COVID-19
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East Bay Omicron Cases Were Vaccinated Kaiser Staff
Kaiser Permanente said Wednesday that a cluster of East Bay COVID-19 cases linked to the Omicron variant that has alarmed health officials worldwide involved staff at its Oakland Medical Center. The revelation comes five days after Alameda County health officials said they were investigating 12 local COVID-19 cases linked to a Nov. 27 wedding in Wisconsin, which one of the infected people had attended upon return from international travel, and that at least five were confirmed to have the Omicron variant. Kaiser said Wednesday that 11 of those 12 were its Oakland Medical Center staff, all of whom were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and had received booster shots.
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Free COVID Clinic In Oakland Unexpectedly Shuts Down
A non-profit healthcare clinic that provided free COVID-19 vaccinations and testing to walk-up patients in Oakland’s Frank Ogawa Plaza unexpectedly closed its doors Wednesday due to staffing and vaccine shortages. The clinic, which began operating on Sept. 15, was supposed to operate until the end of the year. “The City of Oakland is extremely disappointed that they were unable to fulfill their agreement to extend services through the end of December as previously announced,” city officials stated in an announcement. KPIX5 Read more
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COVID Cases Are Rising Quickly In Highly Vaccinated Marin
Marin County’s COVID-19 case rates have more than doubled in the past 10 days and are now the highest in the Bay Area. But the county, which has one of the highest vaccination rates in the country, is not seeing a rise in hospitalizations or deaths — illustrating what is perhaps the region’s clearest example of vaccination successfully preventing the worst COVID outcomes. The county is shifting to hospitalizations, instead of case rates, as its main metric to form pandemic response policies, health officer Dr. Matt Willis told county supervisors Tuesday. This includes the criteria to reimpose indoor mask mandates in stores and other public settings — a mandate that Marin lifted on
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Contra Costa County Supes Tell Health Department To Crack Down On COVID-19 Offenders
Contra Costa County Supervisor Karen Mitchoff told county health services director Anna Roth on Tuesday that she wants a detailed report concerning what Roth's department is doing about 13 businesses still refusing to comply with COVID-19 indoor mandates, including checking customers' vaccine records. During Roth's regular report to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, she said her department received 99 complaints about 80 businesses allegedly not complying in November. She said 13 are still being investigated. KTVU Read more
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Is A "Twindemic" Coming? Bay Area Sees Flu Cases Rising As Omicron Variant Spreads
The first cases of influenza have been detected in Marin County pointing to the start of flu season which typically kills thousands of people each year. On average influenza kills between 20,000 - 50,000 Americans each year, and now experts are concerned we might be entering a "twindemic" with cases of the COVID-19 variant Omicron likely to rise. "We don't know whether Omicron will add substantially to that or not. But, Delta is enough of a problem as it is. We don't want people ending up at the hospital with Delta and people winding in the hospital with the influenza and hospital beds getting filled and the ICU beds getting with both of these patients," said Dr. John Swartzberg, UC Berkeley Clinical Professor Emeritus & Infectious Disease Expert. ABC 7 News Read more
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Berkeley Food Network Battles Hunger In COVID Era
Carolyn Sharp is grateful that Berkeley Food Network has embarked on a dynamic quest during the COVID pandemic: end hunger in the iconic East Bay city. “The Berkeley Food Network is a main artery for this neighborhood,” said Sharp, who lives around the corner from the pantry near the corner of Ninth Street and University Avenue. “It’s a lifeline. People come here not just from Berkeley, but from Richmond and Oakland.” In February 2020, before extensive business shutdowns to combat the coronavirus, Berkeley Food Network was serving about 1,500 clients a week in its various programs. By May 2020, that number had climbed to about 5,000 people a week, said Sara Webber, the nonprofit’s executive director and co-founder. It also expanded its on-site pantry in the company’s home base on Ninth Street. Mercury News Read more
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Sharks, SAP Center To Enforce New COVID Requirements For Kids This Week
Starting today, kids ages five to 11 will need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or have proof of a negative test no more than 72 hours old to attend Sharks or Barracuda games, or any other event at SAP Center. Children ages 3-4 will require proof of a negative test. The mandate by the State of California and City of San Jose on mega-events had been in effect since Nov. 18, but thi s is the first week the directive will be enforced. Arena guests ages 12 and older are still required to show proof of full vaccination upon entry. Vaccines are not yet available to 3- and 4-year-olds in California, so those children will have to show proof of a negative test within the last 72 hours.
The requirements will remain until state and local health and safety guidance is revised.
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S.F. Made Parklets Permanent — But Added So Many Rules That Many Restaurants Plan To Tear Them Down
Chelsea Hung spent $5,000 on the parklet to help save her family’s 25-year-old restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown, getting the necessary permits and rejoicing when the city announced that the popular Shared Spaces program would continue. But in October, her hope for a future of outdoor dining diminished. She began receiving warnings that Washington Bakery & Restaurant’s parklet wasn’t up to code. The notices from multiple city agencies cited rules that she’d never seen: The walls needed to be lowered. The roof needed to be removed. It could only occupy one parking space. And if it wasn’t all fixed in 14 days, she’d be fined $100, then $200, then $500 on the third day onward.
