Statewide mask requirements are disappearing in all indoor places, including those with lots of visitors and employees such as prisons and homeless shelters. The California Department of Public Health’s guidance now aligns with United States Centers of Disease Control and Prevention guidance for when COVID-19 cases are low. State health officials do strongly recommend those who are at high risk of severe illness to continue wearing masks in crowded indoor facilities. Marin and Sonoma counties are the only two in the Bay Area with medium transmission levels of the COVID virus. The rest are at a low level of transmission. KRON4 Read more

New concerns from health experts arise this winter as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations remain at the top of the mind. There's the worry that the flu could make a brutal return. "I can tell you as an emergency physician and a health care professional, that we get scared with flu season," said Dr. Laleh Gharahbaghian, process improvement director for the Stanford Adult Emergency Department. "We anticipate a much higher volume of patients that come into our emergency departments. There will be a rise of cases for those vulnerable populations, which also include the elderly population, and the very young. There will be increased hospitalizations and increased deaths." ABC7 News Read more

Jill Hollenbach, a UCSF professor of neurology, epidemiology and biostatistics, conducted a study on a group of 1,400 people. Patients selected for the study were unvaccinated, tested positive for COVID and experienced zero symptoms while infected Hollenbach and the research team analyzed each person’s DNA, looking closely at a set of genes called HLA. They found a genetic mutation in HLA genes that fought off COVID so quickly, the person’s body never had enough time to develop symptoms. And while the mutation was not bulletproof, it raised a person’s chances of remaining asymptomatic times 10. KTLA Read more

Community non-profit agencies serving residents of the Eden area (Hayward, San Leandro, Castro Valley, Ashland, Cherryland, San Lorenzo, Fairview, and Hayward Acres) are encouraged to apply for community grants up to $25,000. Key priorities for funding include mental health, housing and homelessness, and food and nutrition. Here is the link to apply: https://ethd.org/grants/application-forms/. Grant applications are due September 30 at noon. Grant awards will be made in December of 2022. Services funded by community grants should start in January of 2023.

When is the best time to get the updated Omicron booster shot? Although someone’s schedule could change depending on health, occupation or travel plans, officials generally recommend getting the additional bivalent dose ahead of the busy fall-and-winter holiday season. With Halloween a little over a month away, “planning to increase your protection by getting this updated booster in the next few weeks is a good idea,” Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said. Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a UC San Francisco infectious diseases expert, suggested that eligible people get both the new booster and flu shot no later than October. LA Times Read more

As people prepare to roll up their sleeves for a third, fourth or even fifth dose of COVID-19 vaccine, some may be wondering: Do I need to stick with the same brand, or is it safe to mix it up? When it comes to the new COVID-19 Omicron bivalent booster, the answer is, yes, you can mix and match. You can get either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna version, regardless of which offering you previously received. “The best booster for you is the one that you can get — either the Pfizer or the Moderna can be used, and they can be mixed or matched,” said Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, epidemiologist and infectious disease expert at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. “If there’s shortages of one, you should not have hesitancy to take the other.” LA Times Read more

Moderna has asked the Food and Drug Administration to authorize its Omicron booster shots for children, the company announced on Friday. Moderna filed two separate FDA authorization requests, one for adolescents ages 12 to 17 and another for kids ages 6 to 11. The Boston biotech company said it will also ask the FDA to clear the shots for the youngest children, 6 months through 5-years-old, later this year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a document published Tuesday, said it expects children to become eligible for the Omicron boosters by mid-October pending authorization by the FDA. The CDC’s vaccine advisory committee has meetings scheduled for October 19 and 20. CNBC Read more

The COVID-19 vaccines can help keep you from getting the nasty virus, missing many days of work or school, and ending up in the hospital or the graveyard. But can they keep you from going bald? “Rona can lead to hair loss,” warns a social media ad from California’s Vaccinate All 58 campaign depicting a fellow with a pencil-thin moustache in a baby-blue suit straight out of the 1970s, whose hair is being snatched from his head by a cat paw labeled “rona” — slang for the coronavirus: “Protect your melon. Get vaxed.” East Bay Times Read more

