Eden Health District COVID-19 Bulletin
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"The path to herd immunity is not by getting the herd sick."
Dr. Eric Topol, Director of Scripps Research Translational Institute,
7/27/20
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LA artist painted 1,800 flowers and shipped them across the country to a hospital hit by Covid-19
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Michael Gittes’s artwork has been shown in museums and art galleries around the world, but the
Los Angeles artis
t
is perhaps most proud of his latest project, on display in the apartments and office cubicles of almost 2,000 hospital workers in Brooklyn, N.Y.
In early July, Gittes, 32, filled a truck with 1,800 paintings he completed since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. He shipped them 2,777 miles to Interfaith Medical Center in Brooklyn in a neighborhood hit hard by Covid-19.
“I wanted every single employee — all 1,800 — to have a painting to show how much they are loved and appreciated,” said Gittes, who spent more than three months painting about 100 flowers a day using a syringe as “a symbol of healing.” (The project was financed through the sale of several paintings to anonymous collectors.)
On July 13, after the delivery truck pulled in front of Interfaith Medical Center, Gittes’s paintings were carefully unloaded and handed out to every employee at the hospital. From custodians and cafeteria workers to security guards, nurses, doctors and chief executives, nobody was forgotten.
Gittes, who titled his project “Strangers to No One,” wasn’t there for the gifting, but everyone felt the emotional impact of his generosity, said Tracy Green, the hospital’s chief financial officer.
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For Sheila Arthur-Smith, a 61-year-old patient-accounts representative, hanging Gittes’s pink-and-purple abstract flower on her living room wall was a touching reminder of what she has lost and what she now gives thanks for. Arthur-Smith was in the hospital for 9 days with Covid-19 in late March and was so weak she would barely breathe or speak. To communicate with her husband, she tapped on the phone, “so he’d know I was still alive,” she said. On the day she was released, Arthur-Smith received sad news: Her older sister, Patricia, had died that day of Covid-19 in a Queens hospital.
“I see Michael’s painting as a memorial to my sister, and I’ll never forget that he created this for me from his heart,” she said. “It’s incredible to me that he took the time to paint so many portraits and show that the work we have done is not in vain and that we’re loved. It’s a phenomenal gift.”
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Alameda County:
10,438
Contra Costa County:
7,073
California:
453,036
U.S.:
4,266,116
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Alameda County:
178
Contra Costa County:
104
California:
8,455
U.S.:
147,209
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Mercury News, July 27, 2020
Contra Costa could soon become the third Bay Area county to authorize administrative citations for anyone violating public health orders. A vote on the
proposed ordinance
, which is similar to those in Marin and Napa counties, is on the Board of Supervisors’ agenda for their meeting Tuesday. It would give city and county officials the ability to cite social distancing scofflaws with fines starting at $100 for individuals and as high as $1,000 for businesses for each violation.
SF Chronicle, July 26, 2020
As the coronavirus dug into the Bay Area’s low-income Latino and Black neighborhoods this spring, doctors and community leaders pleaded for more testing sites. But even as access to testing grew in wealthier, whiter parts of several Bay Area counties, community testing sites lagged or offered only limited hours in communities of color where the virus was spreading fastest, according to a Chronicle analysis of test-site data from March through mid-July.
Richmond and San Pablo, predominantly Latino, Asian American and Black working-class cities, have some of the highest infection rates in Contra Costa County. Yet they still have about the same number of community testing sites as Walnut Creek, an affluent, mostly white city with half the population. Walnut Creek had 4 cases per 1,000 people compared with 13 in Richmond and 19 in San Pablo, as of Friday.
City Website, July 24, 2020
The City of Hayward Covid-19 Testing Center, currently located at
Lot A
at Cal State University, is moving to Skywest Golf Course at 1401 Golf Course Road adjacent to Hayward Executive Airport starting Monday, Aug. 3. The Testing Center’s last day operation at Cal State will be Friday, July 31.
Starting Aug. 3, as the COVID-19 Testing Center moves to Skywest Golf Course, people will be able to begin making advance appointments by visiting the Testing Center
webpage
on the City of Hayward website.
