COVID-19
breaking news & updates
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Bulletin Publishing Schedule for July
During the month of July the Bulletin will be published once a week, on Wednesday. Twice a week publication (Monday and Thursday) will resume in August.
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COVID Test Resources
Food Pantries
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Local COVID Expert’s Reinfection Shows Why "Hybrid Immunity" May No Longer Be Possible
Dr. Abraar Karan, an infectious disease doctor at Stanford, suffered the same fate as many people in January. Despite being vaccinated and boosted, he got infected with COVID during the surge of the highly infectious Omicron variant. Then, just a few months later in May, he performed a routine COVID test one day before work and found himself infected with the coronavirus yet again. Earlier in the pandemic, scientists held out the hope that hybrid immunity — the dual protection afforded by having been both infected with the virus and vaccinated against it — would provide the strongest shield against subsequent reinfection. The theory largely held true for versions of the virus that were less infectious than Omicron. SF Chronicle Read more
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Santa Clara University Law Student Defying COVID Vaccine Mandate Sues School Claiming It’s Making Him Abandon Legal Career
A Santa Clara University law student defying the school’s COVID vaccination requirements filed a lawsuit this week claiming the school is blocking him from moving to a different law school for a degree. Ryan Driggs, who does not have a lawyer for the case and is representing himself, alleged in the suit that the university, after barring him from registering for classes, is denying his transcript requests in order to keep him from “securing the economic advantages completion of his legal education would bring.” Driggs, of San Jose, claimed the purported moves by the school will push him into a “substantially less prestigious and remunerative vocation.” Mercury News Read more
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COVID Vaccine/Treatment News |
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Omicron-Based Coronavirus Booster Shots Will Roll Out This Fall
This fall, vaccine makers will begin rolling out coronavirus booster vaccines better tailored to fight the current phase of the pandemic. Two days after outside experts voted in favor of a new vaccine adapted to protect against Omicron, the Food and Drug Administration announced that the fall shots would include a component from BA.4 and BA.5, the Omicron subvariants gaining ground in the United States. The change shows the FDA trying to be more nimble in efforts to keep up with a changing virus. The precise formula has not been tested in people yet, but studies showed that vaccines tuned to fight a previous version of Omicron modestly increased the short-term immune response in people compared with more shots of the original. Washington Post Read more
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Pfizer To Begin Testing Universal Coronavirus Vaccines
Pfizer and its partner BioNTech plan to start clinical trials of pan-coronavirus vaccines in the second half of the year, BioNTech officials said on Wednesday. Creating a vaccine that works against a variety of coronaviruses, including COVID-19, represents a holy grail — particularly as new variants threaten to outrun our current arsenal of vaccines. Universal vaccines have been studied with limited success for years, but they are gaining renewed investment and research interest. Axios Read more
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As Vaccines For Younger U.S. Children Roll Out, The Effects on Day Care Centers May Be Muted
It is finally their turn. American children ages 6 months through 4 years recently became eligible to receive coronavirus vaccinations, after federal regulators and health officials cleared vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech for very young children. The immediate impact, though, will be blunted by weakened demand by parents, many experts have forecast, and the patchwork policies of day care facilities and early childhood centers, where few policies, if any, are expected to change in the near future. “If the authorization had come in December, it would have been much more of a game changer,” said Rupali Limaye, the deputy director of the International Vaccine Access Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. NY Times Read more
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Fauci Says He Believes Paxlovid Kept Him Out Of The Hospital, Even Though He Tested Positive Again
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s top medical adviser for the coronavirus pandemic, sought on Wednesday to discourage doubts about the antiviral drug Paxlovid after disclosing that he had suffered what appeared to be a “rebound” of COVID-19 after taking a five-day course of the pills. “Paxlovid did what it was supposed to do,” Dr. Fauci, 81, said in an interview, saying that he believed that the treatment, made by Pfizer, kept him out of the hospital when he first tested positive for the virus on June 15. He added that he thought the drug also reduced the severity of his initial symptoms. NY Times Read more
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Largest Study To Date Reveals How COVID Vaccines Work With People Of Different Sizes
We are all different. Some are taller, shorter, bigger or smaller. Now the largest study to date reveals how COVID vaccines work with people of different sizes. The researchers at Oxford University wanted to find out how well COVID-19 vaccines protect people of different weights from hospitalization and death. Dr. Carmen Piernas with the University of Oxford said, "The first key outcome is that vaccines are highly effective across all body weights and that is great news." Scientists studied the medical records of more than 9 million people across the UK and looked at body mass index, or BMI, a measure of body fat based on height and weight. Dr. Piernas led the study and says not everyone is the same, "In the vaccinated people there are still cases and those cases is where we see an increased risk of severe COVID in the high weight and low body weight."
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State/National/International News |
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With Breakthrough COVID Cases Commonplace, Experts Set Expectations About "Vaccine Efficacy"
In the early days of the coronavirus vaccine rollout, scientists were hopeful it might herald the long-awaited turning point of the pandemic, not only bringing the threat of severe disease, hospitalization and death to an end, but also completely halting the spread of the disease. Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the White House, said in December 2020 that if the nation's COVID-19 vaccine campaign went well, the U.S. could approach herd immunity by summer’s end and “normality that is close to where we were before” by the end of 2021. A series of events last summer, including a widespread COVID-19 outbreak that hit highly vaccinated Provincetown, Massachusetts, soon swayed those hopes, as evidence emerged that vaccinated people were contracting the virus more frequently than initially expected and transmitting it to others. ABC News Read more
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"We’re Really Worried." Coronavirus Cases Jump At L.A. County Workplaces, Sparking New Safety Push
An upswing in coronavirus infections has spawned a rise in worksite case clusters in Los Angeles County, prompting health officials to recommend additional measures aimed at tamping down transmission, including reducing crowding and, if there’s a suspected outbreak, expanding remote work. “With the continued increase in cases, and now as you’re seeing the corresponding increase in hospitalizations … we’re really worried,” L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said of the region’s overall trends.
