COVID-19
breaking news & updates
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"This virus is like the wind — you can't stop the wind. It's going to continue to mutate and become more infectious. But as long as we can protect against severe disease at this stage of the pandemic, I can live with that."
Dr. Cody Meissner, Dartmouth University Pediatric Infectious Disease Physician and Member of the FDA's Advisory Panel for Vaccines
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COVID Test Resources
Food Pantries
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Bay Area Businesses Are Still In Survival Mode. These ZIP Codes Are Suffering The Most
Before the pandemic, Papenhausen Hardware in San Francisco could make about $10 in profit selling a garbage disposal for $129. It wasn’t a king’s ransom, but it was the kind of transaction that has kept the place afloat and serving the West Portal neighborhood for almost 90 years — through earthquakes and multiple fires. But with COVID-19 concerns increasingly in the rearview for many people, small businesses like Papenhausen are still locked in a struggle for survival, battling the immutable laws of economics and the permanent changes brought on by the pandemic. SF Chronicle
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Bay Area Lawmaker Calls For Hospitals To Meet Behavioral Health Staffing Standards
In an effort to address a growing need for mental health and addiction care, a bill was introduced on Monday in the state assembly to develop a minimum staffing requirement for behavioral health emergencies in California hospitals. Introduced by Assemblymember Matt Haney, D-San Francisco, Assembly Bill 1001 would reportedly ensure there is enough qualified staff available in all units of a hospital to promptly assist those experiencing mental health and addiction crises. CBS News Read more
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"I’m Being Treated Like An Addict": A New Kind Of Drug Crisis Is Descending On The Bay Area
Two decades ago, Tom Rudderow underwent spinal fusion surgery. At first, it appeared all had gone well. As he healed, however, his pain persisted. His surgeon eventually diagnosed him with arachnoiditis, an incurable disorder that, he was told, would cause him a lifetime of suffering. “I remember this surgeon coming into the room crying,” Rudderow told me over the phone last week, from his home in Oakland. “He said, ‘The only thing you can do is take painkillers, there’s nothing else that will help you with this.’ ” That diagnosis has rung true. Without his medication, Rudderow told me, he can’t even walk. So, for 20 years, he’s taken morphine daily in order to function. SF Chronicle
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Vaccine/Testing/Treatment News |
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China Approves An mRNA COVID Vaccine, Its First
China has for the first time approved a Covid-19 vaccine based on mRNA technology, greenlighting a homegrown shot months after the ruling Communist Party eliminated its strict pandemic restrictions. China has long refused to use the foreign-made mRNA shots that were crucial in easing the pandemic in many parts of the world and that the United States first authorized for emergency use in December 2020. Beijing chose instead to promote its own pharmaceutical firms, first in rolling out a more traditional but less effective Covid vaccine, and later, in the pursuit of a homegrown mRNA, or messenger RNA, vaccine. NY Times Read more
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If You Had COVID Before You Were Vaccinated, You Might Have Less Immunity Than You Think, Study Says
People who caught COVID-19 before they were vaccinated had a weaker immune response to the shots than those who never had the virus, potentially leaving them less protected against reinfection, new research shows. Co-funded by the National Institutes of Health, the study released Monday challenges older research that suggested a prior COVIUD infection enhanced a vaccinated individual’s immune response — a phenomenon known as hybrid immunity, which some scientists believe provides the best protection against reinfection. CNBC Read more
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Vaccine Makers Prep Bird Flu Shot For Humans "Just In Case"; Rich Nations Lock In Supplies
Some of the world's leading makers of flu vaccines say they could make hundreds of millions of bird flu shots for humans within months if a new strain of avian influenza ever jumps across the species divide. One current outbreak of avian flu known as H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b has killed record numbers of birds and infected mammals. Human cases, however, remain very rare, and global health officials have said the risk of transmission between humans is still low. Executives at three vaccine manufacturers told Reuters they are already developing or about to test sample human vaccines that better match the circulating subtype, as a precautionary measure against a future pandemic. Reuters Read more
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State/National/International News |
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End Of COVID Emergency Will Usher In Changes Across The U.S. Health System
