COVID-19
breaking news & updates
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"Today’s announcement by our federal partners underscores the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine and comes at a critical juncture as many of our communities are grappling with increasing cases fueled by the faster spreading Delta variant. For weeks we have watched cases go up at an alarming pace among individuals who are not vaccinated while the vaccinated are largely protected, especially against severe and long-term illness. We know the vaccines work. We know vaccines are safe. We know they save lives. If you are not vaccinated, let this be the milestone that gets you there. Get vaccinated to protect yourself and help put an end to this deadly pandemic."
Dr. Tomás J. Aragón, CDPH Director and State Public Health Officer
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Bay Area Schools Face Coronavirus Cases And Quarantines: "Parents Are Overwhelmed"
For hundreds if not thousands of parents across the Bay Area, the dreaded email from school officials arrived just days into the school year. Dear Families: Someone at your child’s school tested positive for COVID-19. Parents who sent their children to fully reopened schools with a sigh of relief suddenly faced testing protocols followed by days of uncertainty and in some cases, 10 days or more of quarantine. SF Chronicle
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S.F. Moves To Suspend Police, Fire And Sheriff's Employees Who Refuse To Report Vaccination Status
San Francisco is moving to suspend 20 employees in the police, fire and sheriff’s departments who refused to disclose whether they are vaccinated against the coronavirus, demonstrating how seriously officials are taking the city’s vaccine mandate for its employees. The employees will receive a letter from their department heads Thursday that outlines the consequences for failing to report their vaccination status by the Aug. 12 deadline. SF Chronicle Read more
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New COVID-19 Outbreak Reported At San Quentin State Prison
A new COVID-19 outbreak has been reported at San Quentin State Prison, the site of one of the most deadly outbreaks of the virus in the California prison system last summer. Vicky Waters, a spokeswoman for the prison, said four inmates have tested positive, and three of those prisoners have become infected for a second time. Waters said 85% of San Quentin’s inmates have been vaccinated for coronavirus, but she said privacy laws prevented her from saying if the inmates who tested positive had been vaccinated. Mercury News Read more
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New Report by Oakland Nonprofit Analyzes Struggle of Girls During Pandemic
Girls and gender-expansive youth collectively faced greater mental health barriers, more caregiving responsibilities and fewer resources during the pandemic, according to a new report released Wednesday from the Oakland-based nonprofit Alliance for Girls. Using mixed method analyses to survey more than 1,200 girls across the state, the report found that the isolation in the early stages of the lockdown left 66 percent of participants with greater feelings of stress or anxiety in various ways. About 44 percent of girls said they had more caregiving responsibilities at home than before the pandemic, and 31 percent said those duties negatively affected their education, according to the report. KPIX5 Read more
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"Sometimes I Get Home And I Just Sob": In Bay Area COVID Wards, Doctors Battle Delta, And Fatigue
In the COVID ward at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, there’s a remarkable calm as nurses sanitize equipment and monitor ventilators - belying the desperation of patients in the glass-walled rooms around them who are trying to stay alive. More than a dozen men and women lie in those isolation rooms, some alive only because a machine is pushing oxygen into their lungs. SF Chronicle Read more
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Hundreds Of Immunocompromised Marin County Residents Get Third Shot Of COVID Vaccine
Marin County held a mass vaccination clinic Saturday to give third doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to immunocompromised people in the area. The county, in partnership with Safeway, was prepared to vaccinate 1,300 people throughout the day. But the event wasn’t open to everyone. The FDA has only authorized a third shot for people who weren’t able to build a sufficient antibody response after the first two shots. KTVU Read more
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Full COVID-19 Vaccine Approval Won't Just Boost Confidence. It'll Likely Lead To New Business Requirements, Surgeon General Says
With the "imminent" full approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine expected, more businesses will likely issue vaccine mandates to help prevent the Delta variant from sending the country further backward in this pandemic, doctors say. "For businesses and universities that have been thinking about putting vaccine requirements in place in order to create safer spaces for people to work and learn, I think that this move from the FDA ... will actually help them to move forward with those kinds of plans," US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy told CNN on Sunday. CNN Read more
