Eden Health District COVID-19 Bulletin
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"I don't like to talk about a second wave right now, because we haven't gotten out of our first wave.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Daily Beast,
6/17/20
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Pho, the steamy, savory Vietnamese rice noodle soup, has become a bridge and a promise to elders in the Sacramento area isolated by months of stay-at-home orders and physical distancing needed to curb the coronavirus and Covid-19. Since starting a few weeks ago, the volunteer group Pho for Seniors has expanded to preparing and delivering meals to more than 180 seniors from a network of pho restaurants.
For Nikki Nguyen and Mai Nguyen (not related), putting together the effort was as quick as the fit was natural. Nikki owns a restaurant. Mai has ties with a local Vietnamese seniors association. Then the two thought about how they could help seniors caught in the contagion and stay-at-home order and joined forces with a Little Saigon community nonprofit. And by
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helping seniors, the fledgling program also was helping restaurants whipsawed by the statewide shutdown.
It’s not just a bowl of pho: “It’s a soup for the soul,” Nikki Nguyen said. “It shows you’re not alone. You matter. You matter to the community.”
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Alameda County:
4,481
Contra Costa County:
2,026
California:
159,231
U.S.:
2,148,357
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Alameda County:
112
Contra Costa County:
49
California:
5,203
U.S.:
117,290
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East Bay Times, June 17, 2020
Contra Costa County is easing restrictions on hair salons, barber shops, churches and other facilities, even as a county official acknowledges that the county’s COVID-19 numbers are all trending upward. The county announced this week that as of Wednesday morning, an amendment to the coronavirus public health order would allow hair salons and barber shops to resume business. Houses of worship can hold religious services, including funerals, for groups of up to 100 people.
On Tuesday, Contra Costa Health Services Director Anna Roth told the Board of Supervisors that health officials were noting that most of the county’s coronavirus “indicators,” the rate of positive tests, the rates of deaths and hospitalizations, were still on the rise.
Contra Costa Health Services
Oaklandside, June 16, 2020
On June 19,
sidewalk pickup will start
at five Oakland Public Library branches. During the shelter in place, many librarians and library shifted gears and temporarily became city
Disaster Service Workers
, distributing food to the community.
Other staff continued to provide traditional library services online, even while the physical branches were closed.
Berkeleyside, June 16, 2020
Profiles of three East Bay eateries and the challenges they are facing during the pandemic. “We aren’t ever going back to normal and we need to embrace that,” said Neelam Patil, chef, educator and CEO of Bliss Belly.
KQED, June 16, 2020
San Mateo County says the state has granted its request to allow gyms, hotels for tourists, hair salons and museums to open, and for restaurants to serve customers indoors. With state approval, county health officers can now issue a new shelter-in-place guidance that would accelerate the pace of San Mateo's reopening. “This is an important step, but as of now, nothing has changed in terms of the existing Shelter Order,” Michelle Durand, a county spokeswoman, said in an email. "The new order is expected to be issued this week, which will make clear what business may open and what guidelines they must follow."
Mercury News, June 17, 2020
Dr. Sara Cody, Santa Clara County’s public health officer who has faced criticism for her cautious approach to lifting stay-at-home orders, has also been the target of personal threats. “We are aware of the threats made against Dr. Cody and it is under investigation,” Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Sgt. Michael Low said in a statement Tuesday. He provided no details about the nature of the threats.
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Washington Post, June 17, 2020
The novel
coronavirus
can be a killer, or no big deal. It can put a person in the intensive care unit on a
ventilator
, isolated from family, facing a lonely death, or it can come and go without leaving a mark, a ghost pathogen, more rumor than reality. Six months into a
pandemic
that has
killed
more than 400,000 people globally, scientists are still trying to understand the wildly variable nature of covid-19, the disease caused by
the virus
. Among their lines of inquiry: Are distinct strains of the coronavirus more dangerous? Does a patient’s blood type affect the severity of the illness? Do other genetic factors play a role? Are some people partially protected from covid-19 because they’ve had recent exposure to other coronaviruses?
Much of the research remains provisional or ambiguous, and for now scientists can’t do much better than say that covid-19 is more likely to be worse for
older people,
often described as over the age of 60, and for those with
chronic conditions
such as hypertension, diabetes, lung disease and heart disease. That describes tens of millions of people in the United States alone. It also isn’t much of an explanation: The link between chronic disease and the severity of covid-19 is more in the category of correlation than causation. The “why” of the matter remains unclear.
