Eden Health District COVID-19 Bulletin
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“If you ignore [Black and Latino] communities, then we’ll keep seeing the kinds of surges that we’re seeing now.”
Dr. Tony Iton, former top health official for Alameda County & senior vice president of the California Endowment,
7/1/20
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As Bay Area restaurant business drops, local farms send produce to struggling families
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Once a week, trucks loaded with fresh organic produce converge at Pie Ranch, a nonprofit organic educational farm just outside of Pescadero. The produce comes from small farms scattered from the Monterey County to coastal San Mateo County.
Usually, the delicious fresh ingredients end up at farm-to-table restaurants in affluent neighborhoods from San Francisco to Santa Cruz. But the “table” part of that equation has been devastated by shelter-in-place orders. Now an unprecedented coalition of farmers is working together to ensure that much of the food that once wound up in some of the region’s finest restaurants goes to low-wage workers and their families who are struggling to survive during the coronavirus shutdown.
The approach at Pie Ranch enables farms to keep growing food as their traditional revenue streams collapse, and ensures that the food goes to the people who are experiencing the financial brunt of the coronavirus-related shutdowns.
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Farms are reimbursed for their produce at about the market rate it would be sold for. “We know a number of farms that have lost markets,” Pie Ranch’s Jered Lawson said. “I see it as economic stimulus money on the one hand for farms, and hunger relief on the other.”
The Covid-19 crisis “accelerated, or amplified, the need for more community food resilience. When supply chains are disrupted at the level at which we’re witnessing nationally and globally, it really crystallizes the need for a more local, more resilient food system,” notes Lawson, who hopes the partnerships from this project are just the beginning.
The program has been
supported by local grants from individual donors and organizations such as the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
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Alameda County:
6,156
Contra Costa County:
3,132
California:
232,466
U.S.:
2,638,338
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Alameda County:
136
Contra Costa County:
76
California:
6,088
U.S.:
127,485
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Website, Updated June 30, 2020
Free Covid-19 is now available to everyone, even those without symptoms, at all community testing sites in Alameda County. This includes the testing centers at Cal State University East Bay and the San Leandro Marina Community Center. The Eden Health District is supporting operations at both sites.
No insurance is required and no one is asked about their immigration status. Testing is highly recommended for health care, front line, or essential workers and anyone who attended protests or other large public gatherings. Covid-19 symptoms include cough, fever, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, chills, muscle pain, headache, sore throat or a new loss of taste or smell.
East Bay Times, July 1, 2020
An overwhelming number of people seeking Covid-19 tests prompted officials to close a drive-up line to vehicles at a city testing center more than three hours ahead of its scheduled closing time Tuesday. City spokesperson Chuck Finnie said the center is designed to accommodate a maximum of about 400 tests per day. In the first three months of operation, starting in late March, the City of Hayward administered 18,418 Covid-19 tests.
East Bay Counties Hit "Pause" Button on Reopening Plans
Given recent increases in COVID-19 case and hospitalization rates in our county and region, Alameda and Contra Costa health officials this week delayed the opening of businesses and services previously planned for July, including dining indoors at restaurants, nail salons and gyms and fitness centers. Bars, nightclubs and movie theaters remain closed statewide.
East Bay Times, July 1, 2020
Looking at the
measures the state uses to monitor COVID-19 by county,
disease transmission, hospitalization growth rate and capacity, there are signs of disturbing metrics among Bay Area counties. Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties were flagged as among the dozen California counties with hospitalizations growing faster than 10%. The growth rate in Contra Costa County was 13% and Santa Clara’s was 24.1% over the past week.
SF Chronicle, June 30, 2020
What’s behind the surge in statewide cases and hospitalizations, and are the same forces at work in the Bay Area? Health officials are citing three main reasons:
- Prison Outbreaks: San Quentin State Prison has more than 1,000 active cases of the coronavirus, and the numbers continue to climb.
- Nursing Homes: Nursing homes have been hot spots for the virus from the pandemic’s outset, and nationwide are accounting for about 40% of deaths.
- Social Gatherings: Contact tracing in some counties indicates that many infections are occurring during indoor gatherings of friends and family, including funerals and birthday and graduation parties.
Oaklandside, June 30, 2020
UPS customers in Oakland are demanding action from the delivery giant as thousands of packages have gotten stuck at a United Parcel Service warehouse near Oakland International Airport, causing many people to miss important personal and business items. UPS communications representative Dionicio Hernandez said delays are due to COVID-driven high volume “similar to the peak holiday shipping season,” with “about 70% of our deliveries to residences compared to about 50% during the rest of the year.”