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Omicron Boosters Are In The Works, But Will They Be Needed?
Moncef Slaoui, the former head of the Trump administration's Operation Warp Speed, says he's "cautiously optimistic" about how well existing vaccines will hold up against Omicron, the latest coronavirus variant of concern. Omicron has more mutations than previous variants, with around 30 mutations on just its spike protein. That's worrying for virologists, who note that the spike protein is what vaccines use to "teach" our bodies to recognize the coronavirus. But Slaoui, who spent decades developing vaccines in the pharmaceutical industry before leading Operation Warp Speed's scientific work, says even if antibodies prompted by vaccines are less effective against Omicron, other parts of the immune response could still help. NPR Read more
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As Variants Spread, The U.S Invests $400 Million In New Global Vaccine Distribution Program
The U.S. government is investing $400 million in a new program to help countries get vaccines to their citizens quickly, an effort that comes amid fears that the Delta and Omicron variants will drive a new wave of cases. The U.S. Agency for International Development said in a statement on Monday that the program, called the Initiative for Global Vaccine Access, would “enhance international coordination” to help countries “overcome vaccine access barriers.” NY Times Read more
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Canada Begins Human Trials On Inhalable COVID Vaccines
Researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., have been approved to begin human trials on two Canadian-made COVID-19 vaccines that are delivered by inhaled aerosol to target the lungs and upper airways. In a release Tuesday, McMaster said researchers would test the safety and immune potency of the inhaled vaccines during Phase 1 of clinical trials they recently received Health Canada approval to begin. Both inhaled vaccines are intended to act as boosters to be administered to participants who have previously received two doses of a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine such as Pfizer or Moderna’s. Mercury News Read more
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Time Of Day Matters When Getting Vaccine
Our internal 24-hour circadian clock regulates many aspects of physiology, including the response to infectious disease and vaccination. A new study published in the Journal of Biological Rhythms demonstrates that antibody levels are higher when people receive the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in the afternoon versus the morning. “Our observational study provides proof of concept that time of day affects immune response to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination, findings that may be relevant for optimizing the vaccine’s efficacy,” said co-senior author Elizabeth Klerman, research investigator, Division of Neurophysiology, Sleep Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, and professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. The Harvard Gazette Read more
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F.D.A. Authorizes Eli Lilly Antibody Treatment For High-Risk Young Children
The Food and Drug Administration last week authorized Eli Lilly’s monoclonal antibody treatment for infants and children under age 12 with COVID-19 who are at high risk of becoming severely ill from the virus because they have a condition such as obesity or diabetes. Previously, high-risk COVID patients 12 or older had been eligible to get the drugs, which are typically administered intravenously at a clinic or hospital and have been shown to lower the risk of hospitalization and death. NY Times Read more
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First Plant-Based Coronavirus Vaccine Shows "Positive" Results, Say GlaxoSmithKline And Medicago
Pharmaceutical companies Medicago and GlaxoSmithKline announced on Tuesday “positive efficacy and safety results” from a global trial using what they say is the world’s first plant-based coronavirus vaccine. The late-stage trial, which studied 24,000 adults across six countries, found that the overall efficacy rate of the vaccine candidate was 71 percent, rising to 75.3 percent against “COVID-19 of any severity for the globally dominant Delta variant." Washington Post Read more
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State/National/International News |
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Omicron Is Fast Moving, But Perhaps Less Severe, Early Reports Suggest
The COVID-19 virus is spreading faster than ever in South Africa, the country’s president said Monday, an indication of how the new Omicron variant is driving the pandemic, but there are early indications that Omicron may cause less serious illness than other forms of the virus. Researchers at a major hospital complex in Pretoria reported that their patients with the coronavirus are much less sick than those they have treated before, and that other hospitals are seeing the same trends. In fact, they said, most of their infected patients were admitted for other reasons and have no COVID symptoms.
