October 19, 2020
Eden Health District COVID-19 Bulletin
"[With] so many states struggling, micro-targeting [and] more testing are smart policies that can avoid big surges. [The] Golden State [is] leading the way. We don't have to look abroad to see this success story. And we can learn to keep COVID under control."
Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean, Brown University School of Public Health, 10/18/19
Campus protests are out (for now), but student activism at UC Berkeley is still alive and well
These days, with many Covid-19 restrictions in place, Sproul Plaza is pretty sleepy; aside from the sound of maintenance trucks, it is largely empty and quiet. Back in the day (earlier this year) it was a hotbed of student activism, having been the activist heart of campus for decades.

This year, however, university officials are barring large in-person gatherings on campus because of the pandemic. But that has hardly stopped students from continuing to campaign for causes they care about.

“We have been repeatedly conveying the message to our student organizations that all of their activities need to be virtual,” said Sunny Lee, UC Berkeley's assistant vice chancellor and dean of students. “We have a Covid-19 temporary provision to our student code of conduct, due to California’s public health guidance for higher education and local public health orders, that prohibits student organizations from sponsoring or organizing in-person meetings, gatherings, and events for students on or off-campus.”

So, like almost everything else, a lot of the organizing has moved online, from protests and petitions, to crowdfunding efforts on behalf of students in need.
“Getting through Covid is getting through Covid with the whole village,” said senior Derek Imai, who this year is also the external affairs vice president for the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC). “And I think really, what I've seen on Facebook, is when friends are financially struggling or going through something, people will fundraise for their friends and communities.”

While the university can’t officially sanction in-person activism on campus per local public health orders, there is some measure of at least unofficial support for gatherings of under 12 people that are held outdoors, with social distancing and mask requirements in place.

“We support students exercising their First Amendment rights,” said Lee. “There's nothing that replaces the energy, the spirit, the camaraderie which is gathering in person. In-person activity will come back.”

Source: KQED
By the Numbers
CONFIRMED CASES
Alameda County: 22,636

Contra Costa County: 18,214

Bay Area: 111,314

California: 875,291

U.S.: 8,180,502
REPORTED DEATHS
Alameda County: 433

Contra Costa County: 236

Bay Area: 1,670

California: 16,968

U.S.: 219,891
Bay Area News
East Bay Times, October 19, 2020
For the first time in more than four months, California is now reporting, on average, fewer than 3,000 cases of COVID-19 per day. In the Bay Area, however, the 584 new cases reported Sunday were its most in more than two weeks, despite typically lower numbers reported on weekends.

Four counties in the region did not update their numbers Sunday, but the cases in Santa Clara and Alameda more than made up the difference. In both Alameda and Santa Clara counties, the 178 and 172 new cases, respectively, were their most reported in a single day since Sept. 18, exactly a month ago.

In the Bay Area, the number of active hospital patients has dropped by more than 20% in the past two weeks, with big reductions in San Francisco and Alameda County. San Francisco hospitals on Friday reported 22 total COVID-19 patients, the second-lowest per-capita hospitalization rate of any major jurisdiction in California, behind only Contra Costa County. Two weeks ago, there were 50 patients hospitalized in the city — a 56% decline. In Alameda County, there were 54 patients hospitalized Friday, about 30% fewer than two weeks ago.

Berkeleyside, October 16, 2020
About this time most years, Pinkie FitzGibbon-Flad is busy with city street closure permits, spooky decorations, creepy costumes and candy for thousands. She is joined by many of her Russell Street neighbors in Berkeley, preparing for their annual Halloween bash. This year will be different.

Gone is the street closure, the spectacle of elaborate front-yard Halloween installations, the crowds, the buckets and baskets of treats being passed from hand to hand. Like many Berkeleyans — and indeed, people everywhere who usually enjoy a lively Halloween celebration — the Russell Street Halloween extravaganza is adapting to life in a pandemic.
Masks may be the only constant from past years.
Contra Costa Health Services, October 15, 2020
This video in Spanish provides advice on how to celebrate Halloween safely. Here is the link to the English version of the video.