KTUV, July 25, 2020
There is growing concern among Oakland city officials that a surge in Covid-19 cases is attributed to social gatherings. City leaders are worried that parties at Lake Merritt on weekends, may play a role in the rise of infections in East Oakland. Data shows that in July, the number of Covid-19 cases related to people traveling and hanging out at parties and social gatherings has spiked to about 40% of the positive cases, that's double the rate of cases contracted in the workplace.
East Bay Times, July 26, 2020
The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office shared additional details this weekend about its loss of another member to Covid-19 late last week. In a statement Saturday following
Friday’s disclosure
, the department said Valerie Leon, 61, died at 6:30 p.m. Friday at Kaiser Medical Center in Modesto.
Leon, who joined the sheriff’s office in 1997, worked assignments at Oakland’s Rene C. Davidson Courthouse and the Alameda County Coroner’s Bureau, where she was on duty during the pandemic, officials said.
SF Chronicle, July 26, 2020
San Francisco’s city attorney had warned Catholic leaders to stop holding illegal indoor events only days earlier. Yet the leadership of SS Peter and Paul’s helped organize the wedding ceremony, the city said. The celebration included a rehearsal dinner and reception with invitations extended to large groups from multiple households, at a time when such gatherings remain heavily restricted in much of the Bay Area. In the days following, the newlywed couple and at least eight attendees tested positive for the coronavirus, two guests told The Chronicle.
KQED, July 26, 2020
A Muni operator was attacked with a half-size baseball bat after asking three young men to wear masks aboard a Muni bus in the South of Market neighborhood, Wednesday. But while that incident was widely reported, perhaps less known is when the bus driver asked the young men to wear a mask, one of them spat at the driver and accused the Asian bus operator of having coronavirus. That’s according to Transport Workers Union Local 250-A President Roger Marenco, who told KQED that after the assault bus drivers may be more reluctant to enforce mask rules.
SF Chronicle, July 27, 2020
The
public health department that ran Laguna Honda,
the largest nursing home in the state, wasn’t equipped to handle a surge of cases at the facility. Now, four months into the pandemic, not one Laguna Honda resident or worker has died of Covid-19, public health officials say. Of the 721 people living there, 19 have become infected. And of more than 1,800 employees, 50 have tested positive.
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Vaccine News
Associated Press, July 27, 2020
The world’s biggest Covid-19 vaccine study got underway Monday with the first of 30,000 planned volunteers helping to test shots created by the U.S. government -- one of several candidates in the final stretch of the global vaccine race. There’s still no guarantee that the
experimental vaccine
, developed by the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc., will really protect. The needed proof: Volunteers won’t know if they’re getting the real shot or a dummy version. After two doses, scientists will closely track which group experiences more infections as they go about their daily routines, especially in areas where the virus still is spreading unchecked.
STAT, July 27, 2020
While the world awaits the results of large clinical trials of Covid-19 vaccines, experts say the data so far suggest one important possibility: The vaccines may carry a bit of a kick. In vaccine parlance, they appear to be
“reactogenic,”
meaning they have induced short-term discomfort in a percentage of the people who have received them in clinical trials. This kind of discomfort includes headache, sore arms, fatigue, chills, and fever.
As long as the side effects of eventual Covid-19 vaccines are transient and not severe, these would not be sources of alarm, in fact, they may be signals of an immune system lurching into gear. It’s a simple fact that some vaccines are more unpleasant to take than others.
Covid-19 Medical News
USA Today, July 27, 2020
An unknown but growing number of the 4 million U.S. COVID-19 patients say they can't shake symptoms ranging from fatigue to serious respiratory or neurological problems, often for months after diagnosis. The ailments are all the more challenging because patients say they often face skeptical families, friends, employers and even doctors. A study of 143 patients in Italy out this month in JAMA Network found
87% of patients who had recovered from COVID-19
reported at least one lingering symptom, notably fatigue and trouble breathing.
MedRxic, July 25, 2020
In preprint study not yet certified by per review, researchers in France reported that a total of 27 participants, including 25 male singers, a conductor and an accompanist attended a choir practice on March 12, 2020. The practice was indoor and took place in a non-ventilated space of 45 m2. The mean age of the participants was 66.9 years. 70% of the participants were diagnosed with Covid-19 from 1 to 12 days after the rehearsal with a median of 5.1 days. 36% of the cases needed a hospitalization, and 21% were admitted to an ICU.