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STAT, June 29, 2020
On the whole, children appear to contract SARS-CoV-2 less often than adults and have a milder course of disease when they do. But in late April, doctors in London alerted the world to the possibility that some, previously healthy children who had Covid-19 appeared to go on to develop something that looked like Kawasaki’s disease, an inflammatory condition that can attack the heart. Now, two US research groups have reported finding nearly 300 cases of an alarming apparent side effect of Covid-19 in children, a condition called multisystem inflammation syndrome, or MIS-C.
In
one of the studies
, led by researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital, 80% of the children who developed the condition required intensive care, 20% required mechanical ventilation, and four children, or 2%, died. In the
second study
, from researchers from New York state, a similar percentage of 99 children who developed the syndrome required ICU care and two children died. In both studies, many of the children developed cardiovascular and clotting problems and many had gastrointestinal symptoms. A high proportion also had skin rashes.
Twitter, July 1, 2020
What about transmission of
#SARSCoV2
from children? Their pattern of viral load and culture-competent virus is similar to adults, even though studies have suggested transmissibility is low [in
new study
published by the CDC].
STAT, July 1, 2020
An experimental Covid-19 vaccine being developed by the drug giant Pfizer and the biotech firm BioNTech spurred immune responses in healthy patients, but also caused fever and other side effects, especially at higher doses. It’s not certain that higher antibody levels will lead to immunity to the virus. To prove that, Pfizer will need to conduct large studies that aim to prove that people who have received the vaccine are at least 50% less likely to become infected. Those studies are expected to begin this summer. Fourteen
Covid-19 vaccines
are currently in human trials.
Fergus Walsh, medical correspondent, BBC, July 1, 2020
Stroke, delirium, anxiety, confusion, fatigue, the list goes on. If you think Covid-19 is just a respiratory disease, think again. As each week passes, it is becoming increasingly clear that coronavirus can trigger a huge range of neurological problems. A study in
the Lancet Psychiatry
found brain complications in 125 seriously ill coronavirus patients in UK hospitals. Nearly half had suffered a stroke due to a blood clot while others had brain inflammation, psychosis, or dementia-like symptoms.
Mercury News, June 30, 2020
More than half of people with COVID-19 have no idea how or where they got infected, underscoring the need for social distancing, more widespread use of masks and better contact tracing, especially at work. That is the conclusion of a
new survey
by the CDC.
“Simply avoiding people who have known coronavirus is not sufficient to stop the spread of the virus, because less than half of the patients had a known close contact,” said Dr. Jennifer Wilson, clinical assistant professor of emergency medicine at Stanford University Medical Center. “That reinforces the fact that when we go out into the community, we need to assume that we can get it from anyone at any time.”
Nature, June 26, 2020
Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health found that weekly surveillance testing, paired with case isolation, would limit an outbreak. By contrast, surveillance testing done every 14 days would allow the total number of infections to climb almost as high as if there were no testing at all.
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LA Times, July 1, 2020
In April, Gov. Newsom launched a multimillion-dollar state initiative to bring COVID-19 testing to the people and places with the least access: rural towns and disadvantaged inner-city neighborhoods. California is now halting its expansion, citing costs, even as the state is getting walloped by record-setting spikes in new infections and double-digit increases in hospitalizations. T
he state will no longer fund new testing sites, despite pleas from counties for additional assistance, and it has closed some locations and moved them elsewhere.
LA Times, June 30, 2020
Gov. Newsom plans to announce new restrictions ahead of the July 4 holiday weekend, continuing to reverse course on reopening California as Covid-19 infections and hospitalizations rise. The governor, who often foreshadows his actions before he unveils them, warned that changes would also include restrictions on indoor gatherings but did not provide details. Newsom said family gatherings had been one of the “areas of biggest concern” as immediate and extended family members mixed together.
SF Chronicle, June 30, 2020
As coronavirus cases surge across California, many counties have paused or rolled back their reopening plans. Among the key factors driving officials’ decisions are record-breaking days of new confirmed cases and higher positive test rates. The positivity rate indicates the percentage of total coronavirus tests conducted that come back positive. According to Johns Hopkins, if the positivity rate is higher than expected, it might mean that there’s an oversaturation of positive cases in testing, meaning that only those who feel sick enough are the ones being tested, or that the state isn’t casting a broad enough net in its testing efforts to know how widespread the virus really is.
LA Times, June 30, 2020
As coronavirus cases rocket upward in many parts of the state, bars across California, many of which only recently reopened, are being forced to again announce last call. The state recently recommended that eight counties issue local health orders closing bars: Riverside, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, Sacramento, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and Stanislaus.
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NY Times, July 1, 2020
Case numbers are surging throughout much of the United States, including in several states that were among the first to reopen. Because the number of people hospitalized and the percentage of people testing positive is also rising in many of those places, the case spike cannot be solely explained by increased testing.