Voting During the Pandemic

  • Hayward News (10/15/20): Official ballot collection boxes have been installed at Hayward City Hall, 777 B Street; Chabot Community College, 25555 Hesperian Blvd. (near the campus bus stop close to Building 200); Cal State University East Bay, 25800 W. Loop Rd. (between the old and new Student Union); Cherryland Park, 198 Grove Way; and San Felipe Community Park, 2058 D St. A box slated for South Hayward Parish has been placed instead at nearby Weekes Community Center, 27182 Patrick Ave., while another that was to be positioned outside the Hayward Hall of Justice at 24405 Amador St. still hasn’t arrived.

Health News
SF Chronicle, October 18, 2020
Gov. Gavin Newsom has given the go-ahead for small gatherings with a set of guidelines that allow people from three households to get together for up to two hours, as long as they do it outside, wear masks, and practice physical distancing.

Whenever mixing with people who are not members of your immediate household, make sure to follow the pillars of pandemic control. “Masking, distancing, and ventilation,” said Monica Gandhi, a doctor and researcher with UCSF. The risk of infectious transmission is lower outside than inside because virus particles tend to scatter and dilute quickly in the air, said Mark Cullen, founding director of the Stanford Center for Population Health Sciences.

You should also wear face coverings and practice social distancing. “You don’t get any points for being outdoors when you’re standing within a foot of people,” said George Rutherford, an infectious disease expert at UCSF.

The article provides further safety tips.

NY Times, October 19, 2020
Fortunately, a feared wave of new cases and hospitalizations after Labor Day doesn’t seem to have materialized. And while cases in many parts of the country are reaching alarming new highs, cases in the Golden State have, mercifully, stayed low. Still, as Halloween approaches — with a holiday season unlike anything we’ve experienced hot on its heels — California officials are imploring us to stay the course.

This time, state officials have eased guidelines that outlawed gatherings of any size, which had sort of outlived their usefulness, practically speaking.
Here’s what to know about the state’s new rules for getting together:

  1. The new rules apply only to private gatherings.
  2. There is no hard cap on the total number of people who can be in the same place. Rather, the new guidelines bar any gathering of more than three households. That includes the host household.
  3. All parties, meetings or other private gatherings have to be outdoors. (You can have shade, but at least three sides — or 75 percent, if you have a round canopy or something — of a space must be open.)
  4. Not only do the parties have to be outside, but you also have to have enough space for everyone to maintain their six feet of physical distance at all times.
  5. You have to wear a mask: You can take off your mask to eat or drink, but you’re supposed to stay away from people outside your household while you do it.
  6. You can have food and drinks, but nix the buffet line and punch bowl. The guidelines urge you to use single-serve containers as much as possible. 
  7. Singing and chanting are still strongly discouraged, because if you’re infected, your spit droplets will spread farther through the air than they would just by talking.

STAT, October 19, 2020
The share of Americans who say they are likely to get a Covid-19 vaccine as soon as it’s available is dropping — and the decline is notably more pronounced among Black Americans than among white individuals, according to a new survey. Overall, 58% of the U.S. public said they would get vaccinated as soon as a vaccine was available when asked earlier this month, down considerably from 69% who said the same thing in mid-August. That change suggests growing concern that the regulatory approval process for a Covid-19 vaccine has been politicized by the Trump administration in the run-up to the presidential election.
US and California Data
Covid Tracking Project, 10/18/20 (bold lines are 7-day averages)
United States
California
U.S. Map, Covid Exit Strategy, 10/19/20
California News
Mercury News, October 19, 2020
Eight months into the coronavirus pandemic, California has become a rare case: a state that has contained the transmission of Covid-19 and isn’t experiencing another surge — yet, at least. The reasons why, health experts say, are made clear by a stroll through San Francisco. Pedestrians are masked and passing each other at acceptable social distances. Painted circles partition off small groups at one of the city’s most popular parks. Posters stapled to signposts once hawked live music; now, they advertise masks.

Every city could be San Francisco, and every state like California, these experts say. SARS-CoV-2 has proved to be a complex and mysterious virus, but 8 months since it landed on our shores, the science seems clear on a simple way to contain it.