Personal Health
NY Times, July 27, 2020
Your blood carries the memory of every pathogen you’ve ever encountered. If you’ve been infected with the coronavirus, your body most likely remembers that, too. Antibodies are the legacy of that encounter. Why, then, have so many people stricken by the virus discovered that they don’t seem to have antibodies? Blame the tests. Most commercial antibody tests offer crude yes-no answers. The tests
are
notorious for delivering
false positives, results indicating that someone has antibodies when he or she does not.
Bloomberg News, Updated July 25, 2020
A regularly updated primer on how the coronavirus is transmitted. For the most part, it spreads by
close personal contact
via tiny particles emitted when an infected person sneezes, coughs,
speaks
,
sings,
or even just breathes normally. These can infect another person by falling into an eye, nose or mouth, by being inhaled or getting stuck on a hand and transferred to one of these entry sites.
Washington Post, July 27, 2020
Six feet is the rule for safe distancing outdoors. Inside, because there’s not as much air flowing, it’s best to stay “as far away from that individual as you can get,” said infectious-disease expert John Swartzberg. “I would wear a mask so I wouldn’t infect the service person, and I’d expect them to wear a mask, so they wouldn’t infect me.” Open doors and windows. The fresh air may dilute any virus that might have hitched a ride with the service tech.
ABC News, July 27, 2020
- Maintain a daily routine
- Make physical activity a priority
- Limit negative news
- Keep up social connections
- Engage children in open dialogue
- Build hope and a sense of purpose
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LA Times, July 27, 2020
Will July end with more bad news or some tentative signs that the efforts to slow infections by closing down some businesses and institutions might be paying off? Health officials are anxious for more signs of the latter, especially amid indications that other hot-spot states may be beginning to plateau.
“We are at the phase of just beginning to flatten the curve, albeit at a higher level than before,” Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, medical epidemiologist and infectious disease expert at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, said Sunday of California.
The state’s hospital system has not been broadly overwhelmed in this latest surge, Kim-Farley said. And where there was an overwhelmed hospital system in a local hot spot, the issue in some cases was a shortage of medical staffing, rather than physical beds. Some of that has been relieved by transferring patients to other nearby counties, and federal doctors and nurses being assigned to hospitals in the Central Valley and Southern California, he said.
Sacramento Bee, July 27, 2020
California now leads the nation with more than
450,000 confirmed cases
of coronavirus. More Californians, roughly 7,000, are now in hospital beds with Covid-19 than during March and April’s spring surge, according to the California Hospital Association. More than 2,000 of those patients are in intensive care.
Even as California’s hospitals come under unprecedented siege from a resurgent pandemic, hospital industry leaders this week warned that the state’s health care framework could still crack under threats to capacity that have been omnipresent since March:
- Personal protective equipment and testing supplies remain in short supply as multiple states report surges in cases.
- Patients need specially trained critical care personnel, but they may not find enough in areas experiencing the worst flare-ups of Covid-19.
- The worst-hit counties will need beds at alternate care sites outside hospitals.
Sacramento Bee, July 26, 2020
A surge in Covid-19 cases and a shortage of contact tracers has for weeks hampered Sacramento County’s efforts to contact and warn people exposed to coronavirus. Now, an additional hurdle is inhibiting the county’s contact tracing: testing slowdowns. Delays to get test appointments and longer waiting periods while labs turn around results mean cases land on investigators’ desks long after a person should have been told to start quarantining. In some cases, the county receives cases more than 14 days after a person was exposed, the period of time most people are thought to be infectious.
LA Times, July 26, 2020
The spiraling number of Covid-19 cases compelled Gov. Newsom to shut down operations in the Golden State — only to announce on July 20 that salons could resume their services if they moved outdoors. For salons, fluctuating between indoors and outdoors, struggling to break even or to keep pace with pandemic-inspired regulations, is a daily pressure. Analysts say the endless guidelines have prompted not only confusion but frustration.