SF Chronicle, June 17, 2020
A steroid long used in hospitals to control inflammation significantly reduced fatalities in seriously ill COVID-19 patients during a drug trial, marking the first time any coronavirus treatment has proven to prevent deaths. The drug dexamethasone reduced deaths among patients on ventilators by one-third and cut fatalities for people receiving oxygen by one-fifth in a drug trial involving 6,425 coronavirus patients in the United Kingdom, University of Oxford scientists said.
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LA Times, June 17, 2020
A new report from the CDC offers the most comprehensive look to date at how Americans have been affected by the virus. The overall death rate for Americans of all ages and both sexes was 5.4%, with men (6%) more likely to die than women (4.8%). Coronavirus infections were 12 times more deadly in patients with underlying health conditions than in patients without them. Among patients who were healthy before they encountered the virus, 1.6% died of COVID-19. But among those who had cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic lung infections or other ailments, 19.5% of infections resulted in death.
STAT, June 17, 2020
Coughing is a tremendously effective way to transmit SARS-CoV-2, the strain of coronavirus that causes Covid-19. Expelling droplets at speeds close to 50 miles per hour, cough is a spontaneous reflex that helps protect the airway and lungs from unwanted irritants and pathogens. It’s also an efficient way to spread disease, an advantage for respiratory viruses that need host cells in which to reproduce.
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LA Times, June 17, 2020
Health officials have said that the public needs to look beyond the rising number of coronavirus cases in California and focus on whether hospitalizations are increasing as a sign that reopening the economy is leading to new outbreaks. Statewide, coronavirus hospitalizations have been relatively flat for the last six weeks, even as officials have allowed myriad businesses to open their doors and people begin to resume old routines. But in some parts of California, hospitalizations are again on the rise, and if the trend continues, it could force officials to slow the pace of reopenings.
Marin Independent Journal, June 17, 2020
California renters, with family budgets battered by the coronavirus lockdown, are more worried about the pandemic than homeowners, according to one poll. Watching the renter-vs.-owner divide as shown in polling by the Public Policy Institute of California offers a glimpse into how views shift along the state’s wide economic gap. Renters are clearly feeling the pain of coronavirus cuts. When asked about the status of their personal finances: 57% of renters replied “fair” or “poor” vs. 41% of owners. And those finances compared with a year ago? A third of renters (33%) said “worse” vs. 26% of owners.
KQED, June 17, 2020
In late March, Imperial County had just nine confirmed cases of COVID-19, and the head of the largest hospital there thought his community had dodged a bullet. But Dr. Adolfe Edward soon realized his assessment was premature. “All of a sudden, we had 65 patients with COVID,” Edward recounted during a recent interview, “which was over 70 percent of my hospital admissions.” Today, the rural county on the U.S.-Mexico border with 180,000 residents has the highest coronavirus infection rate per capita of any California county.
Cal Matters, June 16, 2020
Local public health officers haven’t been this important in a century. They’re also being second-guessed, harassed and threatened by residents angry about pandemic precautions.
Five health officers in California have resigned or retired in the last two months, in Orange, Nevada, San Benito, Yolo and Butte counties.
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Daily Beast, June 16, 2020
During an interview with The Daily Beast on Tuesday, infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci said there’s no need to talk about avoiding a second wave of the pandemic because the country is still in the first one. As counties across the country continue to see coronavirus cases and related hospitalizations increase, though, Fauci wasn’t entirely despondent about the trajectory the country was taking. He said he did not think it was “inevitable” that the U.S. would see another wave of infections and doubted that there would be another scene similar to that of New York City in April, where officials reported thousands of new cases a day and hospitals overflowed with patients.
STAT, June 17, 2020
The US is now confronting what public health experts have been warning about but many in the public had not absorbed: the coronavirus pandemic will be with us for many months, and lapses in vigilance will lead to more sickness and death. The country as a whole is tacking on about 20,000 new Covid-19 cases to its 2.1 million infection tally each day. But cases are surging in about half of states, some of which dodged major outbreaks in the spring. The local outbreaks are leading to increasing hospitalizations in Arizona, Texas, Alabama, and the Carolinas, raising concerns about capacity when the original rallying cry of “flatten the curve” was meant to prevent overwhelming health care systems.
