Eden Health District COVID-19 Bulletin
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“This pandemic is so relatively new, and we’re gathering information at a lightning speed. But there’s still so much we don’t know, particularly in children.”
Dr. Tara Greenhow, regional lead of pediatric infectious disease at Kaiser Permanente Northern California,
6/26/20
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Steve Schrader of Omaha, Nebraska, went to the doctor in early April thinking he was suffering from bad allergies. The doctor tested his oxygen level. "It was below 60, they said, 'You need to get to the emergency room right away'" said Schrader.
For the next 19 days, Schrader was on a ventilator. His lungs were hardening like concrete and his body was shutting down.
As he fought for survival, Steve’s wife, Ann, spread the word to friends far and wide using the phrase #SteveStrong. The saying spread throughout their community of family and friends and was written on sidewalks and posted on signs.
"Yes, he was unconscious, but he had the will to live, I know he had the will to live," said Ann.
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Steve pulled through, thanks to the support of his community and the medical staff at Nebraska Medicine that took such good care of him. He came home in May.
"It has made me look at, what do I need to do, being that I'm a miracle, what do I need to do? For me, it's getting the story out," Steve stated. The Schraders encourage everyone to wear masks when out in public.
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Editors Note
: We appreciate your continued readership of and feedback on the Bulletin. We are now publishing the Bulletin on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
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Alameda County:
5,493
Contra Costa County:
2,676
California:
201,289
U.S.:
2,444,483
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Alameda County:
130
Contra Costa County:
73
California:
5,807
U.S.:
124,732
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East Bay Times, June 26, 2020
East Bay counties have marked grim new single-day highs in case counts this week along with a spike in deaths. Both indicators signal that the coronavirus remains prevalent in the region as officials prepare to lift more rules on public gatherings. Contra Costa County announced five new deaths from the virus on both Wednesday and Thursday. Alameda County announced six new deaths Thursday after noting two on Wednesday.
Oaklandside, June 25, 2020
Thirteen community leaders in Oakland and Alameda County are pushing back against the loosening of shelter-in-place rules, and asking county health officials to release more data before making decisions that they say will increase risks for vulnerable residents. In a
letter sent to county officials
Thursday, June 18, the authors, including four medical doctors, wrote that the reopening of retail, outdoor dining, and religious services could “squander” the progress Alameda County has made in fighting the coronavirus.
Local City Budget News
Triggered by the economic fallout from the pandemic, cities throughout Alameda County are facing significant shortfalls in revenue in the current fiscal year ending on June 30, 2020, and the new fiscal year starting on July 1, 2020. Here are links to recent articles on the budget cuts occurring in the following East Bay cities:
Berkeleyside, June 25, 2020
Over a period of three days last week, about 90 residents of
Strawberry Creek Lodge
left their apartments to get tested for COVID-19. But instead of venturing to a testing center, they only had to travel a few feet, to their complex’s outdoor patio. That’s because one of Berkeley’s coronavirus testing facilities has gone mobile.
KQED, June 26, 2020
San Francisco's health director announced Thursday that the city has won state permission, along with most other counties in California, to accelerate its reopening process. The city will allow hair salons, barber shops, nail salons, massage establishments, tattoo studios, outdoor bars, outdoor museums and zoos to reopen June 29, as long as they employ new safety measures.
KQED, June 26, 2020
Within one week in June, the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases at San Quentin State Prison grew more than 700 percent. Prison authorities have now reported that more than 500 of 3, 500 incarcerated men at the prison have the virus, and that doesn't even include the dozens of guards who have contracted it too.
SF Chronicle, June 25, 2020
A team of UC Berkeley and UCSF health experts warned prison medical officials nearly two weeks ago that they’d need to cut the population of San Quentin State Prison in half to avoid a potentially “catastrophic” outbreak there.
SF Chronicle, June 26, 2020
Muir Woods National Monument will reopen to the public on Monday, becoming the latest and one of the last sites in the National Park Service to welcome people back after closing because of the coronavirus. Visitors to the redwood forest should expect some changes, though. Admission to the Marin County site will be even more limited than it was previously. The 4,000 slots typically allotted for visitors each day, via an online reservation system, are being trimmed to 1,700.
