayed about the same recently and are still high. The numbers of hospitalized COVID patients and deaths in the Alameda County area have fallen. The test positivity rate in Alameda County is relatively low, suggesting that testing capacity is adequate for evaluating COVID spread in the area. NY Times
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Total Reported Deaths
Bay Area: 6,727
California: 73,111
U.S.: 763,092
Contra Costa County
Total Vaccines Administered: 1,886,564
Total Cases: 100,557
Total Deaths: 1,038
Test Positivity (7-day rate): 1.9%
Hospitalized Patients (as of 11/15): 45
ICU Beds Available (as of 11/15): 46
As of November 15, cases have stayed about the same recently and are still high. The number of hospitalized COVID patients has fallen in the Contra Costa County area. Deaths have remained at about the same level. The test positivity rate in Contra Costa County is relatively low, suggesting that testing capacity is adequate for evaluating COVID-19 spread in the area. NY Times
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Should You Put Your COVID Vaccination Status on Your Résumé?
Once you’ve chosen whether to be vaccinated for COVID-19, you may have another big decision to make if you’re looking for a job: Should you put your vaccination status on your résumé? While some employers are still figuring out whether they want to require all of their employees to be vaccinated, it does appear that vaccination status already is affecting the choice of who gets hired. According to a survey of 1,250 hiring managers conducted by ResumeBuilder.com, 33 percent of respondents said that they would automatically eliminate résumés that didn’t include COVID-19 vaccination status. Including your vaccination on your résumé may not only help you get past the first cut with hiring managers, but it may also boost your chance of getting the job, according to the survey. Among the hiring managers who participated, 69 percent said they are more likely to hire an applicant who already has been vaccinated. AARP 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 132 new cases and 2.6 new deaths per day.
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Over the past week, Contra Costa County has averaged 104 new cases and 0.4 new death per day.
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Top 10 Locations of Cases in
Alameda County, cumulative
as of 11/15/21
Oakland: 37,608
Hayward: 17,296
Fremont: 10,746
Eden MAC: 7,514
San Leandro: 7,410
Livermore: 6,533
Union City: 5,110
Berkeley: 5,135
Castro Valley: 3,779
Newark: 3,574
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Top 10 Locations of Cases in
Contra Costa County, cumulative
as of 11/15/21
Richmond: 15,131
Antioch: 14,645
Concord: 11,317
Pittsburg: 9,563
San Pablo: 6,621
Brentwood: 6,330
Oakley: 5,338
Walnut Creek: 4,373
Bay Point: 3,810
San Ramon: 3,299
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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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