STAT, June 30, 2020
The United States may soon record as many as 100,000 new cases of Covid-19 a day if the current trajectory of the outbreak is not changed, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, warned Congress.
The number of new cases is currently hovering around 40,000 per day. Public health and infectious diseases experts, who have been gravely concerned about the way the U.S. response has unfolded, concurred with Fauci’s assessment. A daily count of 100,000 new cases a day could occur within about three to six weeks, warned Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy.
Bloomberg, July 1, 2020
The Arizona Department of Health Services reported 4,878 new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, a record number for the state as it battles a surge in the virus. That brought the total number of cases to 84,092. The state also reported 88 new deaths, another one-day record that put the total at 1,720.
USA Today, July 1, 2020
Things have improved since severe shortages in March. Major mask manufacturers increased production. Federal officials eased some rules for masks and other personal protective equipment, known as PPE, for example allowing reuse and cleaning. But those efforts haven’t matched, much less gotten ahead of, the demand if the nation sees a big resurgence in coronavirus hospitalizations.
The Atlantic, June 30, 2020
The American testing supply chain is stretched to the limit, and the ongoing outbreak in the South and West could overwhelm it, according to epidemiologists and testing-company executives. While the country’s laboratories have added tremendous capacity in the past few months, the U.S. now tests about 550,000 people each day, a fivefold increase from early April, demand for viral tests is again outpacing supply.
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Mercury News, July 1, 2020
In a key signal to Bay Area school districts, Santa Clara County officials said Tuesday that schools must follow stringent social distancing and mask requirements if they reopen for in-person learning this fall, but whether school and health officials take that route amid rising coronavirus cases remains to be seen.
While the Bay Area’s most populous county wants “all students and teachers to return to school as soon as possible,” officials have yet to decide how much, if at all, that involves the physical classroom, Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody said in a Tuesday press conference. “Whether schools can reopen for in-person instruction depends on the containment of COVID-19 in the months to come. … We’re monitoring a number of factors,” Cody said.
LA Times, June 29, 2020
L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner said Monday that no decision has yet been made on whether campuses will reopen in the fall for in-person classes but that the district’s recent survey compounded by the ongoing
spike in infections
and hospitalizations has intensified concerns. “The only way to do this is with
extensive testing and contact tracing
,” Beutner said in his broadcast remarks. “In all of the countries, Denmark, Germany, Israel and others where students are back in school facilities, they have put in place extensive testing and contact-tracing capability.”
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Helen Jenkins & William Hanage, epidemiologists, Washington Post, July 1, 2020
It might seem easy to argue that schools must open for normal business this fall. But we can’t overlook the potential for transmission in the school setting, which can only be reduced and not eliminated. The best way to ensure that schools can open, and stay open, is to keep community spread of the virus low. Activity in some other sectors of the economy will need to be reduced to preserve the education, feeding, socialization and safety of our children, and the ability of parents to do their work. Schools should be prioritized.
SF Chronicle, June 29, 2020
Stanford is inviting only freshmen, sophomores and new transfer students to come to campus for the fall quarter. Juniors and seniors will be permitted on campus for the winter and spring quarters, with freshmen and sophomores returning next summer. Students who are not on campus for a particular quarter can take classes remotely. Even then, school officials expect “the vast majority” of courses to be taught online.
Ed Source, July 1, 2020
Prevailing in negotiations with Gov. Newsom, the Legislature passed a state budget that will let K-12 schools spend at the same level in 2020-21 as this year, avoiding the billions in cuts that Newsom had proposed. But there’s a catch. Spending won’t equate to funding. School and community college districts will have to front $11 billion they would normally get from the state in exchange for IOUs. Districts won’t be paid back until 2021-22.
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Covid-19 survivor warns Black community of virus’s seriousness
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An Austin, Texas man who survived Covid-19 has a message for his community: take this virus seriously because it is killing our own.
Anthony Walker is a changed man since he tested positive for Covid-19 in May after going to the doctor for what he thought was just a cold. "It had me coughing. Every time you coughed, you got a headache. You feel like you were getting poked in the chest with needles. You have to breathe through the mouth. You're trying to get oxygen, you know. So it was a struggle," he said.
Walker is now raising awareness about the dangers of Covid-19, particularly in the minority community, where the virus hits African Americans and Latinos harder than others.
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"It was a wake-up call. I look at life totally different now," said Walker.
He said it bothers him that the younger generation is ignoring safety guidelines. Walker regularly hands out masks and hand sanitizer at his local park and reminds people to practice safety protocols such as social distancing.
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Bloomberg, July 1, 2020
As nations around the world try to get their economies humming again, the number of coronavirus tests coming back positive has turned into the metric to watch. Five percent is the threshold to reopen safely. Ten percent is troubling, twenty percent outrageous.