SF Chronicle, July 26, 2020
As the pandemic drags on and most of California’s long-term care facilities remain virtually shuttered to visitors, families and nursing home watchdogs are saying that video calls and window visits aren’t enough anymore. Family members say they provide important monitoring and care inside the homes, including feeding and bathing residents. The state’s public health agency does allow inside visits but under such stringent conditions — including a decline in cases in the larger community — that few homes can offer them. Even in counties with fewer Covid cases, where visits might be permissible, some facilities won’t allow them, citing liability concerns, advocates say.
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Reuters, July 27, 2020
The U.S. might have more Covid-19 testing capacity than any other country. So why have we seen laboratories overwhelmed and many patients again waiting a week or more for results?
At the heart of the crisis is a reliance by public and private labs on automated testing equipment that locks them in to using proprietary chemical kits and other tools made by a handful of manufacturers. The result: as infection rates spike nationwide, many labs aren’t running anywhere near capacity because of supply-chain bottlenecks, according to interviews with 16 hospital, state, commercial and academic labs and an analysis of state and city procurement plans. U.S. labs now run about 800,000 diagnostic tests daily, according to the Covid Tracking Project. But the United States needs 6–10 million tests per day, by various estimates.
Washington Post, July 27, 2020
About 4,000 federal employees are seeking disability compensation on grounds that they contracted the novel coronavirus at work, while survivors of 60 deceased employees are seeking death benefits for the same reason. The total number of claims is expected to increase to 6,000 within weeks,
according to a report
that amounts to one of the first accountings of the pandemic’s impact on the health of the federal workforce. Employees of three departments with high concentrations of jobs deemed to carry the highest risk of exposure, Homeland Security, Justice and Veterans Affairs, accounted for most of the 4,011 claims filed through July 23.
Washington Post, July 27, 2020
Robert C. O’Brien, President Trump’s national security adviser, has tested positive for coronavirus, the White House said Monday. O’Brien is the highest-ranking Trump administration official known to have tested positive for covid-19. O’Brien is in frequent contact with President Trump, though it was not immediately clear how recently the two had been in close proximity. The two appeared publicly together during a visit to U.S. Southern Command in Miami on July 10.
Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2020
Google will keep its employees home until at least next July, making the search-engine giant the first major U.S. corporation to formalize such an extended timetable in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. The move will affect nearly all of the roughly 200,000 full-time and contract employees.
Washington Post, July 27, 2020
“I’ve said from Day 1, it would have been a lot easier for the decision-makers if everyone would have been on the same page, and we’d have shut down this or that type of business in our county and state, and the bordering states would have done the same. That’s the only sure way of doing it,” said Herb Simmons, emergency management director in St. Clair County, Ill., which sits across the Mississippi River from Missouri, where restrictions are lower. “What we needed is a national-level plan.”
Politico, July 27, 2020
Two major league games scheduled for Monday night were postponed after more than a dozen Miami Marlins players and staff members tested positive for the coronavirus in an outbreak that stranded the team in Philadelphia. The Marlins' home opener against Baltimore was called off, as was the New York Yankees' game at Philadelphia. The Yankees would have been in the same clubhouse the Marlins used last weekend.
NPR, July 26, 2020
Florida has recorded more coronavirus cases than New York. Only California, the most populous state in the country, has more. As of Sunday afternoon,
data
from Johns Hopkins University shows 423,855 people in Florida have tested positive for the coronavirus, compared to 411,736 in New York. California leads with 450,242 cases.
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Sacramento Bee, July 27, 2020
Sacramento mom Erin Gottis knew she wasn’t going to send her 9-year-old son Mason back into the classroom this fall well before his school district announced plans to start the academic year with distance learning. Mason has severe asthma and Type 1 diabetes. Keeping him healthy and out of the hospital for something as simple as getting a cold during a normal school year was hard enough, Gottis, said. Physically sending him back to school amid Covid-19 could kill him. Many California families like hers are bracing months if not years of educating their medically fragile kids at home. They won’t send their kids to class until there’s a widely available vaccine or treatment for Covid-19.
EdSource, July 27, 2020
With students facing ever-growing levels of depression and anxiety as the pandemic wears on, nearly everyone agrees that school districts need to expand their mental health services.
But budget uncertainties have stymied school districts’ efforts to hire more counselors and psychologists, leaving mental health advocates worried that thousands of students in California won’t receive the help they need.