Sacramento Bee, October 18, 2020
Sacramento County Executive Navdeep Gill held an hours-long indoor meeting of department heads last Thursday where many in attendance did not wear masks – a violation of his county government’s coronavirus health order, The Sacramento Bee has learned. One person who attended that meeting has since tested positive for Covid-19.

County health chief Dr. Peter Beilenson, who attended the meeting and said he wore a mask, said in a text on Sunday that everyone at the meeting has been notified of the positive coronavirus test and are being tested. Ten people who were sitting nearest the infected person have been told to quarantine at home.

Dan Walters, CalMatters, October 19, 2020
Covid-19 and the severe recession it spawned abruptly ended what had been one of California’s longest-running and most powerful economic booms. California’s unemployment rate more than quadrupled as millions of jobs vanished in the partial economic shutdown ordered by Gov. Newsom. Seven months later, the economy has rebounded a bit as restrictions have eased, but economists see full recovery taking years.

Among the many casualties has been one of California’s bedrock economic sectors, dubbed “travel and leisure” — encompassing hotels, restaurants, resorts, theme parks, sports arenas and other facilities. The sudden and steep decline in their patronage not only threatens countless billions of dollars in private investment but billions more that local governments have wagered on becoming venues for tourism and entertainment. The syndrome is illustrated by what’s happening in two of the state’s larger cities, Anaheim and Sacramento.

Sacramento Bee, October 19, 2020
Covered California will reimburse its employees’ work-from-home expenses, making it one of the first state offices to commit to doing so 7 months into the coronavirus outbreak. The office, which helps people sign up for health insurance, will reimburse employees for up to $74 per month, according to an email sent to employees this week. The change raises the question whether other departments will follow suit. Just two other departments so far have been reimbursing employees’ claims for similar expenses — the departments of Fish and Game and Industrial Relations.

LA Times, October 17, 2020
In the first 5 months of the Covid-19 pandemic, thousands of Californians bought new guns and changed the way they stored their firearms in a bid to counter the unrest, government crackdowns and societal disintegration they feared would be unleashed by the public health emergency, a new survey has found.

The UC Davis researchers who conducted the survey detected shifts in gun ownership trends that they said are likely to drive an uptick in firearm-related injuries and deaths, including suicides and the consequences of accidental discharges. By mid-July, the pandemic was cited as a factor in the purchase of an estimated 110,000 new firearms in the state, they reported.

Wall Street Journal, October 19, 2020
Several large Southern California hospital systems improperly refused or delayed accepting Covid-19 patients based on their insurance status, leaving severely ill patients waiting for care and adding strain on hospitals overrun by the pandemic. Emails identified 4 major hospital systems as refusing or delaying receiving transfer patients, but in some instances, denying hospitals weren’t named or quantified, so the total could be higher.
US News
Axios, October 19, 2020
Coronavirus hospitalizations are increasing in 39 states, and are at or near their all-time peak in 16. No state is anywhere near the worst-case situation of not having enough capacity to handle its Covid-19 outbreak. But rising hospitalization rates are a sign that things are getting worse, at a dangerous time, and a reminder that this virus can do serious harm.

These numbers, combined with the nationwide surge in new infections, confirm that the pandemic in the U.S. is getting worse — just as cold weather begins to set in in some parts of the country, which experts have long seen as a potentially dangerous inflection point.

The Hill, October 19, 2020
A top infectious diseases expert is warning that the next several weeks will be the “darkest of the entire pandemic” in the U.S. as cases continue to surge in many parts of the country while awaiting a vaccine. “We do have vaccines and therapeutics coming down the pike, but when you actually look at the time period for that, the next 6-12 weeks are going to be the darkest of the entire pandemic,” Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said Sunday. 

Osterholm said the U.S. is suffering from a messaging problem due to the lack of a “lead” voice to guide Americans through the pandemic. He said leaders need to bring people together to understand why public health guidance such as wearing masks and social distancing are worth doing. He warned people against traveling for the holidays to avoid potentially infected members of their own family saying “if you really love the people that you have in your immediate family...do them the greatest gift of all, and that is distance yourself this year and don’t expose them.” 