East Bay Times, Updated June 25, 2020
The East Bay Times provides a list of testing sites in the Bay Area, many of which will provide free testing to persons without symptoms.
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STAT, June 25, 2020
The CDC enters for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday broadened its warning about who is at risk of developing severe disease from Covid-19 infection, suggesting even younger people who are obese or have other health conditions can become seriously ill if they contract the virus.
Website, Updated June 25, 2020
Covid-19 is a new disease. We are learning more about Covid-19 everyday. People of any age with the following medical conditions are at increased risk of severe illness from Covid-19:
Children who are medically complex, who have neurologic, genetic, metabolic conditions, or who have congenital heart disease are at higher risk for severe illness from COVID-19 than other children.
CNN, June 26, 2020
More than 2.4 million cases have been diagnosed nationwide since the pandemic started, but the number of people who have been infected is likely to be 10 times as high. Antibody tests show more than 20 million people have been infected with coronavirus, most of them without knowing it, said CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield.
Reuters, June 26, 2020
Besides the respiratory issues that leave patients gasping for breath, the virus that causes Covid-19 attacks many organ systems, in some cases causing catastrophic damage. “We thought this was only a respiratory virus. Turns out, it goes after the pancreas. It goes after the heart. It goes after the liver, the brain, the kidney and other organs. We didn’t appreciate that in the beginning,” said Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California.
STAT, June 25, 2020
A new survey reveals a wide range of serious psychiatric and neurological complications tied to Covid-19, including stroke, psychosis, and a dementia-like syndrome. The study underscores how aggressively the coronavirus can attack beyond the lungs, and the risk the disease can pose to younger adults. Whereas the strokes were more common among older patients, the researchers found that about half of those who experienced altered mental status were younger than 60.
Nature, June 24, 2020
Evidence from tissue studies and some people with COVID-19 shows that the virus damages insulin-producing cells.
Kaiser Health News, June 25, 2020
As states ease their lockdowns, bars are emerging as fertile breeding grounds for the coronavirus. They create a risky cocktail of tight quarters, young adults unbowed by the fear of illness and, in some instances, proprietors who don’t enforce crowd limits and social distancing rules. Public health authorities have identified bars as the locus of outbreaks in Louisiana, Florida, Wyoming and Idaho.
Dr. James Hamlin, The Atlantic, June 24, 2020
"Unlike when you open a window and allow air to pass through, air-conditioning recirculates a lot of the same air inside a building. Though the exact risks are still unknown, this has the potential to create a virus-laden stew in offices and, yes, hotels."
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Mercury News, June 26, 2020
Not only is the coronavirus pandemic not slowing down, Thursday brought the most new cases yet nationwide, including thousands more in California, pushing the state past 200,000. There were 5,052 positive tests for COVID-19 and another 81 deaths from the virus reported Thursday around California, pushing the state’s confirmed case count to 200,476, according to
data compiled by this news organization
. The new fatalities, more than half in Los Angeles County, raised California’s death toll to 5,804.
Mercury News, June 26, 2020
As coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continue to spike across the state, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday tried a new strategy to convince Californians to remain vigilant about social distancing: He gave them new access to the state’s COVID-19 data and predictive models, showing how bad things are and how bad they might get.
Warning about the ongoing dangers of the virus while simultaneously defending his decision to continue reopening the state’s economy, Newsom unveiled two websites intended to provide a more transparent look into California’s coronavirus response. The first,
calcat.covid19.ca.gov
, shows the virus’ rate of spread in each county throughout the state, compares the various academic models health officials use to guide policies, and predicts what might happen as various shelter-in-place orders are lifted. The second,
github.com/stateofcalifornia/calca
, provides the same data in an open-source format.
The Guardian, June 26, 2020
As of Thursday, the number of patients in California hospitalized with Covid-19 is 32% higher than it was two weeks ago, Gov. Newsom reported. The number of patients in intensive care also increased 19% over the past fortnight, more than a third of ICU beds available across the state are now occupied by coronavirus patients. Over the past two weeks, about 64 people have died of the virus each day.