“Basically, nearly every student in California has been traumatized,” said Melanee Cottrill, executive director of the California Association of School Psychologists. “We expect to see a huge demand when school reopens, and we are very concerned about meeting the needs of students.”
CalMatters, July 24, 2020
As California colleges rethink their back-to-school plans amid a statewide spike in coronavirus cases, it’s not just their students they need to worry about protecting. Many campus employees are decades older than the students they teach and support, putting them at higher risk of complications if they contract the virus.
The chance of an average 18-year-old student dying if infected by Covid-19 is about 1 in 2,000, UC San Francisco epidemiologist Jeffrey Martin said, but that number increases quickly when talking about older campus employees.
Jean Chin, a physician who sits on the AHCA’s Covid-19 task force, told journalists at an education reporting conference Thursday that the ideal scenario to protect students’ and professors’ health would be to test the entire campus population every two to three days. No college, she said, is prepared to do that — with the possible exception of a few large universities like UC San Diego that have their own medical centers.
Mercury News, July 26, 2020
Bay Area college students, already disrupted by the pandemic, are also struggling to renegotiate tightly-drawn leases signed before the crisis. Lawyers and renter advocates say students at universities in San Jose, San Francisco and Berkeley — expensive markets where high demand often forces students into making quick and early decisions on apartments — are being squeezed to pay rent for rooms they may never set foot in.
While some property owners have worked with tenants, others have drawn a hard line. Tenant protections enacted during the pandemic have postponed evictions and give struggling residents months to repay back rent. But the temporary orders have done little for the private agreements made between students and corporate landlords before the crisis struck.
Berkeleyside, July 24, 2020
When UC Berkeley’s fall semester begins in August, only 3,200 students will be living in dorms and all of them will be in singles in order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. When those students arrive, they will have to take a COVID-19 test within 24 hours. Then they will have to stay “sequestered” in their dorm rooms for 7 to 10 days, only coming outside to pick up a grab and go meal. Then they will take another test. All students will be asked to pledge to certain behavioral standards, including wearing masks and practicing social distancing.
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US & International Education News
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NY Times, July 24, 2020
The CDC enters for Disease Control and Prevention issued
a full-throated call to reopen schools in a statement
that aligned with President Trump’s pressure on communities, listing numerous benefits of being in school and downplaying the potential health risks. The new statement came from a working group convened by officials at the Department of Health and Human Services. A federal official familiar with the group said it included minimal representation from the CDC.
Experts on the subject at the C.D.C. were cut off from direct communication with the working group after their input on the statement was interpreted as being too cautious, the official said.
Washington Post, July 25, 2020
If you are confused by the CDC’s changing guidance, here are recommendations from Wendy Armstrong, professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Emory University’s School of Medicine, and Tina Tan, professor of pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. A
video recording of the full town hall
along with the
slide presentation
dated July 16, 2020, are available online. Among the points made:
1. Schools cannot be opened safely for in-person instruction if the virus is not contained in the local community.
2. The decision to open schools has to be a local decision based on the latest available, local scientific data.
3. Infection rates for children aged 10 to 19 are similar to infection rates for adults 20 to 49.
4. Schools need well-developed protocols for reopening and for steps to follow if the virus appears in a school.
5. Schools should consider strategies that encourage cocooning, staggered drop-off and pickup times, social distancing on buses and making best use of ventilation.
6. Teachers in schools need protection but so do non-teaching staff.
7. Extracurricular activities are going to be an extremely challenging area for school safety.
8. The costs of attending to all this are astronomical, at a time when state and local revenues will decline due to the crippling unemployment and recession accompanying the pandemic.
CNN, July 26, 2020
Two students tested positive for Covid-19, and as many as 200 others may have been exposed, after taking a two-hour ACT college admissions test at an Oklahoma high school on July 18th.
Politico, July 27, 2020
Black people are dying at 2.5 times the rate of white people, according to the
Covid Racial Data Tracker
. And nearly a third of deaths among nonwhite Americans were in
people younger than 65
,
according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, compared with 13% among white people under that age.
“We have to acknowledge and recognize that African Americans with comorbidities have fared far worse in this pandemic than any other group,” said Howard University President Wayne A.I. Frederick in an interview. “I think, for an HBCU in particular, there’s a lot of differences in terms of opening that are probably a little more accentuated because of our circumstances.”