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Growing Use Of Home COVID-19 Tests Leaves Health Agencies In The Dark About Unreported Cases
When fans of the band Phish started falling ill with COVID-19 all over the country after a Halloween concert weekend in Las Vegas, public health officials were largely in the dark about what appears to have been a superspreader event. In a Facebook post from mid-November with hundreds of responses, concertgoers compared symptoms and positive test results, many of those from tests taken at home. But those data weren’t added to state public health tallies of COVID’s spread. It’s a story that’s becoming commonplace in the era of rapid home COVID testing: People who test positive are almost never counted by public health agencies charged with bringing the pandemic to heel. STAT Read more
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Study Shows Men Spread COVID Particles More Than Other Populations
A study focused on tracking the spread of COVID-19 in performing arts settings has also unveiled the population of humans who spread the most COVID-19 particles. Researchers at Colorado State University learned that men more frequently spread the coronavirus particles than women or children. The study, which lasted months, was originally developed in an effort to see what those in the performing arts can do to facilitate a safe return to the stage following the pandemic. The performing arts, from the educational level all the way to Broadway performances, were some of the most drastically impacted fields. CBS News Read more
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When The Surges Just Keep Coming: A View From The COVID Vortex
Dr. Rais Vohra has impeccable timing. He stepped into his role as interim health officer of Fresno County just months before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Almost immediately, he found himself navigating the treacherous tensions between public health messaging and a skeptical population in a hub of industrial agriculture that is also one of the most politically conservative regions of California. For almost two years, Vohra and the rest of the county’s health care system have struggled to keep up with what has felt like an unrelenting series of COVID surges. The current wave has overwhelmed area hospitals, with emergency rooms so packed that ambulances line up for hours waiting to offload patients. Nearly 160,000 cases of COVID have been recorded, and more than 2,200 residents have died. California Healthline Read more
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European Travel Powerhouse - France - And 6 Other Places At "Very High" Risk For COVID-19, CDC Says
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has put five places in Europe — including one of the world’s biggest tourism powerhouses — on its list of destinations for “very high” COVID-19 travel risk. France and four of its European neighbors moved to Level 4, the CDC’s highest-risk category, on Monday. France was the world’s top destination for international tourist arrivals pre-pandemic, according to 2019 figures from the United Nations World Tourism Organization. Two other places — one in the Middle East, the other in East Africa — were also moved to Level 4. Mercury News Read more
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Childhood Asthma And The Risk Of Severe COVID-19: What Parents Should Know
While 70 percent of adults in the United States are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, it was only in October that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use in children ages 5 to 11. And while experts are pushing for authorization for a wider use of the vaccines in children, new research shows that it may be critical to vaccinate kids who live with poorly controlled asthma. Healthline
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As COVID Persists, Nurses Are Leaving Staff Jobs — And Tripling Their Salaries As Travelers
Wanderlust, and the money to fund it, made Alex Stow’s decision easy. After working a couple of years in an intensive care unit, he signed up to be a travel nurse, tripling his pay to about $95 an hour by agreeing to help short-staffed hospitals around the country for 13 weeks at a time. “Travel” proved a bit of a misnomer. His current assignment is in Traverse City, Mich., only a few hours from his old full-time job in Lansing — close enough that he still works per-diem shifts at his previous hospital. Washington Post Read more
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Total Confirmed Cases
Bay Area: 624,024
California: 5,137,244
U.S.: 49,520,726
Alameda County
Total Vaccines Administered: 2,893,944
Total Cases: 123,585
Total Deaths: 1,513
Test Positivity (7-day rate): 1.6%
Hospitalized Patients (as of 12/8): 82
ICU Beds Available (as of 12/8): 87
As of December 8, case have increased recently and are high. The number of hospitalized COVID patients has remained at about the same level in the Alameda County area. Deaths have decreased. 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: 6,878
California: 75,061
U.S.: 793,074
Contra Costa County
Total Vaccines Administered: 2,047,619
Total Cases: 102,903
Total Deaths: 1,059
Test Positivity (7-day rate): 2.2%
Hospitalized Patients (as of 12/8): 58
ICU Beds Available (as of 12/8): 29
As of December 8, cases have increased recently and are very high. The numbers of hospitalized COVID patients and deaths in the Contra Costa area have also risen. 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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COVID-19 Symptoms Usually Show Up In This Order
The symptoms of COVID-19, including fever and cough, are similar to the symptoms in a host of other common diseases, including the seasonal flu. With flu season in full swing, how can you tell if a fever is a symptom of the flu or COVID-19? A previous study shed light on how COVID-19 symptoms present, which may help people trying to figure out if their cough is just a cough or something worse. The research from the University of Southern California (USC) was able to determine that COVID-19 symptoms often start in a certain order. 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 148 new cases and 1 new deaths per day.
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Over the past week, Contra Costa County has averaged 128 new cases and 1.7 new death per day.
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Top 10 Locations of Cases in
Alameda County, cumulative
as of 12/8/21
Oakland: 38,607
Hayward: 17,671
Fremont: 11,167
Eden MAC: 7,664
San Leandro: 7,604
Livermore: 6,771
Berkeley: 5,368
Union City: 5,266
Castro Valley: 3,908
Newark: 3,668
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Top 10 Locations of Cases in
Contra Costa County, cumulative
as of 12/8/21
Richmond: 15,346
Antioch: 14,892
Concord: 11,528
Pittsburg: 9,715
San Pablo: 6,702
Brentwood: 6,557
Oakley: 5,486
Walnut Creek: 4,566
Bay Point: 3,880
San Ramon: 3,425
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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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