LA Times, June 26, 2020
The surge in new coronavirus cases that has alarmed health officials and put renewed strain on hospitals appears to be driven at least in part by increases in younger Californians falling sick. As of Wednesday, 56% of people diagnosed with Covid-19 were 18 to 49 years old, though they account for only 43.5% of the state’s population. That figure has risen consistently throughout the outbreak but surged sharply in recent weeks. Officials warn that although testing criteria may be a factor, they do not fully explain the trends. The virus appears to simply be spreading more in younger age groups now, they say.
Kaiser Health News, June 25, 2020
Predictions of a summer lull have evaporated. Public health officials now fear that a persistent summer upswing could unwind gains made early in the pandemic, taxing hospitals and health care workers, and leading to thousands of more deaths even before an ominous fall resurgence. County health officials expected they’d be battling outbreaks in the riskiest places, including prisons, homeless encampments and nursing homes. What has caught them off guard is how fast cases are multiplying following major holidays and social gatherings.
Cal Budget Center, June 2020
The Covid-19 public health and economic crisis is not easing for Californians – even as businesses have been allowed to reopen and may be able to hire some workers. For many Californians who earned low wages and struggled with the cost of living before the pandemic, this recession and the job losses are only worsening the economic disparities they experience every day. Who is hit hardest by California’s job losses that are far worse than the Great Recession? Women and people of color.
Sacramento Bee, June 26, 2020
They’ve resisted the stay-at-home order, denounced contact tracing as government control and disregarded a statewide mask mandate. At every stage of the pandemic, California’s anti-vaccine activists have foreshadowed what their fight against a future vaccine to prevent Covid-19 could look like.
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NPR, June 26, 2020
With numbers spiking across southern states, the U.S. set a daily record for new Covid-19 cases Thursday in a return to figures not seen since late April. According to data collected by
Johns Hopkins University & Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center
, 40,401 new cases were recorded June 25, surpassing the previous record set April 24, which saw 36,291 new cases.The U.S. continues to lead the world in both reported cases and deaths from the coronavirus. According to the CDC, the case numbers are almost certainly vastly understated. "Our best estimate right now is that for every case that was reported, there actually were 10 other infections," Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC, said.
LA Times, June 26, 2020
Medical centers in Arizona, Florida, Texas and other states with skyrocketing infections are rapidly filling with sick patients, threatening state healthcare systems. The swift increase has forced hospital leaders to begin bringing in extra staff, converting space into dedicated coronavirus units and, in some cases, moving sick patients hundreds of miles to get to available beds. “The numbers are definitely scary,” said Judy Rich, chief executive of Tucson Medical Center. which has seen a threefold increase in Covid-19 patients since the beginning of June.
NY Times, June 26, 2020
Infections among Latinos have far outpaced the rest of the nation, a testament to the makeup of the nation’s essential work force as the American epidemic has surged yet again in the last couple of weeks. Latinos in the United States are hardly a cultural monolith, and there is no evidence yet that any ethnic group is inherently more vulnerable to the virus than others. But in the last two weeks, counties across the country where at least a quarter of the population is Latino have recorded an increase of 32 percent in new cases, compared to a 15 percent increase for all other counties, a Times analysis shows.
Washington Post, June 26, 2020
Nearly 1 in 3 black Americans know someone personally who has died of covid-19, far exceeding their white counterparts, according to a
Washington Post-Ipsos poll
that underscores the
coronavirus
pandemic’s profoundly disparate impact. The nationwide survey finds that 31 percent of black adults say they know someone firsthand who has been killed by the virus, compared with 17 percent of adults who are Hispanic and 9 percent who are white.
The Hill, June 26, 2020
Texas will order bars and some outdoor recreation businesses to close once again in an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus as the number of infections mount across the state. Gov. Greg Abbott announced the decision in a statement Friday morning amid rising cases in the state.
Bloomberg, June 26, 2020
Florida has suspended consumption of alcohol at bars effective immediately, the state’s first major policy shift in response to a surge in Covid-19 cases this month. Florida reported 122,960 Covid-19 cases on Friday, up 7.8% from a day earlier, compared with an average increase of 4.1% in the previous seven days. The one-day increase of 8,942 was the most ever.
Kaiser Health News, June 25, 2020
Last week it was
widely reported
that American escorted a passenger off a flight after he refused to wear a mask and then banned him from future American flights while the mask rule remains in place. It was the first known incident of stepped-up enforcement of airlines’ updated Covid policies. American now states that if a passenger is not exempt from wearing a face mask and refuses to wear one, they may be denied boarding and future travel on American.
Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2020
American Airlines
says it will fill its planes completely as passengers start to return to traveling after the coronavirus pandemic decimated demand in recent months. United Airlines allows planes to fly full, though it also gives customers the chance to change flights. Delta and Southwest
are leaving open all middle seats, or the equivalent number of seats. Both airlines have said they plan to continue blocking seats through the end of September.
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SF Chronicle, June 26, 2020
Research into the new coronavirus has moved “lightning fast” since the global pandemic began, but uncertainty around how the virus affects kids and how infectious they might be has made decisions around reopening California schools especially fraught.
In the Bay Area, children and teens have made up about 10% of all coronavirus cases, or about 2,000 in all. Statewide about 13,300 people 18 and younger have tested positive for the virus, about 8% of the total cases. No children have died of COVID-19 in California.
It’s hard to say how well those numbers capture the actual infection rates among children, infectious disease experts say. Children may be less likely to be tested, for several reasons, they are less often hospitalized, and more often experience symptoms that could be mistaken for some other respiratory virus, for example.
What the numbers do show is that children are not immune to the virus.
SF Chronicle, June 25, 2020
The Marin County schools superintendent was gushing. “Isn’t it just great?” Mary Jane Burke asked, as she summarized the county’s recommendation to reopen schools and bring all kids back to classrooms full time in the fall, with masks and social distancing. Marin was among the first counties in the state to release such a specific plan for a return to in-class instruction, a nearly back-to-normal environment, with more liberal guidelines than recommended by the state.
Despite Burke’s optimism, the plan sparked immediate resistance and a heated debate, one playing out in virtually every district across the state, over what is an acceptable level of risk for students and staff — and at what point do the benefits of in-class instruction outweigh the concerns over the coronavirus spreading.
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School District Communications
EdSource, June 26, 2020
Education officials recently completed a survey of California districts to determine technology needs, and the results show the digital divide persists and the need for devices continues to grow. Along with pooling resources to help provide districts with devices, a digital divide task force has been meeting regularly with internet companies to find ways to bring internet access to thousands of California students who still need it
.
Cal Matters, June 25, 2020
Eight of the nine undergraduate campuses of the University of California system have published their plans for fall term, with most estimating that only a small number of classes will be conducted in person. The campus guidelines contrast with what UC President Janet Napolitano said
in May
, suggesting more classes will be conducted in-person with a hybrid model. Instead, the UC plans look more like what the larger California State University has been signaling since the spring: mostly online.
Lancet, June 25, 2020
Covid-19 is generally a mild disease in children, including infants. However, a small proportion develop severe disease requiring ICU admission and prolonged ventilation, although fatal outcome is overall rare. The data also reflect the current uncertainties regarding specific treatment options, highlighting that additional data on antiviral and immunomodulatory drugs are urgently needed.
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Free counseling for medical professionals
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Nurses, doctors and other frontline workers, burdened by the stress of providing health care during the pandemic, can get free counseling from hundreds of licensed Bay Area psychotherapists.
Launched in March, the Frontline Workers Counseling Program, or FWCP, stemmed from a recognition of the high stress levels essential workers face as the pandemic worsens, said the co-founder, San Francisco psychiatrist Elizabeth Rawson. People can go to the FWCP
website
to find therapists with a range of professional, personal and demographic backgrounds and treatment approaches.
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“I became very aware of elevated levels of stress in our practice, particularly among health care workers, who were anticipating a catastrophe in the Bay Area, and who were watching what was happening in Italy, with the lack of PPE,” Rawson said (in photo above).
“We don’t have a maximum on the number of sessions,” Rawson added. “Workers aren’t going to reach out and get four sessions and then be stuck without resources. This is therapists making a commitment to an ongoing therapeutic relationship.”
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CNN, June 26, 2020
European Union ambassadors are meeting today to discuss the criteria for reopening the bloc's external borders, after speculation that US travelers could be among those banned because of severe coronavirus outbreaks in their countries. The 27 member states have
yet to agree
on the criteria to be used to draw up the guidance that will be applied to the 104 countries with which the EU has visa arrangements, including the United States.
