Eden Health District COVID-19 Bulletin
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"
I know this ceremony looks a little bit different. But I know you can overcome all obstacles — you have, over and over, the past couple of years.’’
Michael Ervin, Paradise, CA High School Principal, NY Times,
6/15/20
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From delivering the news to shopping for scores
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As the owner of a small business in Chatham, New Jersey, Greg Dailey supplements his income by delivering newspapers. Early in the pandemic, a long-time, 88-year-old customer asked him if he wouldn’t mind leaving the paper near her door as the 25 foot walk to the lawn was so trying on her. She was afraid to leave her house because of the coronavirus.
That evening while at the grocery store, Dailey had an epiphany: “This woman is afraid to walk even a few steps out of her home. How in the world, with the coronavirus leaving many seniors afraid to even open the door to their homes, was she getting groceries?” The next day, he offered to be of service, and offer that she accepted, and asked if he could also pick some things up for her neighbor. Dailey extended the offer, sending a note to all his delivery customers; within days he had dozens of takers.
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The entire Dailey family stepped in to help. Daughter Erin began organizing the orders into an Excel sheet. Wife Cherlyn orders items ahead to save time. Sons Sean and Brian were enlisted to carry groceries.
How long will they continue to shop for their new friends? “We are at the very beginning of this. It’s going to be months.”
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Alameda County:
4,320
Contra Costa County:
1,959
California:
152,466
U.S.:
2,100,749
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Alameda County:
112
Contra Costa County:
44
California:
5,083
U.S.:
115,827
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KRON 4 News, June 12, 2020
Alameda County plans to ease coronavirus restrictions under its updated health order that will take effect on June 19. Outdoor museums, outdoor restaurant dining, religious services, indoor and outdoor retail and outdoor fitness classes can reopen under the Health Officer Orders. Indoor and outdoor retail and outdoor dining will be allowed to open at reduced capacity to ensure physical distancing and safety plans are in place.
Residents and businesses are still strongly recommended to continue focusing primarily on pick-up and delivery options.
Limited religious services will be permitted to resume for up to 100 people or less than 25% building capacity, whichever is lower.
Pleasanton Weekly, June 14, 2020
In response to Alameda County allowing for the reopening of outdoor dining, Pleasanton city officials will close Main Street to vehicular traffic on weekends starting next Friday afternoon (June 19) to give restaurants and shops more room to operate outdoors. "We are pleased to hear Alameda County Public Health Department has accelerated the reopening of some local businesses next Friday, including indoor and outdoor retail and outdoor dining," stated Pleasanton City Manager Nelson Fialho.
CNBC, June 13, 2020
All of the UCSF doctors said they saw patients in their forties and fifties, who didn’t meet the “typical” profile for Covid-19 because they were otherwise healthy. “There’s no way to describe how awful this disease is until you see it,” said Dr. Michelle Yu, a pulmonary and critical care doctor from UCSF.
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Mission Local, June 12, 2020
In a surprising twist of fate, the virus that closed their shops, ended their jobs and unsettled their lives has presented some San Francisco Mission District businesses with a lifeline to solvency, or at least a sandwich: making masks. Throughout the Mission, from the upscale Valencia commercial corridor to the grittier Mission Street or the Latinx mom-and-pop shops on 24th Street, masks abound, homemade, imported, some possibly contraband. Often the designs are a reflection of the seller.
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Associated Press, June 12, 2020
Take the stairs, not the elevator, down from your hotel room. Encourage people to bring their own food and drinks to your cookout. Use hand sanitizer after banking at an ATM. Call ahead to restaurants and nail salons to make sure staff are wearing face coverings. And no high-fives, or even elbow bumps, at the gym. These are some of the tips in
long-awaited guidance
from U.S. health officials about how to reduce risk of coronavirus infection for Americans who are attempting some semblance of normal life.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted the guidelines Friday, along with
a second set
for organizing and attending big gatherings such as concerts, sporting events, protests and political rallies.
But the guidelines are “not intended to endorse any particular type of event,” the CDC’s Dr. Jay Butler said in a Friday call with reporters.
New CDC Guidelines
LA Times, June 12, 2020
At popular destinations like
Santa Barbara
,
Napa Valley
and
Los Angeles
, tourism boosters are eagerly inviting the masses back and treating the state’s stay-at-home order as history. But that’s not what state public health officials are saying, at least not yet. The state
Public Health Office gives this advice on its website
: “You can travel for urgent matters or if such travel is essential to your permitted work. Even though businesses around the state are opening up, avoid travelling long distances for vacations or pleasure as much as possible."
Reuters, June 15, 2020
The Food and Drug Administration on Monday revoked the emergency use authorization for malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19, the use of which has been championed by U.S. President Donald Trump. The FDA said based on new evidence, it was no longer reasonable to believe that oral formulations of hydroxychloroquine and the related drug chloroquine may be effective in treating the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus.
