COVID-19
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Oakland Unified School District Hosts COVID-19 Vaccine Clinics Ahead Of Spring Break
The Oakland Unified School District is hosting COVID-19 vaccine clinics at several of its schools ahead of spring break. Children ages 5 and up, staff and community members are welcome at 18 on-campus clinics that will run until April 1. First and second doses will be available at all sites and booster shots will be available at selected locations.
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S.F. Expands Mobile COVID-19 Testing In Bid For Greater Equity
San Francisco is boosting its mobile COVID-19 testing options across the city in an effort to make access to testing more equitable and to ensure that testing operations are more responsive to communities’ needs, officials said Monday. The new “mobile testing strategy” is designed to allow the city to target specific neighborhoods that need more testing resources. Communities with particularly high test positivity rates and areas that have seen the greatest impact from COVID-19 will receive more testing opportunities, including access to mobile testing vans, the Department of Public Health said in a news release. SF Chronicle Read more
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COVID-19 Case Counts Dropping In Bay Area Spring Break Hotspots
With new COVID-19 surges in Europe and China, there are concerns about the latest variant leading to a spike in the Bay Area, but so far, local spring break hotspots are seeing nothing but good news. Scientists are testing the local wastewater daily, looking for any possible signs of a new surge. So far, the results in Santa Clara County have been promising. "The wastewater data from Santa Clara County is telling us two things right now," Stanford University environmental engineering Professor Alexandria Boehm said. "It's telling us that SARS-CoV-2 levels continue to be low and decrease, which suggests that the infections in the area are also decreasing and remaining low."
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Three Out Of Five Bay Area Survey Respondents Continue To Mask Up In Public Settings
Isolating. Frustrating. Disrupting. These are some of the common words local readers used to describe their COVID-19 pandemic experience, according to an informal, nine-question survey that a local news organization conducted earlier this month. To examine how the highly contagious disease upended our everyday routines, the survey asked people about their outlook on their lives, attitudes on how the health crisis has been handled and opinions on what the future holds. Over the course of nine days, 352 people from the Peninsula and East Bay responded. The poll results indicated that many people expect to continue taking precautions against COVID-19 and have faced numerous obstacles since March 2020. Pleasanton Weekly Read more
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Moderna Will Seek Emergency Authorization Of Its Vaccine For Young Children
Moderna said on Wednesday that it would seek emergency authorization of its coronavirus vaccine for children younger than 6, after interim results from its clinical trial showed that volunteers in that age group had a similar immune response to young adults when given a dose one-fourth as strong. But the firm said the vaccine proved only about 44 percent effective in preventing symptomatic illness among children 6 months to 2 years old, and 37 percent effective in children 2 through 5 years old. The company is studying the effectiveness of a booster shot, and one of its top officials said she expects a booster will be necessary for that age group, just as it is for adults. NY Times
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Vaccination Rates Have Stalled With Another Potential Uptick Coming
When the COVID vaccine first became widely available a year ago, it was a hopeful time, with demand exceeding capacity and millions of Americans jockeying for the nearest appointment slot. But, as of Monday, about a quarter of eligible adults were still not fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since last summer, the U.S. inoculation campaign has sputtered, undermined by vaccine skepticism, partisan politics and misinformation. And warnings of another potential surge, fueled by the new Omicron subvariant, BA.2, may have little impact on vaccination rates. NY Times Read more
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White House Officials Say U.S. Has Exhausted Funds To Buy Potential Fourth Vaccine Dose For All Americans
The Biden administration lacks the funds to purchase a potential fourth coronavirus vaccine dose for everyone, even as other countries place their own orders and potentially move ahead of the United States in line, administration officials said Monday. Federal officials have secured enough doses to cover a fourth shot for Americans age 65 and older as well as the initial regimen for children under 5, should regulators determine those shots are necessary, said three officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail funding decisions. But the officials say they cannot place advance orders for additional vaccine doses for those in other age groups, unless Congress passes a stalled $15 billion funding package. Washington Post Read more
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Could The COVID-19 Vaccine Become A Yearly Shot?