STAT, June 26, 2020
The World Health Organization and key partners unveiled a plan Friday to purchase 2 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines for the highest risk populations of the world. The plan anticipates that by the end of 2021, the doses could be delivered to countries to vaccinate high risk individuals, likely including health care workers, people over the age of 65, and other adults who suffer from conditions like diabetes.
Axios, June 25, 2020
The coronavirus pandemic's spread around the globe looks to be intensifying, bringing closer a worst-case scenario in which many of the world's developing countries are left with economic damage that is deep and long-lasting. The IMF lowered its
global growth projection
for 2020, expecting a 4.9% contraction this year, almost two percentage points lower than it predicted in April.
The Guardian, June 25, 2020
An analysis of coronavirus data, in combination with the University of Oxford’s
coronavirus government response tracker
,
has identified that 10 of the 45 most badly-affected countries are also among those rated as having a “relaxed response” to the pandemic, underlining the mitigating impact of effective government public health policies. The countries include the U.S., which is experiencing its largest increase in coronavirus cases since April; Iran, Germany and Switzerland, two European countries where the R rate has risen above 1 this week.
Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2020
Two months after a market outbreak infected possibly thousands of people across Mexico City and beyond, the virus appears to be diminishing at the market after its leaders, working with city officials and epidemiologists, employed an aggressive program of testing, isolating the sick, and tracing their contacts. The approach taken at the market is starkly different from that in the rest of the country, where the federal government has ruled out widespread testing and contact tracing. The approach to tackling the pandemic at the Central de Abasto could be a blueprint for similar food markets that operate throughout the developing world and are a major source of infections as the virus sweeps through countries where many people still buy food in crowded street markets.
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Axios, June 25, 2020
The U.S. today is getting closer to the worst-case scenario envisioned in the spring, a nationwide crisis, made worse by a vacuum of political leadership, threatening to overwhelm hospitals and spread out of control. Cases are up 30% nationwide compared to the beginning of this month, and dramatically worsening outbreaks in several states are beginning to strain hospital capacity, the same concern that prompted the lockdowns in the first place.
The Atlantic, June 25, 2020
Yesterday, the U.S. reported 38,672 new cases of the coronavirus, the highest daily total so far. Ignore any attempt to explain away what is happening: The American coronavirus pandemic is once again at risk of spinning out of control.
Kathryn Stephenson and Bisola Ojikutu, STAT, June 26, 2020
To match local demographics of Covid-19, Black or Latinx individuals would need to comprise up to 40% of vaccine trial participants nationwide. Everyone in medical research shares the responsibility to promote equitable representation in Covid-19 vaccine trials. The authors outline steps to achieve this.
Mohana Ravindranath, Politico, June 26, 2020
Employers are rushing to use digital tracking technology to reduce virus transmission in the workplace. But privacy experts worry that businesses will start using their newfound surveillance capabilities for purposes far beyond public health. The data could be used to evaluate workers' productivity, see which colleagues are holding meetings or even flag an employee who unexpectedly ducks out of the office during work hours.
Brett Dahlberg, Kaiser Health News, June 25, 2020
Across the country, authorities are finding that their usual strategies for protecting people against heat-related health problems are in direct conflict with their strategies for containing the coronavirus, and with record-breaking temperatures already recorded in some places before summer even officially began, those conflicts are likely to become more frequent.
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Alameda County Data
: 1,262 n
ew cases have been recorded over the last 14 days. The number of confirmed infections is currently doubling every 29 days.
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Contra Costa County Data
: 747 new cases have been recorded over last 14 days. The number of confirmed infections is currently doubling every 23 days.
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Top 8 Locations of Cases in Alameda County
, data as of 6/24/20
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Oakland:
2,144
Hayward:
910
Eden MAC:
345
Fremont:
259
San Leandro:
255
Union City:
178
Castro Valley:
170
Newark:
149
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Top 8 Locations of Cases in Contra Costa County
, data as of 6/25/20
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Richmond: 636
Concord:
346
Antioch:
260
San Pablo:
239
Pittsburgh:
180
Bay Point:
128
Walnut Creek: 115
Brentwood: 92
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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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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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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, 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. On Mondays and Fridays the Bulletin includes an education section.
We welcome your feedback on our bulletin. Please contact editor
Stephen Cassidy
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