Bloomberg, June 17, 2020
Lowndes County, Alabama exemplifies the kind of region where the coronavirus continues to hunt: It’s rural, among the nation’s poorest, majority Black, rife with pre-existing illnesses and starved of health-care resources. It's the kind of place where a resurgence of the pandemic is taking root. George Thomas, the county's sole doctor, said Lowndes became a coronavirus hot spot almost overnight. He suspects it was brought from Montgomery, where many of his patients work.
The Guardian, June 17, 2020
The retail sector is the US’s largest private employer,
accounting for 29 million jobs.
But even before Covid-19 it was an industry in transition, suffering from oversupply, changing consumer habits and the shift to online shopping. Several retail corporations filed for bankruptcy even before the pandemic.
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Ready to face another birthday
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After living through the Spanish Flu, two world wars, and all the loss a person who lives that long experiences, 106-year-old Washington state resident Fritzi Bryant wasn’t about to let a pandemic get her down.
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After Bryant tested positive for coronavirus in April, her cough persisted for weeks; “I worked hard at (beating it),” she said. Eventually, staff at her long-term care facility declared her symptom-free. She had recovered, making her one of the oldest people in the country to beat the deadly virus.
For Bryant, stopping at 106 isn’t in the cards. She’s got more plans in store, including celebrating her 107th birthday with as many of her 21 grandchildren, 47 great-grandchildren, and 10 great-great grandchildren as possible. “I’m planning on it,” she said.
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Children & Education News
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Washington Post, June 16, 2020
Children and teenagers are only half as likely to get infected with the
coronavirus
as adults age 20 and older, and they usually don’t develop clinical symptoms of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, according to
a study
from
researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
From the start of the pandemic, it has been known that children are typically spared the worst effects of the disease. They rarely die of it. But they can still get sick and can spread the virus, including to older family members who are more likely to have a severe illness. The new report, however, estimates that children are only half as likely to become infected. When they do, they usually remain asymptomatic, or have mild, “subclinical” symptoms. What the study does not answer is the extent to which children, including ones with no symptoms, can transmit the virus. That is a major factor in school closings: Even if children as a group are less likely to become seriously ill from the disease, their teachers and other adult staffers at school are in higher-risk age cohorts.
USA Today, June 17, 2020
NPR, June 17, 2020
There is no one answer for what the coming school year will look like, but it won't resemble the fall of 2019. Wherever classrooms are open, some form of social distancing and other hygiene measures will likely be in place that challenge traditional teaching and learning. Future outbreaks will make for unpredictable waves of closures. Virtual learning will continue. And all this will happen amid a historic funding crunch. NPR speaks to educators offering ideas that seem newly relevant given the constraints of 2020 and beyond.
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The Guardian, June 16, 2020
Despite the risks of new infections and outbreaks, many institutions have announced they will invite students back to campus in the fall, with some major caveats. Multiple institutions have said they are looking into allowing only a portion of the student population to be on campus at once.
Stanford
plans to allow two classes of undergraduates on campus per quarter. The freshman class will be on campus in the fall, while the senior class will be on campus in the spring.
New York University
is planning a “mixed mode” of learning, allowing students to participate in either in-person or online classes. Other schools are looking to get rid of breaks to ensure students do not leave campus and return with the virus.
Notre Dame
is planning to start its fall semester three weeks earlier than scheduled to allow classes to end before Thanksgiving.
LSU said it may
transition to online learning after Thanksgiving and into finals.
Washington Post, June 15, 2020
For the high school Class of 2021, though, testing mandates are rapidly vanishing as the coronavirus crisis has
obliterated exam schedules
. This shift, coupled with growing skepticism of the tests that predated the pandemic, could produce lasting change in college admissions, as a gigantic test-optional experiment gets underway. It is now possible for rising high school seniors to apply without a score to more than half of the Ivy League, to most top-ranked liberal arts colleges, to
all public universities in California
and nearly all in Virginia.
Politico, June 16, 2020
Given travel restrictions, universities are expecting a pandemic-induced drop in international students, who usually pay higher fees than their domestic or EU counterparts, leaving a hole in their budgets. The imminent economic crisis, meanwhile, puts public funding in jeopardy. More domestic students are likely to struggle to pay fees during a recession; others might delay going to university until distance learning ends.