Some Experts Think So
Some scientists think we might be rolling up our sleeves each year not just for flu shots but for COVID-19 jabs too. Public health experts aren't quite clear on what the future holds for COVID-19 vaccines - but some say it's looking more and more like these shots could be needed on a yearly basis, similar to how flu shots are recommended each fall. "In order to keep it under control, we likely will need some form of periodic vaccination. Now, whether that's annual or every two years or every five years, we don't really know that yet. I think that that will emerge as we gather more data," Dr. Archana Chatterjee, dean of the Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University, said Monday. CNN Read more
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Pills To Fight COVID-19 Coming To A Drugstore Near You
Sore throat? Cough? Sniffles? Finally, effective treatments for COVID-19 are available. But temper your expectations. The president launched a nationwide “Test to Treat” Initiative on March 8 that seeks to make treating COVID-19 simple: You get tested at a pharmacy-based clinic. If you’re positive and at high risk, you can get antiviral pills on the spot, which can cut the chance of developing severe disease by some 85%. “It’s a very exciting time,” said Dr. Annie Luetkemeyer, professor of medicine at UC San Francisco, in a recent USC webinar. Mercury News Read more
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Immunocompromised Man Shakes Months Of COVID With Pfizer Vaccine
An immunocompromised Welsh man was stuck in his home for more than seven months with intractable COVID, until a jab set him free. Ian Lester, 37, had begun to think of his home as a prison by the time doctors tried a first-ever use of the coronavirus vaccine: giving him the shot to cure, rather than prevent, the illness. Lester suffers from Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, an immune disorder, and was never able to combat the COVID-19 he contracted in December 2020. Orange County Register Read more
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State/National/International News |
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COVID’s Severe Risk To Pregnant Women Is Real, A Large Kaiser Study In California Shows
Unvaccinated pregnant women infected with the coronavirus have more than twice the risk of having dangerous sepsis or other severe medical problems, than those who don’t have the virus, according to a study of thousands of Northern California women published Monday. The analysis of 43,886 women who gave birth at Kaiser Permanente Northern California between March 1, 2020, and March 16, 2021 — before coronavirus vaccines were widely available — revealed that babies born to mothers who contracted COVID were also more likely to be born prematurely, placing them at greater risk for brain and heart problems. SF Chronicle Read more
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New Research Shows Higher Risk Of Developing Diabetes After COVID-19 Infection
A large new study found that people who recovered from Covid-19 within the past year are 40% more likely to receive a new diagnosis of diabetes compared to those who weren’t infected. The increased risk translates into 1% of people who have had Covid-19 developing diabetes who otherwise wouldn’t have, the study’s author says, resulting in potentially millions of new cases world-wide. Most of the people with diabetes in the study, published online Monday in the journal Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, were diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, not Type 1. Some researchers say Covid-19 could also be triggering an entirely new type of diabetes in which certain cells mistakenly start to raise, rather than lower, blood sugar. The Wall Street Journal Read more
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Omicron Survives Longer On Some Surfaces, Studies Find. That May Help Explain Why It's More Contagious, But It's No Reason To Panic
Under experimental conditions, the Omicron variant of the coronavirus survives at least twice as long on surfaces like plastic, paper and skin than the original strain that emerged from Wuhan, China, which may help explain how this variant has become so contagious, two recent studies show. There's no need to start obsessively wiping and washing, however. Even though Omicron may survive longer on surfaces, you're probably still more likely to be infected by inhaling the virus rather than by touching something that's been contaminated, says Linsey Marr, an environmental engineer and aerosol scientist at Virginia Tech. CNN Read more
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Hong Kong's High Death Rate Shows The Importance of Vaccinating The Elderly
As the death toll from COVID-19 surges in Hong Kong, some scientists said that, in the era of Omicron, vaccinating as many older people as possible should be a top priority. Hong Kong, which was once one of the world’s most formidable redoubts of “zero COVID,” has offered scientists a case study about the threat Omicron poses in an entirely different setting: a dense city where people were not only largely untouched by previous infections, but also where the oldest and most vulnerable residents were largely unvaccinated. NY Times Read more
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Health Officials See Bright Future In Poop Surveillance
One of Patrick Green’s first orders of business each day is to open a tap and fill a bottle with sludge. A utilities plant operator in Modesto, a city of nearly a quarter-million people in California’s San Joaquin Valley, Green’s primary job is to help keep the city’s sewers flowing and its wastewater treated to acceptable levels of safety. But in recent months, he and his colleagues have added COVID-19 sleuthing to their job description. Sewage surveillance is proving so useful that many researchers and public health officials say it should become standard practice in tracking infectious diseases. California Healthline Read more
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COVID Rent Relief Taking a Long Time To Process? What You Can Do If You're Waiting
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Total Confirmed Cases
Bay Area: 1,286,144
California: 9,079,606
U.S.: 79,843,517
Alameda County
Primary Vaccine Series Completed: 85.1%
Total Cases: 256,536
Total Deaths: 1,815
Test Positivity (7-day rate): 1.5%
Hospitalized Patients (as of 3/23): 59
ICU Beds Available (as of 3/23): 104
As of March 23, cases have decreased recently but are still high. The numbers of hospitalized COVID patients and deaths in the Alameda County area have also fallen. The test positivity rate in Alameda County is relatively low, suggesting that testing capacity is adequate for evaluating COVID-19 spread in the area. NY Times
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Total Reported Deaths
Bay Area: 8,202
California: 88,320
U.S.: 974,799
Contra Costa County
Primary Vaccine Series Completed: 85.6%
Total Cases: 189,640
Total Deaths: 1,277
Test Positivity (7-day rate): 2.1%
Hospitalized Patients (as of 3/23): 41
ICU Beds Available (as of 3/23): 34
As of March 23, cases have decreased recently but are still high. The numbers of hospitalized COVID patients and deaths in the Contra Costa County area have also fallen. 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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How To Get Back To Working Out After COVID-19
For many people, returning to exercise after COVID-19 can be a challenge. They may find they no longer have the same level of endurance or strength that they had before their illness. And for those who have lingering symptoms that occur with long COVID, regaining their previous level of fitness can sometimes take months or longer. To help both professional and recreational athletes get back to their physical activities safely, the American College of Cardiology (ACC) released new guidance last week. Healthline 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 104 new cases and 1.4 new death per day.
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Over the past week, Contra Costa County has averaged 77 new cases and 1.6 new deaths per day.
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Top 10 Locations of Cases in
Alameda County, cumulative
as of 3/23/2022
Oakland: 75,100
Hayward: 33,412
Fremont: 26,093
San Leandro: 15,691
Eden MAC: 14,612
Berkeley: 13,207
Livermore: 12,904
Union City: 11,300
Castro Valley: 8,803
Alameda: 8,797
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Top 10 Locations of Cases in
Contra Costa County, cumulative
as of 3/23/2022
Richmond: 27,962
Antioch: 25,506
Concord: 20,489
Pittsburg: 16,493
San Pablo: 11,921
Brentwood: 11,420
Oakley: 9,551
Walnut Creek: 9,386
San Ramon: 8,101
Martinez: 6,295
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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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