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An antibody drug developed by AstraZeneca was strongly effective in preventing COVID in a study that mostly enrolled high-risk people, the company announced Friday. The findings raise hopes that the drug, which is easier to administer and designed to stay in the body for much longer than the available antibody treatments for Covid, could provide long-lasting protection for people with weakened immune systems who do not respond well to vaccination. NY Times Read more
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The Vaccinated Are Worried And Scientists Don’t Have Answers
Anecdotes tell us what the data can’t: Vaccinated people appear to be getting the coronavirus at a surprisingly high rate. But exactly how often isn’t clear, nor is it certain how likely they are to spread the virus to others. Though it is evident vaccination still provides powerful protection against the virus, there’s growing concern that vaccinated people may be more vulnerable to serious illness than previously thought. There’s a dearth of scientific studies with concrete answers, leaving public policy makers and corporate executives to formulate plans based on fragmented information. While some are renewing mask mandates or delaying office reopenings, others cite the lack of clarity to justify staying the course. It can all feel like a mess. Forbes Read more
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COVID Vaccines: What One Family Doctor Tells His Patients Who Are Nervous About Getting The Shot
As the Delta variant has sent COVID cases spiking in recent weeks, public health officials have doubled-down to urge the public to get vaccinated. It is working - somewhat. Vaccinations are increasing again, and 60% of Americans age 12 and older are now fully vaccinated, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, with 64% of Californians 12 and older fully vaccinated. But hospitals are still filling with unvaccinated patients who are contracting COVID. And many people remain hesitant. One family doctor from the country’s heartland is drawing attention for sharing his approach on social media about what he tells his patients when they say they aren’t sure about the vaccines. Mercury News Read more
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Vaccination Status May Be Considered To Get ICU Beds At Dallas-Area Hospitals If COVID Spread Worsens
If North Texas starts running out of ICU beds, doctors may have to consider coronavirus vaccination status as a factor in who gets priority care - a situation health officials hope to avoid but worry is becoming increasingly likely - with the vaccinated potentially being prioritized for treatment on the assumption that they’re more likely to survive. Forbes Read more
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L.A .County School District Mandates COVID Vaccines For K-12 Kids - Others Soon May Follow
Amid worsening COVID-19 outbreaks and a rash of new vaccine requirements, a Los Angeles County school district is believed to be the first in the state to announce it will require eligible students to prove they’ve had the shots. They may soon have company. “Other districts are thinking about it,” said Quoc Tran, superintendent of the Culver City Unified School District, which announced the policy this week ahead of Thursday’s first day of school. Mercury News Read more
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State/National/International News |
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COVID Hospitalizations Break Records In 6 California Counties
Hospitals in six rural California counties - all in remote, northern parts of the state - are now treating more COVID-19 patients than ever, breaking records by exceeding their winter surges. Driven by sharp spikes in infections and low vaccination rates, COVID-19 patients hospitalized in Del Norte, Tuolumne, Lake, Humboldt, Nevada and Mendocino counties have more than tripled in the past five weeks, according to a CalMatters analysis of state data. CalMatters Read more
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First U.S. COVID Deaths Came Earlier - And In Different Places Than Previously Thought
In a significant twist that could reshape our understanding of the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, death records now indicate the first COVID-related deaths in California and across the country occurred in January 2020, weeks earlier than originally thought and before officials knew the virus was circulating here. A half dozen death certificates from that month in six different states - California, Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Oklahoma and Wisconsin - have been quietly amended to list COVID-19 as a contributing factor, suggesting the virus’s deadly path quickly reached far beyond coastal regions that were the country’s early known hotspots. Mercury News Read more
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90% Of Patients Treated With New Israeli Drug Discharged In 5 Days
Some 93% of 90 coronavirus serious patients treated in several Greek hospitals with a new drug developed by a team at Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center as part of the Phase II trial of the treatment were discharged in five days or fewer.