The Biden administration’s decision to end the COVID-19 public health emergency in May will institute sweeping changes across the health care system that go far beyond many people having to pay more for COVID tests. In response to the pandemic, the federal government in 2020 suspended many of its rules on how care is delivered. That transformed essentially every corner of American health care — from hospitals and nursing homes to public health and treatment for people recovering from addiction. Kaiser Health News Read more
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How Immune Are We? Why Answering This Question Is Essential For Post-Pandemic Life
The pandemic’s formal end on May 11 marks neither victory nor peace: It’s a cessation of hostilities with a dangerous virus that is still very much with us. To maintain such an uneasy truce, Americans will have to stay protected enough to prevent humanity’s viral foe from staging a break-out of our shaky accord. Providing that assurance, in turn, assumes scientists and public health officials all agree on what it means to be “protected enough,” and that they can tell whether people are meeting that mark. On both counts, the nation’s readiness to monitor this armistice falls short. The trouble is no one has a clear fix on the extent of Americans’ immunity to the virus that causes COVID-19. And beneath that lies a more fundamental problem: that scientists and public health officials still have not settled on what it means to be immune or adopted a common yardstick for measuring it. LA Times Read more
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Rapidly Spreading Fungus Already In California, 27 Other States Presents "Urgent" Threat, CDC Warns
A fungus that poses “an urgent antimicrobial resistance threat,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has already been detected in more than half of U.S. states. Candida auris, or C. auris, is so concerning because it is often resistant to anti-fungal drugs, making it hard to treat infections. It can also be hard to identify with standard lab tests, making it even more difficult to treat properly and early. The fungus was first detected in the United States in 2016. The fungus “spread at an alarming rate” between 2020 and 2021 in health care facilities, the CDC wrote in a memo released Monday and has continued to spread in 2022. KTLA Read more
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Prescription For Housing? California Wants Medicaid To Cover 6 Months Of Rent
Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose administration is struggling to contain a worsening homelessness crisis despite record spending, is trying something bold: tapping federal healthcare funding to cover rent for homeless people and those at risk of losing their housing. States are barred from using federal Medicaid dollars to pay directly for rent, but California’s governor is asking the administration of President Biden, a fellow Democrat, to authorize a new program called “transitional rent,” which would provide up to six months of rent or temporary housing for low-income enrollees who rely on the state’s healthcare safety net — a new initiative in his arsenal of programs to fight and prevent homelessness. LA Times Read more
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Mobile Clinics Really Got Rolling In The Pandemic. A New Law Will Help Them Cast A Wider Safety Net
Nearly 12 years ago, a nonprofit centered on substance abuse prevention in Lyon County, Nevada, broadened its services to dental care. Leaders with the Healthy Communities Coalition were shocked into action after two of their food pantry volunteers used pliers to pull each other’s abscessed teeth. The volunteers saw no other option to relieve their overwhelming pain in the small town where they lived, 40 miles southeast of Reno, because of a dearth of dental care providers. That drastic act, said Wendy Madson, executive director for the coalition, prompted her organization to use mobile clinics to offer health and dental services in rural communities where there aren’t enough patients to support brick-and-mortar offices. Kaiser Health News Read more
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COVID Fraud Victims Are Still Struggling To Clear Their Names
A little over two years ago, Richard Loew and his wife Donna were settling into a relaxing, new stage of their life: retirement in Florida. But then came a government-branded letter, informing them that payments were due on nearly $100,000 of pandemic-relief loans, called Economic Injury Disaster Loans, or EIDL. The loans were registered to the Loews’ Palm City, Florida, address. Each was for under $50,000. The Loews are just two of the thousands of Americans whose stolen identities were used to wrongly obtain COVID-19 relief money as over $5 trillion was pushed out to the American public to keep a halted economy afloat. ABC News Read more
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Ignoring Experts, China's Sudden Zero-COVID Exit Cost Lives
When China suddenly scrapped onerous zero-COVID measures in December, the country wasn’t ready for a massive onslaught of cases, with hospitals turning away ambulances and crematoriums burning bodies around the clock.