SF Chronicle, June 15, 2020
The discovery of antibodies that block the most infectious elements of the coronavirus is helping Bay Area scientists unlock the many mysteries of human immunity, and could be crucial in the development of a vaccine. Epidemiologists have found “neutralizing antibodies” in fewer than 5% of COVID-19 patients, but the ones they are now attempting to isolate are unique in their ability to prevent SARS-CoV-2, the specific coronavirus that causes the illness, from entering human cells.
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NPR, June 15, 2020
San Francisco librarian Lisa Fagundes is part of the first team of contact tracers trained through a new virtual academy based at the University of California, San Francisco. The state awarded the university an $8.7 million contract in May to expand the academy and train 20,000 new contact tracers throughout California by July, one of the largest such efforts in the country. In addition to librarians, San Francisco has asked government employees from the tax assessor and city attorney offices to help out, including financial analysts, paralegals, and investigators. Some rural counties have been recruiting sheriff's deputies for the job.
EdSource, June 15, 2020
California’s vaccination rates for children took a nosedive just a few weeks after Gov. Newsom issued a statewide stay-at-home order in March to slow the spread of Covid-19, causing concerns among health professionals about the potential for outbreaks of other diseases during the pandemic.
LA Times, June 14, 2020
The mid-March American Airlines Flight 341 from JFK to LAX was far from full, but nonetheless, public health officials failed to inform the 49 people aboard that one of their fellow travelers hospitalized the next day with Covid symptoms. Without instructions to self-quarantine or seek testing, people returned to their families and communities ignorant of their exposure, potentially seeding new outbreaks. The mishandling of this case and others raises questions about how well public officials have carried out contact tracing thus far and whether they are prepared for an expected uptick in cases as California reopens.
Sacramento Bee, June 12, 2020
With all the businesses that are opening back up in some California counties, bars, gyms and movie theaters, to name a few, it can be easy to lose track of just what stage of reopening California as a whole is in. Officially, California is still in Stage 2 of reopening from the shutdown prompted by the coronavirus pandemic. Some counties have permission to move ahead quickly through Stage 2. “There is not yet a timeline for moving to Stage 3 statewide,” according to a statement from the California Department of Public Health.
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The Guardian, June 15, 2020
Coronavirus cases are climbing in Arizona, Florida, South Carolina and Arkansas. In Texas, hospitalizations for Covid-19 are up 42% since Memorial Day. In Oklahoma, health officials have expressed concern that a Trump campaign rally in Tulsa this weekend
could contribute to the spread of the disease
in a city that has experienced a recent rise in cases.
Washington Post, June 14, 2020
Almost 90 percent of the 20 million workers who lost their jobs in April said they had been laid off temporarily and expected to return to their jobs, but economists are far less sanguine. Roughly 9 million workers who believe they have been laid off temporarily will end up losing their jobs permanently, according to Oxford Economics. More than $6.5 trillion in household wealth vanished during the first three months of this year as the pandemic tightened its hold on the global economy, the Federal Reserve said this week. Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell notes, “We went from the lowest level of unemployment in 50 years to the highest level in close to 90 years, and we did it in two months.”
Texas Tribune, June 13, 2020
With the number of people hospitalized for the new coronavirus continuing to climb in Texas, Gov.
Greg Abbott
said there’s “no real need to ratchet back the opening of businesses in the state.” One of the reasons is “because we have so many hospital beds available to anybody who gets ill.”
The Guardian, June 15, 2020
Covid-19 hit Corona, a district in the borough of Queens
New York
, hard. The first, deadly, wave is over but the economic and health consequences will likely shake the neighborhood for years to come. The toll the coronavirus has taken on the coincidentally-named Corona tells a story of race, poverty and inequality in America.
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For some people, the pandemic hits close to home as loved ones battle the disease. For others fortunate enough to recover from Covid-19, the disease is a memory they hope others do not have to share.
For Florida resident Vernet Stallworth the coronavirus is a disease that made her sicker than she has eve nbeen and that's exactly why she's urging people to take it seriously.
Back in March, Stallworth thought she
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was simply exhausted, or maybe her asthma was flaring up. She was not feeling well, but didn’t think anything terrible was wrong. When Stallworth called her mother, Dr. Rosemarie Solomon, Solomon had a feeling something else was going on. She urged her daughter to get an X-ray, which showed lungs full of pneumonia. “It is definitely not like the flu," Stallworth said. "When they say it’s 10 times worse than the flu, it is. It is like your whole body is completely shut down."
After weeks in quarantine and a slow recovery, the first thing Stallworth and her family did was travel to see her mother, just in time for Solomon's 60th birthday. Stallworth's hopeful her own harrowing road to recovery encourages people to be cautious so they can avoid getting sick.