LA Times, October 18, 2020
In the homestretch of the presidential campaign, with the U.S. coronavirus caseload trending ominously upward, the rival campaigns of President Trump and Joe Biden more than ever are providing a clash of contrasts on how to contain Covid-19 and tend to the virus-battered economy. That was evident in their own actions over the weekend, and in the statements of their surrogates. With the election over in 16 days and voting underway in all 50 states, the country is entering “the most difficult phase of this epidemic,” said Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration under President Trump, now a critic of his response.

Washington Post, October 17, 2020
Within weeks of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in August, the Dakotas, along with Wyoming, Minnesota and Montana, were leading the nation in new coronavirus infections per capita. The surge was especially pronounced in North and South Dakota, where cases and hospitalization rates continued their juggernaut rise into October. Experts say they will never be able to determine how many of those cases originated at the 10-day rally, given the failure of state and local health officials to identify and monitor attendees returning home, or to trace chains of transmission after people got sick. Some, however, believe the nearly 500,000-person gathering played a role in the outbreak now consuming the Upper Midwest.

NY Times, October 19, 2020
To keep the coronavirus from spreading and jeopardizing the harvest, Lipman Family Farms in Virginia has put its crews on lockdown. With few exceptions, they have been ordered to remain either in the camps, where they are housed, or the fields, where they toil. Gone are the weekly outings to Walmart to stock up on provisions; to the convenience store to buy shell-shaped concha pastries; and to the laundromat to machine wash heavily soiled garments.

The restrictions have allowed Lipman’s tomato operations to run smoothly, with a substantially lower caseload than many farms and processing facilities across the country that have wrestled to contain large outbreaks. But they have caused some workers to complain that their worksite has become like a prison.

Reuters, October 19, 2020
It has been a nightmare year for many of America’s renters. September’s reprieve by the CDC, which protected many, but not all, renters will expire in January. At that point, an estimated $32 billion in back rent will come due, with up to 8 million tenants facing eviction filings. Unless Congress and the Trump administration act, January will bring a surge in displacement and homelessness “unlike anything we have ever seen,” said John Pollock, a Public Justice Center attorney.
CA Education News
EdSource, October 19, 2020
The reopening of hundreds of Orange County schools for in-person instruction over the last month — the largest return to school in a major metropolitan area in California so far this year — is likely to be a test case for the rest of the state.

The 13 school districts that returned to in-person instruction serve about 225,000 students, although not all of their students are back on campuses. Some districts have opted to bring their students back in phases, two or three grade levels at a time, while others have brought back elementary school students, but have yet to bring back middle and high school students.
Almost all districts began in-person instruction in a hybrid model, which splits students into two groups that rotate onto campus either a few days a week or every day for a few hours.

Cal Matters, October 16, 2020
Deep into the pandemic, some districts are finding an alarming percentage of students are missing from the virtual classroom — with the worst absentee rates occurring among homeless students, foster youth, English learners, Black students and high school seniors.

Now some districts, such as West Contra Costa and Oakland Unified in the San Francisco Bay Area, are scrambling to find ways to track down and re-engage students and provide them with the support they need to complete their coursework. West Contra Costa Superintendent Matthew Duffy said the district is keeping a close eye on absences among students who are not fluent in English, since English learners had high absentee rates last year. The district is also concerned that its homeless student population may have grown due to families struggling to pay rent. And it has logged about 1,000 absences from students without required immunizations. 

CalMatters, October 16, 2020
Driven by concerns about climate change, racism and healthcare, students are more mobilized around the November election than they were in 2018 or 2016, researchers who study the group’s voting patterns say. But the coronavirus pandemic has also exacerbated a lack of information among younger Californians about where and how to vote. Student get-out-the-vote organizers are trying to close that gap, trading tabling for social media campaigns as they work to reach their peers who are scattered and isolated by the pandemic. More than a million voters 18-29 have already cast ballots nationwide, according to the Democratic data firm TargetSmart, up from 266,000 at this point in 2016.
US Education News
NY Times, October 19, 2020
For months, as New York City struggled to start part-time, in-person classes, fear grew that its 1,800 public schools would become vectors of coronavirus infection, a citywide archipelago of super-spreader sites.
But nearly three weeks into the in-person school year, early data from the city’s first effort at targeted testing has shown the opposite: a surprisingly small number of positive cases.