Wired, July 27, 2020
One large
new study from South Korea
found children under the age of 10 appear to not transmit the virus very well. While it's not exactly clear why, the pediatric infectious disease experts say that it's perhaps because young children expel less air that contains the virus and are shorter, so any potential respiratory droplets are less likely to reach adults. A
study published in April
by researchers at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston suggests that younger kids haven’t developed the molecular keys that the
virus exploits to enter the body
and wreak havoc on the respiratory system.
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Holocaust survivor returns home after beating Covid-19
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Gita Shorr is a survivor. A 90 year-old great-grandmother whose arm is still branded with the numbers 33380, Gita Shorr survived the horrors of the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. Nearly 80 years later, Shorr survived a more than two-month battle with Covid-19.
On Thursday, Shorr, bubbling with excitement and dancing with the help of a walker, was welcomed back to her home at The Bristal in East Northport, Long Island, by a parade of staff and family holding streamers and singing Carrie Underwood's hit song "The Champion."
On May 1, Shorr, who has lived at The Bristal for the past four years, was diagnosed with Covid-19 and sent to Huntington Hospital. Family members recalled that during the earliest stages of the illness, Shorr suffered nightmares and flashbacks from her time in the concentration camps.
Shorr remembers relatively little of her time battling Covid-19. She lost her sense of taste and smell but said the worst part was being unable to see her family.
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"I am very strong in my will," she said. "And that helped me. It let all the people know what kind of person I am."
Shorr is now fully recovered and eager to spend time with her three children, seven grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren. Shorr has even suggested to her family that she's on the lookout for a new boyfriend.
"Life is too short so I want to take in everything," she said. "I am now very happy."
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ABC News, July 26,2020
Over 16 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with Covid-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to
data
compiled by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases, and suspicions that some governments are hiding or downplaying the scope of their nations' outbreaks. The United States has become the worst-affected country, with more than 4.2 million diagnosed cases and at least 146,788 deaths.
Reuters, July 27, 2020
Countries around Asia are confronting a second wave of coronavirus infections and are clamping down again to try to contain the disease. Mainland China is battling the most aggressive return of Covid-19 in months, confirming 57 new locally transmitted cases on Sunday, the highest level since early March, driven by fresh infections in the far western region of Xinjiang. Hong Kong is expected to announce further restrictions on Monday, including a ban on restaurant dining and mandated face masks outdoors, local media reported.
Australian authorities warned a 6-week lockdown in parts of the southeastern Victoria state may last longer after the country registered its highest daily increase in infections. In Japan, the government said it would urge business leaders to ramp up anti-virus measures such as staggered shifts, and aimed to see rates of telecommuting achieved during an earlier state of emergency.
Vietnam is evacuating 80,000 people, mostly local tourists, from the central city of Danang after three residents tested positive for the coronavirus at the weekend, the government said on Monday. The Southeast Asian country is back on high alert after the government on Saturday confirmed its first community infections since April, and another three cases on Sunday, all in Danang. Manila is weighing whether to re-impose stricter lockdown measures after easing them saw a dramatic surge in infections and deaths, with 62,326 cases reported since the first lockdown was relaxed June 1.
Associated Press, July 27, 2020
Europe’s tourism revival is running into turbulence only weeks after countries reopened their borders, with rising infections in Spain and other nations causing increasing concern among health authorities over people bringing the coronavirus home from their summer vacations.
European countries started opening up to each other’s tourists in mid-June, but recent events have shown that the new freedom to travel is subject to setbacks. Over the weekend, Britain imposed a 14-day quarantine on travelers arriving from Spain, Norway ordered a 10-day quarantine for people returning from the entire Iberian peninsula, and France urged its citizens not to visit Spain’s Catalonia region.
Forbes, July 24, 2020
While people over age 61 account for the majority (53%) of the confirmed Covid-19 deaths in Mexico City, relatively young people, aged 41-60, account for 39% of the total. Furthermore, 2,450 people age 35 to 55 have died of Covid-19 in Mexico City, nearly a third (29%) of the total tally of officially confirmed deaths.