Chinese state media claimed the decision to open up was based on “scientific analysis and shrewd calculation,” and “by no means impulsive.” But in reality, China’s ruling Communist Party held off on repeated efforts by top medical experts to kickstart exit plans until it was too late. Instead, the reopening came suddenly at the onset of winter, when the virus spreads most easily. HuffPost Read more
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What Berkeley’s New Mental Health Crisis Team Will Look Like
Berkeley is securing resources for its new, 24/7 mental health response team, which will be dispatched to handle emergencies in public spaces and private homes. Officials have begun hiring about 21 staff members for the fledgling Specialized Care Unit, hoping they will begin responding to Berkeley residents facing drug and mental-health emergencies starting in June. The pilot program, which follows two and a half years of planning and research sparked by calls for police reform in the summer of 2020, will operate independently from the Berkeley Police Department. Berkeleyside Read more
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Black Veterans Were More Often Denied VA Benefits For PTSD Than White Counterparts, Newly Surfaced Study Shows
A newly surfaced 2017 internal Veterans Affairs report shows Black veterans were more often denied benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder than their white counterparts. The analysis crunched claims data from fiscal year 2011 through 2016 and showed that Black veterans seeking disability benefits for PTSD were denied 57% of the time, compared to 43% for white veterans. The report emerged as part of an open records lawsuit filed by an advocacy group for Black veterans. NBC News Read more
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Fentanyl Crisis/Drug Trends |
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Newsom Doubles Down On Naloxone Distribution In New "Master Plan" To Curb Overdose Deaths
On the heels of his statewide tour introducing proposals aimed at tackling California’s homelessness, mental health and substance use disorder crises, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday announced a plan to earmark just shy of $100 million in next year’s state budget for overdose prevention services. Under the governor’s “Master Plan for Tackling the Fentanyl and Opioid Crisis” (PDF), the brunt of funding — $79 million — would go toward distributing naloxone, a nasal spray or injectable that can reverse opioid overdoses. An additional $3.5 million would be used to distribute the medicine in middle and high schools, where overdoses have increased in recent years. KQED Read more
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On The Frontlines Of Oakland’s Methamphetamine Crisis
In the early 2000s, Katie O’Bryant was a homeless teenager living on the streets of Berkeley and San Francisco. Like many people who use drugs, she found that different substances played very specific roles in her life. As someone who was opiate dependent, O’Bryant needed to use heroin to function on a day-to-day basis. But she also took other drugs recreationally to get high and relied on stimulants to balance out heroin’s sedative effects — something that dealers took into account by selling heroin and cocaine as a packaged deal. Oaklandside Read more
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Fentanyl Accounts For A Majority Of Fatal Overdoses. But ERs Aren’t Testing For It
When Tyler Shamash survived a drug overdose at 19, his mother, Juli, asked his doctor several times if he’d been tested for fentanyl. Tyler had been in and out of sober living homes in Los Angeles after battling addiction for years, and his family suspected he may have been taking illicit drugs. The doctor said they had run a standard drug test and fentanyl hadn’t come up in the toxicology screen. Juli Shamash believes the doctor didn’t know that fentanyl isn’t included in the standard test run in emergency rooms across the country. A standard drug test panel in most emergency rooms checks only for marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines, PCP and natural and semi-synthetic opioids (like heroin and oxycodone) — but not synthetic opioids like fentanyl. NBC News Read more
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Why The News Is So Negative — And What We Can Do About It
Journalists have always been a fairly morose bunch, and the news they produce reflects that. Communications scholars have found that across many years and countries, coverage of political topics tends to more often be conveyed in a negative or cynical tone rather than a positive one; one study in the mid-2000s found that about half of US, German, Italian, and Austrian campaign coverage conveyed bad news, while as little as 6 percent conveyed good news. By some measures, the situation is deteriorating; a recent study found that the “proportion of headlines denoting anger, fear, disgust and sadness” grew markedly in the US between 2000 and 2019. Vox 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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About Eden Health District |
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The Eden Health District Board of Directors are Chair Pam Russo, Vice Chair Ed Hernandez, Secretary/Treasurer Roxann Lewis, Mariellen Faria and Surlene Grant. 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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