“Our case numbers, they are staying pretty high,” Ferrer said. And she expressed concern about the rising numbers of even more contagious Omicron subvariants, BA.4 and BA.5, at a time when more people have lowered their guard and shed their masks. LA Times Read more
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A Clunky Mask May Be The Answer to Airborne Disease And N95 Waste
In the early 1990s, long before P.P.E., N95 and asymptomatic transmission became household terms, federal health officials issued guidelines for how medical workers should protect themselves from tuberculosis during a resurgence of the highly infectious respiratory disease. Their recommendation, elastomeric respirators, an industrial-grade face mask familiar to car painters and construction workers, would in the decades that followed become the gold standard for infection-control specialists focused on the dangers of airborne pathogens. But when the coronavirus swept the globe and China cut off exports of N95s, elastomeric respirators were nowhere to be found in a vast majority of hospitals and health clinics in the United States. Although impossible to know for sure, some experts believe the dire mask shortage early on contributed to the wave of infections that killed more than 3,600 health workers. NY Times Read more
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What Are The Odds You’ll Get COVID From Someone Who’s Asymptomatic? Here’s How To Measure The Risk Now
How likely is it for people to catch COVID from someone who is asymptomatic? It’s not impossible — and may be more common than people realize, health experts say. With coronavirus cases currently stuck at a high level across California as fast-spreading offshoots of the omicron variant crowd out their competitors, that means the chances of getting COVID from an asymptomatic person are heightened. An estimated 5%, or about 1 in 20, asymptomatic patients coming to UCSF for procedures unrelated to COVID are testing positive for the virus, said Dr. Bob Wachter, one of the university’s leading infectious disease experts. SF Chronicle Read more
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Don’t Worry, It’s Not COVID
The maskless man a few rows back was coughing his head off. I had just boarded the train from D.C. to New York City a couple of weeks ago and, along with several other passengers, was craning my neck to get a look at what was going on. This was not the reedy dregs of some lingering cold. This was a deep, constant, full-bodied cough. Think garbage disposal with a fork caught inside. No one said anything to the man (at least to my knowledge). If someone had, though, I imagine that he might have replied with a now-familiar pandemic-times refrain: “Don’t worry! It’s not COVID!” The Atlantic
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Shanghai Wrestles With The Psychological Scars of Lockdown
June, for Shanghai, was supposed to be a time of triumph. After two months of strict lockdown, the authorities had declared the city’s recent coronavirus outbreak under control. Businesses and restaurants were finally reopening. State media trumpeted a return to normalcy, and on the first night of release, people milled in the streets, shouting, “Freedom!” We are seeing a lot of symptoms of post-traumatic stress, though many people may not recognize them,” said Chen Jiejun, a Shanghai psychologist.
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Florida Pediatrician Axed From State Board For Pro-Vaccine Comments
A Florida pediatrician has been booted off a state-appointed public health board of directors for statements about COVID-19 vaccines that displeased at least one Republican elected official. The pediatrician, Dr. Lisa Gwynn, had been advocating for equal access to the vaccine for children under 5 years old at a time when the state of Florida was running counter to health advice from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. HuffPost
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Total Confirmed Cases
Bay Area: 1,569,899
California: 10,157,114
U.S.: 87,858,093
Alameda County
Primary Vaccine Series Completed: 86.6%
Total Cases: 311,270
Total Deaths: 1,920
Test Positivity (7-day rate): 14.3%
Hospitalized Patients (as of 7/6): 138
ICU Beds Available (as of 7/6): 103
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Total Reported Deaths
Bay Area: 8,621
California: 92,386
U.S.: 1,017,880
Contra Costa County
Primary Vaccine Series Completed: 87.0%
Total Cases: 224,869
Total Deaths: 1,342
Test Positivity (7-day rate): 16.3%
Hospitalized Patients (as of 7/6): 91
ICU Beds Available (as of 7/6): 34
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Returning To Running After Having COVID-19
In March 2020, Dr. Niall Elliott was planning for the summer Olympics with his colleagues at the British Olympic Association. Plans were drawn for what to do if an athlete suffered a catastrophic injury or a mental health crisis in the final lead up to the Games. There were meetings on how to move some of the world’s finest athletes across the globe and how to address logistical snafus. They had plans in place for nearly everything, except a global pandemic, he said. NY Times 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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Top 10 Locations of Cases in
Alameda County, cumulative
as of 7/6/2022
Oakland: 89,332
Hayward: 38,442
Fremont: 33,478
San Leandro: 18,849
Berkeley: 17,868
Eden MAC: 16,863
Livermore: 15,228
Union City: 13,598
Alameda: 11,320
Castro Valley: 10,996
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Top 10 Locations of Cases in
Contra Costa County, cumulative
as of 7/6/2022
Richmond: 31,762
Antioch: 29,076
Concord: 24,281
Pittsburg: 18,691
San Pablo: 13,428
Brentwood: 13,387
Walnut Creek: 12,046
San Ramon: 11,078
Oakley: 10,996
Martinez: 7,797
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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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