While public health experts said the data was encouraging, they also cautioned that it was still early. In general, maintaining low levels of infection at schools would depend on how well New York City does in holding off a broader spread in the population.

NY Times, October 18, 2020
The story of Canyons School District in Utah is an object lesson in what can happen when schools reopen in communities that are failing to contain the virus. In the two weeks before the district reopened, Salt Lake County had roughly 187 new cases per 100,000 people, a level at which some experts have advised against high schools opening in person; that level is two and a half times higher than the standard Washington State uses to recommend distance learning for all students.

Since then, with schools and colleges open, things have only worsened, as both the county and Utah have become hot spots. In the two weeks that ended Thursday, Salt Lake County had nearly 617 cases per 100,000 people. Over the last week, Utah had the sixth-highest rate of new cases per 100,000 people of any state and set a new state record for the number of people hospitalized with the virus.

Axios, October 19, 2020
The coronavirus-sparked shift to widespread remote work has been generally smooth because most modern offices were already using a raft of communication, collaboration and administrative tools. Remote learning has faced a much rougher transition.

Even the best technology can't eliminate the inherent problems of virtual schooling. Several key technological stumbling blocks have persisted in keeping remote learning from meeting its full potential:
·     The needs of IT departments and students can be at odds. 
·     Existing tech can't just be grafted onto remote learning. 
·     The digital divide looms over everything. 

Data compiled from 300 school districts in 18 states show affluent districts increased student engagement during remote learning, while poorer schools saw a decrease.

A 102-year-old woman is back home after beating Covid-19
Della Hathorne spent two weeks at the hospital in Guthrie, Oklahoma.

"Can't believe it. Because all the rules are you don't make it through if you're a certain age because it's hard on them," Hathorne's son said.

He's actually the one who noticed something was wrong back in early October. He was giving his mother medicine when he realized she didn't seem as upbeat as usual.

Days later she would be in the hospital fighting for her life.
Hathorne said she's thankful to be alive, and she's thankful to her family and hospital staff that helped her pull through. "I just want to say, 'Thank the Lord be.' That's what it is," she said.

She's now looking forward to spending the holidays with her family and turning 103 in January.

Source: ABC 7 News
International News
NY Times, October 19, 2020
As most of the world still struggles with the coronavirus pandemic, China is showing once again that a fast economic rebound is possible when the virus is brought firmly under control. The Chinese economy surged 4.9% in the July-to-September quarter compared with the same months last year, the country’s National Bureau of Statistics announced on Monday. The robust performance brings China almost back up to the roughly 6% pace of growth that it was reporting before the pandemic.

China’s lead could widen further in the months to come. It has almost no local transmission of the virus now, while the United States and Europe face another accelerating wave of cases. The vigorous expansion of the Chinese economy means that it is set to dominate global growth — accounting for at least 30% of the world’s economic growth this year and in the years to come.

BBC, October 19, 2020
The German government is investing €500m ($488m) in improving ventilation systems in public buildings to help stop the spread of coronavirus. The grants will go to improve the air circulation in public offices, museums, theatres, universities and schools. Private firms are not yet eligible.

Viruses spread on tiny droplets called aerosols, exhaled by infected people — especially when they sneeze or cough. Studies suggest they can remain in a room's air for at least 8 minutes. Colder weather puts more people at risk because they spend more time indoors.
The main aim is to upgrade existing air conditioning systems, rather than install new ones, which costs more.

Associated Press, October 19, 2020
After entire nations were shut down during the first surge of the coronavirus earlier this year, some countries and U.S. states are trying more targeted measures as cases rise again around the world, especially in Europe and the Americas.

Spanish officials limited travel to and from some parts of Madrid before restrictions were widened throughout the capital and some suburbs. Italian authorities have sometimes quarantined spots as small as a single building. While countries including Israel and the Czech Republic have reinstated nationwide closures, other governments hope smaller-scale shutdowns can work this time, in conjunction with testing, contact tracing and other initiatives they’ve now built up.

The concept of containing hot spots isn’t new, but it’s being tested under new pressures as authorities try to avoid a dreaded resurgence of illness and deaths, this time with economies weakened from earlier lockdowns, populations chafing at the idea of renewed restrictions and some communities complaining of unequal treatment.