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Associated Press, June 17, 2020
China raised its emergency warning to its second-highest level and canceled more than 60% of the flights to Beijing on Wednesday amid a new coronavirus outbreak in the capital. It was a sharp pullback for the nation that declared victory over Covid-19 in March and a message to the rest of the world about how tenacious the virus really is.
Washington Post, June 16, 2020
Latin America’s largest country has registered more than 888,000 coronavirus cases and nearly 44,000 deaths, second on both counts only to the United States. But while other countries have been through steep curves and are now focused on preparations for a possible second wave, Brazil can’t even get past its first. There has been no national lockdown. No national testing campaign. No agreed-upon plan. There has been insufficient health-care expansion. Instead, the hardest-hit cities are throwing open the doors to malls and churches even as the country is routinely posting more than 30,000 new cases a day, five times more than Italy reported at the peak of its outbreak.
Bloomberg, June 17, 2020
When Mexico’s coronavirus czar said last week that case growth in the nation’s capital had stabilized, few found cause to cheer. Hugo Lopez Gatell had claimed such victories before. But the numbers tell a different story. A day after Lopez Gatell’s
tweet
about Mexico City, the nation reported a record 5,222 new cases of the deadly disease. As of Tuesday, Mexico’s infections have more than doubled since May 25 to 154,863, with a quarter of them in the capital. Deaths stand at 18,310, according to the official count.
The Guardian, June 17, 2020
There are growing concerns in some Pacific countries that measures designed to safeguard public health are being used to undermine civil rights and democratic principles. In Samoa, some argue that the prime minister is using emergency powers to push his own ideological preoccupations by seeking to ban all commercial activity on Sundays.
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US Vice President Mike Pence, Wall Street Journal, June 16, 2020
"Cases have stabilized over the past two weeks, with the daily average case rate across the U.S. dropping to 20,000, down from 30,000 in April and 25,000 in May. And in the past five days, deaths are down to fewer than 750 a day, a dramatic decline from 2,500 a day a few weeks ago, and a far cry from the 5,000 a day that some were predicting.The truth is that we’ve made great progress over the past four months, and it’s a testament to the leadership of President Trump."
Politico, June 16, 2020
Colorado was the first Democratic-run state to reopen from a coronavirus lockdown, and so far it has avoided the fresh spikes in infection rippling across the West. Its measured approach could be a lesson for the country on how to reopen effectively.
NY Times June 17, 2020
After a drastic decline this spring, global greenhouse gas emissions are now rebounding sharply, scientists reported, as countries relax their coronavirus lockdowns and traffic surges back onto roads.
Christopher Ingraham, Washington Post, June 17, 2020
In a new report, economists writing for the Brookings Institution estimate that the United States could see “on the order of 300,000 to 500,000 fewer births next year” as a result of the economic recession triggered by the novel coronavirus. The loss of a job or otherwise uncertain prospects for a steady income lead many would-be parents to postpone having kids until things are more settled.
CNN, June 16, 2020
US airline passengers who figured face mask enforcements had more bark than bite could end up getting bit. Major US airlines in
Airlines for America, the carriers' industry group
, have announced they intended to more strictly enforce mask wearing aboard their planes, including potentially banning passengers who refuse to wear a mask.
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Alameda County Data
: 966 n
ew cases have been recorded over the last 14 days. The number of confirmed infections is currently doubling every 42.2 days.
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Contra Costa County Data
: 520 new cases have been recorded over last 14 days. The number of confirmed infections is currently doubling every 34.5 days.
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Top 8 Locations of Cases in Alameda County
, data as of 6/15/20
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Oakland:
1,742
Hayward:
796
Eden MAC:
287
Fremont:
224
San Leandro: 203
Union City:
156
Castro Valley:
143
Newark:
125
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Top 8 Locations of Cases in Contra Costa County
, data as of 6/14/20
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Richmond:
484
Concord:
246
San Pablo:
174
Antioch:
168
Pittsburgh:
137
Bay Point:
111
Walnut Creek:
74
Brentwood:
74
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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. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday the bulletin includes an education section.
We welcome your feedback on our bulletin. Please contact editor
Stephen Cassidy
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