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SF Examiner, June 13, 2020
Complying with national coronavirus guidelines to reopen San Francisco schools in the fall could cost a minimum of $27 million at a time when The City’s school district is already contending with a $132 million budget deficit, officials said Friday.SFUSD Deputy Superintendent Myong Leigh said the
School Superintendents Association (AASA) estimates
that cleaning procedures, supplies, and additional staff needed for coronavirus precautions outlined by the Centers for Disease Control would cost a national average of $450 per student.
SF Chronicle, June 14, 2020
Even as the region learns to live with COVID-19, it’s already facing a new scourge: Hunger that may grow as rapidly as the virus that triggered it. Since schools closed, the San Francisco Unified School District has given out more than 1.5 million meals at grab-and-go sites and via deliveries. Oakland Unified School District has distributed more than 2.3 million student meals, 300,000 adult meals, half a million pounds of groceries and 400,000 diapers since mid-March.
SF Chronicle, June 15, 2020
As colleges in the Bay Area and across the country prepare for a fall term amid the coronavirus pandemic, faculty members wrestle with daunting challenges, including the health risks and logistical hurdles of potentially returning to the classroom. Many schools around the nation are forging ahead, with safety protocols. About 66% of U.S. colleges and universities are planning for in-person instruction, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Bay Area schools seem to be moving more cautiously.
Washington Post, June 15, 2020
All four of Uzma Jafri’s children will stay home this fall, even if the public schools they attend in Phoenix open their physical doors. Jafri, a doctor, and her husband, a pediatric dentist, do not think schools will be a safe environment during the pandemic, even if
guidelines proposed by the CDC
are in place. “In August, for schools, it’s a petri dish when it’s not a pandemic,” Jafri said. “We both know how viruses work, and we cannot understand how schools can open and be safe.”
LifeHacker, June 14, 2020
If you’re one of the millions of people who have lost their jobs during the pandemic or have had your hours or workload reduced, you may have considered applying to be a contact tracer. If this is the case, or if you’re just curious about how the process works, you can enroll in a free online course on contact tracing through
Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health
.
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NY Times, June 15, 2020
The senior class of Paradise High, 142 strong, is a unique bunch, survivors of back-to-back crises that tested bonds of friendship, family and community in extreme ways. As juniors, most of them lost homes in the Camp Fire, which razed much of the Northern California town. As seniors, their final months of school were spent sheltering in place, cut off from one another and the usual rites of passage they had hoped would help restore those bonds. All they wanted was a proper graduation, a final glorious expression of teenage solidarity, a moment to collectively acknowledge all that had been endured and overcome.
Dr. Laurence Steinberg, professor of psychology at Temple University, NY Times, June 15, 2020
"[University reopening plans] are so unrealistically optimistic that they border on delusional and could lead to outbreaks of Covid-19 among students, faculty and staff. . . . I look forward to a time when we are able to return to campus and in-person teaching. But a thorough discussion of whether, when and how we reopen our colleges and universities must be informed by what developmental science has taught us about how adolescents and young adults think. As someone who is well-versed in this literature, I will ask to teach remotely for the time being."
LA Times, June 14, 2020
If schools can carry it off, in-person schooling is a big improvement for many students over remote learning. Class sizes would be smaller, and kids would experience more than just lessons. They would receive companionship, connection to a bigger community, physical activity and more direct help mastering their lessons.
But the “ifs” are big ones. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s current budget contains draconian cuts to education at the same time that schools must pay for masks, hand sanitizer, temperature checks, more bus trips and the like. In Los Angeles and much of the rest of the nation, we have not managed to bring down COVID-19 cases to nearly the level that Israel did before it reopened schools. That raises our chances of school-based outbreaks. Administrators worry about liability. If they can’t afford the needed testing and so forth, will they be blamed for the infections that ensue? Massive federal aid is needed. Aside from expenditures on public health and economic relief, it’s hard to imagine a higher priority for the nation than its education system.
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Washington Post, June 15, 2020
Beijing has set about testing hundreds of thousands of people for the
coronavirus
in an exhaustive effort to stamp out a new eruption of the disease in the Chinese capital. After dozens of cases were reported over the weekend, continuing into Monday, Chinese authorities mobilized almost 100,000 community workers to test everyone who has worked in or visited the Xinfadi market in the southwest of Beijing.
Xinfadi is the largest fruit, vegetable and meat market in the capital, which is home to about 21 million people, and supplies 70 percent of the city’s fresh vegetables and 80 percent of its fruit. But after discovering more than 90 new infections linked to the market over the weekend, and 36 more being reported Monday, Beijing’s health authorities are taking military-style action to try to ensure that the virus doesn’t spread further.