Wall Street Journal, October 19, 2020
A second wave is surging across the Continent but civil obedience has waned. In response, governments are flexing enforcement muscles more forcefully than at any time since March. Fines for public-health violations that had declined over the summer are rising in most countries and punishments for breaking curfews, local lockdowns and quarantines are also increasing.

Europe’s spring lockdowns tamed coronavirus, but they also brutalized its economy. Over summer, a consensus emerged that even if a second wave hit, blanket lockdowns were too painful economically and the public wouldn’t be as tolerant. Governments’ growing challenge now is to limit potentially dangerous social interactions without bankrupting businesses or prompting voter revolts. As infection rates have jumped and emergency wards have started overflowing again, some governments are going beyond individual punishments to shutting places where people meet and potentially transmit the virus.

Bloomberg, October 19, 2020
India has already seen a peak in the number of new coronavirus infections and may be able to contain the world’s second-largest outbreak by February, according to a government panel of scientists that attributed a recent slowdown to a harsh national lockdown earlier this year.

In a presentation, the Covid-19 Supermodel Committee led by M. Vidyasagar said a peak in active cases came in late September. The scientists looked at a number of hypothetical scenarios where lockdowns had been avoided or delayed. They concluded that the restrictions imposed in March saved “a lot more misery and lives” and signaled that Covid-19 could be tamed in a few months.
Analysis/Opinion
Matthew D. Snape and  Russell M. Viner, Science, October 16, 2020
Unusually for a respiratory viral infection, children and adolescents are at much lower risk from Covid-19 than any other age group. The near-global closure of schools in response to the pandemic reflected the reasonable expectation from previous respiratory virus outbreaks that children would be a key component of the transmission chain. However, emerging evidence suggests that this is most likely not the case.

A minority of children experience a postinfectious inflammatory syndrome, the pathology and long-term outcomes of which are poorly understood. However, relative to their risk of contracting disease, children and adolescents have been disproportionately affected by lockdown measures, and advocates of child health need to ensure that children's rights to health and social care, mental health support, and education are protected throughout subsequent pandemic waves.

Evidence from contact-tracing studies suggest that children and teenagers are less susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection than adults; however, community swabbing and seroprevalence studies conducted outside of outbreak settings suggest that infection rates are similar to those in older age groups. Only half of children and teenagers with antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 have experienced symptoms, and there is growing evidence that there is a broad range of presentations, emphasizing the limitations of community-based prevalence studies based on testing only children with respiratory symptoms.

Hospitalization for severe acute Covid-19 in children is rare, but among these pediatric inpatients, respiratory symptoms are more apparent than in infected children in the community. Case fatality in hospitalized children is, fortunately, relatively low at 1% (compared with 27% across all ages).

Bloomberg, October 14, 2020
As a second wave of infections grows, so it follows that the number of long Covid cases is bound to increase. Although this clearly has implications for public health and the economy, it has been almost nowhere in the broader policy debate.

That narrative has focused largely on minimizing deaths and hospitalizations. But most long Covid patients weren’t hospitalized and didn’t have pre-existing conditions. This should throw some cold water on the idea of dispensing with restrictions and allowing immunity to build up among the young while shielding the vulnerable — an approach that won more adherents as lockdown fatigue set in. Going in this direction would be far more costly than many perhaps realize.

Yasmeen Abutaleb, Philip Rucker, Josh Dawsey and Robert Costa, Washington Post, October 19, 2020
Discord on the White House Coronavirus Task force has worsened since the arrival in late summer of Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist whose commentary on Fox News led President Trump to recruit him to the White House, and whom colleagues said they regard as ill-informed, manipulative and at times dishonest.

As the White House coronavirus response coordinator, Deborah Birx is tasked with collecting and analyzing infection data and compiling charts detailing upticks and other trends. But Atlas routinely has challenged Birx’s analysis and those of other doctors, including Anthony S. Fauci, CDC Director Robert Redfield, and FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, with what the other doctors considered junk science, according to three senior administration officials. The result has been a U.S. response increasingly plagued by distrust, infighting and lethargy, just as experts predict coronavirus cases could surge this winter and deaths could reach 400,000 by year’s end.