The Phase II trial confirmed the results of Phase I, which was conducted in Israel last winter and saw 29 out of 30 patients in moderate to serious condition recover within days. The Jerusalem Post Read More
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WHO Issues Call For Experts To Help With COVID Origins Probe
The World Health Organization has issued a call for health experts to join a new advisory group it is forming, in part to address the agency’s fraught attempts to investigate how the coronavirus pandemic started. In a statement on Friday, the United Nations health agency said the new scientific group would provide the WHO with an independent analysis of the work done to date to pinpoint the origins of COVID-19 and to advise the agency on necessary next steps. Al Jazeera Read more
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L.A. COVID-19 Surge Is Hitting Affluent Communities
The center of the COVID-19 pandemic in America’s second-largest city has shifted from poor, crowded neighborhoods to affluent ones with younger populations. Across Los Angeles County, cities and neighborhoods including West Hollywood, Venice and Santa Monica now report some of the most infections, even though their vaccination rates are higher than in poorer areas such as East Los Angeles, where COVID-19 raced through families and neighborhoods during earlier surges, county health data shows. Wall Street Journal Read more
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NYC Mandates Vaccinations For Public School Teachers, Staff
All New York City public school teachers and other staffers will have to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, officials said Monday as the nation’s largest school system prepared for classes to start next month. The city previously said teachers, like other city employees, would have to get the shots or test weekly for the virus. The new policy marks the first no-option vaccination mandate for a broad group of city workers in the nation’s most populous city. The deadline for a first dose is Sept. 27. AP Read more
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Confirmed Cases
Bay Area: 513,277
California: 4,234,699
U.S.: 37,725,260
Alameda County
Vaccines Administered: 2,221,773
Cases: 104,819
Deaths: 1,309
Test Positivity: 3.4%
Hospitalized Patients: 227
ICU Beds Available: 80
Cases have stayed about the same recently and are still very high. The number of hospitalized COVID patients has risen in the Alameda County area. Deaths have decreased. The test positivity rate in Alameda County is high, suggesting that cases may be undercounted. NY Times
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Reported Deaths
Bay Area: 5,960
California: 65,139
U.S.: 628,580
Contra Costa County
Vaccines Administered: 1,545,928
Cases: 84,729
Deaths: 854
Test Positivity: 6.3%
Hospitalized Patients: 233
ICU Beds Available: 39
Cases have stayed about the same recently and are still very high. The numbers of hospitalized COVID patients and deaths in the Contra Costa County area have risen. The test positivity rate in Contra Costa County is high, suggesting that cases may be undercounted. NY Times
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Viral Evolution 101: Why The Coronavirus Has Changed As It Has, And What It Means Going Forward
It’s impossible to say how the coronavirus will continue to evolve. Those changes, after all, are a result of random mutations. But there are some fundamental principles that explain why the virus has morphed as it has, principles that could guide our understanding of its ongoing evolution - and what that means for our future with the pathogen. STAT 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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COVID Test Resources
Food Pantries
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Over the last seven days, Alameda County officials have reported 3,188 new coronavirus cases, which amounts to 194 cases per 100,000 residents. |
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Over the last seven days, Contra Costa County officials have reported 2,668 new coronavirus cases, which amounts to 235 cases per 100,000 residents. |
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Top 10 Locations of Cases in
Alameda County, as of 8/22/21
Oakland: 33,432
Hayward: 15,554
Fremont: 9,193
Eden MAC: 6,758
San Leandro: 6,560
Livermore: 5,367
Union City: 4,589
Berkeley: 4,333
Castro Valley: 3,156
Newark: 3,108
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Top 10 Locations of Cases in
Contra Costa County, as of 8/22/21
Richmond: 13,448
Antioch: 12,332
Concord: 9,677
Pittsburg: 8,271
San Pablo: 5,925
Brentwood: 5,043
Oakley: 4,184
Walnut Creek: 3,604
Bay Point: 3,326
San Ramon: 2,656
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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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