In Mexico, it stands at 50%. The sky-high results are easy to explain, though not so easy to fix. The Latin American nation has stubbornly shunned wide-scale testing and instead runs exams only on the sickest of patients.
The Guardian, July 1, 2020
The UN warned that the pandemic has taken a much heavier toll on jobs than previously feared, and that the situation in the Americas is particularly dire. In a
fresh study, the International Labor Organization estimates that by the mid-year point, global working hours were down 14% compared to last December — equivalent to some 400 million full-time jobs.
Deadline, July 1, 2020
Yesterday’s news that the European Union will not lift travel restrictions on the U.S. due to the scale of the country’s ongoing coronavirus outbreak prompted concerns about the re-start of American film and TV production based in Europe. Travelers from 15 countries including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan and China can cross borders into the EU, but the U.S. remains excluded, alongside Brazil and Russia.
However, it is becoming clear that exceptions will be made in many countries for U.S. film and TV crew.
The Guardian, June 30, 2020
As Japan emerges from a state of emergency, hospitals have so far managed to dodge the kind of catastrophic death toll seen elsewhere. But for medical workers, new outbreaks remain a constant threat. New safety precautions to guard against the coronavirus can make life-saving measures more difficult, as hospitals face the prospect of operating in the shadow of a virus with no treatment or cure.
Bloomberg, July 1, 2020
Sweden’s government has initiated a commission to investigate its controversial approach to the Covid-19 pandemic. Sweden has taken a different path compared to most European countries by keeping much of society open and by recommending social distancing and self-isolation rather than imposing a blanket lockdown. That strategy has resulted in a much higher death rate than in neighboring countries, according to
Johns Hopkins University data
.
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Julie Beck, senior editor, The Atlantic, June 30, 2020
Throughout the pandemic, many political leaders in the U.S. have made decisions and delivered messages that run contrary to what public-health experts say needs to be done to stop the virus. As states and cities waffle on pandemic restrictions, public health has become individuals’ responsibility.
Alina Selukh, business correspondent, NPR, July 1, 2020
When the government shut down the U.S. economy in a bid to tame the spread of the coronavirus, Congress scrambled to help tens of millions of people who lost jobs. The government rushed one-time relief checks to all families that qualified and tacked an extra $600 onto weekly unemployment benefits, which are usually less than regular pay and vary by state. Studies have begun to show that the additional pandemic aid threw a critical lifeline to low-income households, keeping many from poverty.
E. Tammy Kin, NY Times, June 30, 2020
Even as states reopen, Covid-19 continues to lay waste to the elderly and those who care for them. This country has a long tradition of banishing ailing seniors, and this neglect extends to the workers who help them eat and dress and nourish their minds and souls. These front-line workers, mostly black and immigrant women, have become victims and vectors of the pandemic. More than 54,000 Americans living or working in long-term care have died of the coronavirus, representing 40% of all Covid-19 fatalities, and a disproportionate number of those deaths have occurred in facilities serving nonwhite patients.
Associated Press, July 1, 2020
The US public health system has been starved for decades and lacks the resources to confront the worst health crisis in a century. When this outbreak arrived, and when, according to public health experts, the federal government bungled its response, hollowed-out state and local health departments were ill-equipped to step into the breach.
James Fallows, staff writer, The Atlantic, June 29, 2020
Coping with a pandemic is one of the most complex challenges a society can face. It is a challenge that the United States did not mee
t. Six months after the president was given his first warnings, more than 2.3 million Americans have been infected by the coronavirus. More than 120,000 have succumbed to the disease. New infections are being reported at the rate of thousands per day, as many now as at what some saw as the “peak” two months ago.
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Alameda County Data
: 1,483 n
ew cases have been recorded over the last 14 days. The number of confirmed infections is currently doubling every 35.2 days.
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Contra Costa County Data
: 1,106 new cases have been recorded over last 14 days. The number of confirmed infections is currently doubling every 19.8 days.
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Top 8 Locations of Cases in Alameda County
, data as of 6/30/20
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Oakland:
2,401
Hayward:
1,027
Eden MAC:
383
Fremont: 307
San Leandro: 301
Union City:
198
Castro Valley:
193
Newark:
166
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Top 8 Locations of Cases in Contra Costa County
, data as of 6/30/20
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Richmond: 731
Concord:
387
Antioch: 323
San Pablo:
259
Pittsburgh:
213
Bay Point:
141
Walnut Creek: 135
Brentwood: 103
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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. We publish the Bulletin on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On Mondays and Fridays the Bulletin includes an education section.
We welcome your feedback on our bulletin. Please contact editor
Stephen Cassidy
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