Eli Cahan, Kaiser Health News, October 16, 2020
During the pandemic, home health aides have buttressed the U.S. health care system by keeping the most vulnerable patients — seniors, the disabled, the infirm — out of hospitals. Yet even as they’ve put themselves at risk, this workforce of 2.3 million — of whom 9 in 10 are women, nearly two-thirds are minorities and almost one-third are foreign-born — has largely been overlooked.

Home health providers scavenged for their own face masks and other protective equipment, blended disinfectant and fabricated sanitizing wipes amid widespread shortages. They’ve often done it all on poverty wages, without overtime pay, hazard pay, sick leave and health insurance. And they’ve gotten sick and died — leaving little to their survivors.
East Bay Focus
Alameda County
Moderate (Orange)
  • 2.9 Adjusted case rate of new Covid-19 positive cases per day per 100,000 residents
  • 1.5% Positivity rate
  • 3.2% Health equity metric
Contra Costa County
Substantial (Red)
  • 4.3 Adjusted case rate of new Covid-19 positive cases per day per 100,000 residents
  • 2.4% Positivity rate
  • 4.9% Healthy equity metric
All California counties are assigned to a tier based on its test positivity and adjusted case rate. To move forward, a county must meet the next tier’s criteria for two consecutive weeks. If a county’s metrics worsen for two consecutive weeks, it will be assigned a more restrictive tier. The state updates the tier data every Tuesday.
by day as of 10/18/20
by day as of 10/18/20
Over the last seven days, Alameda County officials have confirmed 487 new cases, which amounts to 30 cases per 100,000 residents.
Over the last seven days, Contra Costa County officials have confirmed 425 new cases, which amounts to 38 cases per 100,000 residents.
Top 10 Locations of Cases in Alameda County, as of 10/18/20. Alameda County does not publish cases per 100,000 in the last 14 days by city.
Oakland: 8,825

Hayward: 3,325

Fremont: 1,540

Eden MAC: 1,431

San Leandro: 1,229

Livermore: 977

Union City: 842

Berkeley: 731

Newark: 604

Castro Valley: 587
Top 10 Locations of Cases in Contra Costa County plus (in parentheses) cases per 100,000 in last 14 days, as of 10/19/20
Richmond: 3,473 (127)

Concord: 2,434 (98)

Antioch: 2,414 (89)

Pittsburgh: 2,040 (150)

San Pablo: 1,548 (150)

Bay Point: 948 (150)

Brentwood: 697 (66)

Walnut Creek: 646 (45)

Oakley: 556 (108)

San Ramon: 394 (31)
East Bay Resources


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.
Mask On Eden Area
Working in collaboration with the Alameda County Public Health Department, the Cities of Hayward and San Leandro, and the Castro Valley and Eden Area Municipal Advisory Councils, the District has printed “Mask On” posters for each city and community in the Eden Health District area. The posters are free and intended for businesses, health clinics, schools, churches, public agencies and nonprofit organizations to display in their entrances.

“Wearing masks in public or any gatherings, including events with friends and extended families, is essential for slowing the spread of the virus,” stated Eden Health District Director Pam Russo. “While we are seeing signs of progress in California, Alameda County remains a Covid-19 'hot spot' in the Bay Area. Please wear a mask to protect yourself while protecting others.”
The public is welcome to download and print or share “Mask On” posters from the District’s website. Posters are available in English, Spanish and Chinese languages.

Posters may also be retrieved during business hours from the lobby of the Eden Health District office building located at 20400 Lake Chabot Road, Castro Valley. Posters for the City of Hayward are also available from the Hayward Chamber of Commerce located at 22561 Main Street, Hayward.
Public Education Covid-19 Flyers
Contra Costa County Health Services has recently published highly informative flyers addressing the risks of becoming infected in certain settings and activities.
Eden Area Food Pantries
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. 
Your feedback is welcome. Please share the Bulletin.
The Eden Health District Board of Directors are Gordon Galvan, Chair, Mariellen Faria, Vice Chair, Roxann Lewis, Pam Russo and Thomas Lorentzen. 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, education 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, unless the day fall on a public holiday.

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We welcome your feedback on our bulletin. Please contact editor Stephen Cassidy.