President Joe Biden’s declaration that "the pandemic is over" raised eyebrows and the hackles of some experts who think such messaging could be premature and counterproductive. But to many Americans who have long since returned to pre-COVID 19 activities and are now being forced back into the office, the remark may ring true. The problem is that what “back to normal” feels like may differ from person to person, depending on the individual’s circumstances and by what criteria they are judging the pandemic to be over. The Conversation asked three scholars of different parts of U.S. society affected by the pandemic – public health, education and the economy – to evaluate just how “over” the pandemic is in their worlds. CNN Read more

In the middle of January 2021, the deadliest month of the pandemic, one day after inauguration, the Biden administration put out a comprehensive national strategy for “beating COVID-19.” The 200-page document includes many useful goals, such as “Restore trust with the American people” and “Mount a safe, effective, and comprehensive vaccination campaign.” But nowhere does it give a quantitative threshold for when it will be time to say, “Okay, done—we’ve beaten the pandemic.” The Atlantic Read more

CarLa Bryant’s family reunion would have celebrated its 46th straight meeting this year, but there will be no such gathering of the generations. Too many of Bryant’s older relatives are still not ready to travel again. “I’m not around too many people yet,” relatives told Bryant, 56, who lives in Prince William County and works for the Fairfax County government. Eleven hundred miles away, in Fort Smith, Ark., Terry Davis, a 71-year-old retired Safeway manager, made his family’s reunion a priority. Although last year’s event was canceled because “we didn’t want to put the older people at risk,” this year, “people were adamant: ‘I’m not afraid, I’m coming,’ ” he said. “We’ve kind of gone on with normal life, especially things that are important to us.” Washington Post

NY Times Read more

The BA.5 variant that dominated the summer wave of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations has now fallen to 83.1% of new cases, according to estimates released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Three rival strains – the BF.7, BA.2.75, and BA.4.6 variants – have now climbed to make up nearly 1 in 5 new infections nationwide, according to the federal estimates. The growth of the new variants comes at a time when reported COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have largely slowed nationwide. Data published by the CDC late Thursday tallied only 3% of Americans living in areas of "high" COVID-19, where the agency urges indoor masking and other measures to curb the virus. CBS News Read more

Although the daily death rates have ticked down slightly from August, updated federal data shows that the U.S. is still losing hundreds of Americans to COVID-19 every day, and 225,000 people in the U.S. have been lost to the virus since the start of 2022. On average, more than 350 American deaths related to COVID-19 are still reported each day, and over the last seven days, the U.S. has reported nearly 2,500 deaths, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, totals remain much lower than during prior COVID-19 surges, such as in January 2021, when an average of 3,500 people were reported lost to the virus on a daily basis. ABC News Read more

With monkeypox cases on the decline nationally, federal health officials expressed optimism on Thursday that the virus could be eliminated in the United States, though they cautioned that unless it was wiped out globally, Americans would remain at risk. “Our goal is to eradicate; that’s what we’re working toward,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the deputy coordinator of the White House monkeypox response team, said during a visit to a monkeypox vaccination clinic in Washington. He added, “The prediction is, we’re going to get very close.” NY Times Read more

After a couple years of living with COVID-19, UC Santa Barbara student Alex Niles heard about the monkeypox outbreak. “Here we go again,” he thought. Niles, who is president of the UC Student Association, knew monkeypox was transmitted very differently than COVID-19 and generally posed less risk. But he began to notice concern percolating within UC Santa Barbara’s student body. “There’s a good share of folks who are definitely like ‘OK, I’m going to get vaccinated, I’m going to start taking precautions,’ ” Niles said. With the monkeypox outbreak coming amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, California colleges find themselves trying to control the spread of two infectious diseases at once. CalMatters Read more

Sources: Johns Hopkins University, SF Chronicle, and dashboards for California and Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

Until recently, running was a major part of Emma Zimmerman’s life. The 26-year-old freelance journalist and graduate student was a competitive distance runner in college and, even after she graduated, logged about 50 miles per week. So she tentatively tried to return to her running routine roughly a week after a probable case of COVID-19 in March, doing her best to overcome the malaise that followed her initial allergy-like symptoms. Each time, though, “I’d be stuck in bed for days with a severe level of crippling fatigue,” Zimmerman says. Months later, Zimmerman still experiences health issues including exhaustion, migraines, brain fog, nausea, numbness, and sensitivity to screens — a constellation of symptoms that led doctors to diagnose her with Long COVID. Though she can’t know for sure, she fears those workouts early in her recovery process may have worsened her condition. Time Read more