Euronews, June 15, 2020
Across Europe, governments have started to open their borders after weeks of closure during the coronavirus pandemic. With the summer holiday season fast approaching, people across Europe have started to wonder whether they will be able to get away this summer - and how far they will be able to go. The border situation remains a mixed picture across Europe, with each country imposing its own rules and its own timetable for re-opening.
Reuters, June 15, 2020
India’s capital is fast running out of hospital beds amid a surge in coronavirus cases and is struggling to contain the pandemic, after critics said it did too little to prepare and reopened shopping malls and temples too soon. Cases in the capital are set to surge. The government estimates it will have 550,000 Covid-19 cases by the end of July, around 13 times current numbers, and will require 150,000 beds by then.
The Guardian, June 14, 2020
A steep rise in coronavirus cases in Chile has plunged the government into crisis and prompted intense criticism of its management of the pandemic. Divisions between the government and sectors of the medical community led to the resignation of the health minister, Jaime Mañalich, on Saturday, shortly after 234 deaths in 24 hours had been confirmed, the highest daily toll to date. Chile is among the countries with the highest number of daily cases relative to population size.
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Sharon Begley, senior science writer, STAT, June 15, 2020
While early studies of who was dying of Covid-19 identified risks such as obesity and having diabetes, there is a growing realization that those initial conclusions might have been misleading, obscuring a more significant explanation. As researchers pull back their lens from individuals to population-level risk factors, they’re finding that, in the U.S., race may be as important as age in gauging a person’s likelihood of dying from the disease.
The higher the percentage of Black residents in a county, the higher its death rate from Covid-19, even after accounting for income, health insurance coverage, rates of diabetes and obesity, and public transit use, finds a new
study
by researchers at the MIT Sloan School of Management
Washington Post, June 14, 2020
As coronavirus cases are surging in hot spots across the country, the proven strategy’s effectiveness is in doubt: Contact tracing failed to stanch the first wave of coronavirus infections, and today’s far more extensive undertaking will require 100,000 or more trained tracers to delve into strangers’ personal lives and persuade even some without symptoms to stay home. Health departments in many of the worst-affected communities are way behind in hiring and training those people. The effort may also be hobbled by the long-standing distrust among minorities of public health officials, as well as worries about promising new technologies that pit privacy against the public good.
Katie Hunt, CNN, June 15, 2020
But how does wearing a mask shape how we interact or communicate with others? A smile is an easy way to defuse social tensions, but is this still possible when a mask is covering the bottom half of our face? CNN spoke to communications expert Ursula Hess, a psychologist and professor at Humboldt University of Berlin.
Bridget Huber, Mother Jones, June 13, 2020
More than nine times as many meat industry workers have tested positive for coronavirus in the United States than in Europe, and dozens more American workers have died, though the U.S. meat industry employs only a third more people. While no single factor explains this discrepancy, differences in baseline worker protections, the ways the industry is structured, and the political response to the virus are likely at play.
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Alameda County Data and Resources
: 930 n
ew cases have been recorded over the last two weeks. The number of confirmed infections is currently doubling every 45.1 days.
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Contra Costa County Data and Resources
: 509 new cases have been recorded over last 2 weeks. The number of confirmed infections is currently doubling every 31.5 days.
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Top 8 Locations of Cases in Alameda County
, data as of 6/14/20
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Oakland:
1,699
Hayward:
767
Eden MAC:
271
Fremont:
220
San Leandro:
195
Union City:
153
Castro Valley:
139
Newark:
124
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Top 8 Locations of Cases in Contra Costa County
, data as of 6/14/20
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Richmond:
462
Concord:
237
San Pablo:
166
Antioch:
156
Pittsburgh:
131
Bay Point:
111
Pleasant Hill:
72
Brentwood:
72
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We have posted information on food pantries and food services in the cities of Hayward and San Leandro and unincorporated Alameda County including Castro Valley and San Lorenzo. You can access the information
here on our website
.
Alameda County has also released an
interactive map
listing food distributions and other social services.
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We are proud to partner with the
East Bay Community Foundation
in publishing this bulletin. Through donations to its
COVID-19 Response Fund,
the EBCF provides grants to East Bay nonprofit organizations delivering essential services to those most impacted by the economic fallout from the pandemic.
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Your feedback is welcome. Please share the Bulletin.
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The
Eden Health District Board of Directors
are Gordon Galvan, Chair, Mariellen Faria, Vice Chair, Charles Gilcrest, Secretary, Roxann Lewis and Pam Russo. 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.
Each bulletin includes a summary of the top health, Bay Area, California, national and international news on the pandemic plus links to a diverse range of commentary and analysis. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday the bulletin includes an education section.
We welcome your feedback on our bulletin. Please contact editor
Stephen Cassidy
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