Part of the problem is that Mexico’s President Lopez Obrador has encouraged the public to treat family members with Covid-19 symptoms at home to help avoid overwhelming hospitals. In March, early on in the pandemic, he said that families could rely on their daughters for help at home. Because Ministry of Health spokesman Hugo Lopez-Gatell has not urged patients with symptoms to buy
c
heap oximeters
to monitor their oxygen levels at home, most people don’t show up at the hospital until they are in critical condition.
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Bloomberg News, July 26, 2020
Psychological fatigue with social distancing is emerging as a major challenge for curbing a pandemic now into its eighth month. That’s especially so among young adults who are less fearful of the coronavirus, and suffer greater economic and social costs when they stay home. From Japan to
Spain
and the U.S., infections among millennials and Generation Z are driving new waves of cases which don’t seem to be abating despite re-imposed restrictions. The worrying trend reflects that social distancing curbs are proving untenable over a long period, despite their initial efficacy in flattening the virus curve across the world earlier this year.
ABC News, July 27, 2020
During an in-depth interview that will air Tuesday night on ABC News as part of a primetime special, “American Catastrophe: How Did We Get Here?," Dr. Anthony Fauci was pressed to explain why, months after COVID-19 first reached U.S. soil, the U.S. government is still struggling to provide adequate testing for Americans and sufficient personal protective gear for essential workers. “We keep hearing when we go to these task force meetings that these [issues] are being corrected,” Fauci said. “But yet when you go into the trenches, you still hear about that.”
Bill Frist, Richard Pan, and Max G. Bronstein, STAT, July 27, 2020,
No single vaccine is likely to offer a panacea for this pandemic. And even if it did, it might not accomplish its job if we don’t deal with hesitance to get vaccinated and counter vaccine disinformation. By failing to do these things, we risk a perpetual cycle of infectious disease coupled with persistent economic decline.
Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, vaccination
conspiracy theories have flourished
, fueled by a potent combination of fear, misinformation, and social media amplification. According to new polling data, among adults who have heard of one or more Covid-19 conspiracy theories, 36% believe it to be
probably or definitely true
. Now is the time to make sure that all residents of the U.S. understand the value of a Covid-19 vaccine and the necessity of getting one.
Julie Bosman, NY Times, July 27, 2020
Americans now have access to an expanding set of data to help them interpret the coronavirus pandemic. They are closely tracking the number of sick and dead. They can read daily case counts in their cities and states, the percentage of positive tests, the number of people hospitalized and the weekly change in cases. It is possible to look on the Illinois Department of Public Health
website
and learn how many hospital beds exist statewide, how many ventilators are available in Peoria and how many intensive-care unit beds are free in Champaign.
Sophisticated data-gathering operations by
newspapers
, research universities and
volunteers
have sprung up in response to the pandemic, monitoring and collecting coronavirus metrics around the clock.
Caroline Chen, Pro Publica, July 21, 2020
Both Matthew Fox, professor of epidemiology and global health at Boston University, and Youyang Gu, a data scientist best known for his Covid-19
prediction models, advise looking at three measurements together: number of cases, case positivity rates and number of deaths.
The Atlantic, July 27, 2020
In the past few months, the lives that unfolded in the airy, impersonal spaces of the Before Times have changed. Collaboration and togetherness have become disease vectors, to say nothing of open floor plans’ less deadly problems, such as the impossibility of two Zoom calls happening without a wall between them.
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Alameda County Data
: 2,640 n
ew cases have been recorded over the last 14 days. The number of confirmed infections is currently doubling every 32.8 days.
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Contra Costa County Data
: 2,272 new cases have been recorded over last 14 days. The number of confirmed infections is currently doubling every 21.5 days.
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Top 8 Locations of Cases in Alameda County
, cases as of 7/27/20
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Oakland:
4,156
Hayward:
1,513
Eden MAC: 622
Fremont: 574
San Leandro: 536
Livermore:
429
Union City: 319
Castro Valley:
295
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Top 8 Locations of Cases in Contra Costa County
, cases as of 7/27/20
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Richmond: 1,484
Antioch: 865
Concord: 821
Pittsburgh:
671
San Pablo: 602
Bay Point: 328
Walnut Creek: 322
Brentwood: 287
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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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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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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-Treasurer, 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.
We welcome your feedback on our bulletin. Please contact editor
Stephen Cassidy
.
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