Stay Well

September 25, 2024

Free At-Home COVID Tests Are Back. Here’s How To Order Yours

Americans will once again have the opportunity to request free coronavirus tests by mail, as authorities brace for a potential resurgence of COVID-19 cases. The federal program, offering each U.S. household four at-home test kits via the Postal Service since 2022, has distributed more than 1.8 billion tests nationwide. Despite previous pauses due to funding shortages, the Biden administration has revived the initiative multiple times, most recently ahead of last year’s respiratory virus season. Despite a recent decline in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, the program’s seventh phase is set to commence. According to the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, all U.S. households will be eligible to order four free COVID-19 tests at COVIDTests.gov beginning in late September. SF Chronicle Read more

New COVID Subvariant XEC Poses Potential Threat Heading Into Winter

A new coronavirus subvariant is gaining steam and drawing more attention as a potential threat heading into late autumn and winter — a development that threatens to reverse recent promising transmission trends and is prompting doctors to renew their calls for residents to get an updated vaccine. XEC, which was first detected in Germany, is gaining traction in Western Europe, said Dr. Elizabeth Hudson, regional chief of infectious diseases at Kaiser Permanente Southern California. Like virtually all coronavirus strains that have emerged in the past few years, it’s a member of the sprawling Omicron family — and a hybrid between two previously documented subvariants, KP.3 and KS.1.1. Past surges have tended “to move from Western Europe to the East Coast to the West Coast of the U.S.,” Hudson said. “So if this does take off more and more as we get towards the colder weather months, this probably would be the variant that will potentially take hold.” LA Times Read more

Pandemic Recovery In Schools Will Be A "Long Slog," Says Sobering National Report

Nearly five years after COVID-19 began, a national report released Tuesday shows that recovery from the pandemic for students will be a “long slog.”  “The State of the American Student,” a report by the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) states that the findings are “sobering, daunting, and discouraging,” and that the slow pace of recovery from the pandemic has left an indelible mark on education, with long-term implications for students’ income, racial inequity and social mobility in the United States. “If policymakers and educators do not get serious about ensuring these students have access to proven interventions, then we will continue to see the educational impact of the pandemic reverberate for many years, both in our schools and in our economy,” the report stated. EdSource Read more



What Happens To Homeless People After Encampment Sweeps? That’s On Cities, Gavin Newsom Says

Whose fault is the California homelessness crisis? According to Gov. Gavin Newsom, cities and counties are to blame for failing to get people off the street — despite all the money he’s given them to do so. That was the message the governor pushed Friday as he signed a package of housing and homelessness bills at an event in San Francisco with legislators, carpenters’ union members, and members of the press. “There’s never been more support to address all of those concerns than in the last four or five years,” Newsom said. “So what gives? Time to do your job. Time to address the crisis of encampments on the streets in this state. And yes, I’m not going to back off from that. And you will see that reflected in my January budget. I’m going to fund success and I’m not going to fund the rhetoric of failure anymore.” CalMatters Read more

Oakland Mayor Issues Executive Order To Close Homeless Camps

Mayor Sheng Thao announced Monday that she’s ordering the city to take a more aggressive approach to closing down homeless camps. Thao issued an executive order requiring Oakland to “develop and implement a plan to close all encampments” that present an emergency, even when no other shelter is available to residents. The order follows the Supreme Court’s City of Grants Pass v. Johnson ruling in June, which gave local governments freer rein to close camps, regardless of shelter availability. Until now, Oakland policymakers have kept mum on Grants Pass, not indicating publicly whether they’d alter the city’s approach to encampments in response. But shortly after the ruling, San Francisco Mayor London Breed promised a “very aggressive” crackdown on camps. Soon after that, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an order telling cities to address encampments. And the Berkeley City Council this month passed a law allowing new exceptions to the shelter requirement for closures there. Observers anticipated Oakland could be next. The Oaklandside Read more

Looming End Of Historic Student Homelessness Funding Has Arrived

Less than two months into this school year, three families seeking shelter in Monterey County asked for motel vouchers from their children’s schools and were turned away. The vouchers, along with several other services for students experiencing homelessness, are no more. The families sought help from the schools because, in the past, that was where the county’s homeless liaison had provided them with vouchers for short stays at local motels, temporarily sheltering their homeless families with the ultimate goal of getting them into permanent housing. But the funds that paid for those vouchers had come from a federal program, the American Rescue Plan-Homeless Children and Youth, known as ARP-HCY. The historic allocation of $800 million for schools nationwide, of which California received $98.76 million, was one-time pandemic-era funding that must be committed by the end of this month and used by the end of January 2025. There is a possibility for schools to receive an extension on the timeline to spend the funds, though they won’t receive additional amounts. EdSource Read more



Cal, Stanford Athletes Face New Mental, Physical Hurdles As Far-Flung Members Of ACC

Over the coming months, Cal and Stanford, the newest members of the Atlantic Coast Conference, will become familiar with a slew of new conference opponents. The list of names includes Duke and Miami, Louisville and North Carolina, Clemson and Notre Dame. Their most challenging opponent, though, won’t be one they meet on a field, court or pitch. It will be the travel – and the litany of challenges that come with it. “This year is going to be a learning year for all of us,” said Josh Hummel, Cal’s executive senior associate athletics director. “It’s trial and error for a bit. We’re going to go based on our assumptions, which are rooted in science and conversations and everything else. We’ll go, we’ll see how it works, then, if we need to, make changes.” Every team in the ACC aside from Cal, Stanford and fellow newcomer SMU resides in the Eastern Time Zone. Cal and Stanford’s flights to face the likes of Duke, North Carolina and Miami will routinely be five-plus hours, not including transportation and inevitable delays. Those long hours in the air stand to affect the bodies and minds of each program’s athletes.

Mercury News Read more

Staffing Newsom’s CARE Court System Risks Pulling Mental Health Experts From Other Services

A seemingly innocuous proposal to offer scholarships for mental health workers in California’s new court-ordered treatment program has sparked debate over whether the state should prioritize that program or tackle a wider labor shortage in behavioral health services. Nine counties have begun rolling out the Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment Act, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law in 2022 to get people with untreated schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders, many of them incarcerated or homeless, into treatment. But often those skilled clinicians have been pulled by counties from other understaffed behavioral health programs. “There’s just so much change coming with a limited workforce, limited treatment resources, and high expectations for counties to solve things like homelessness,” said Scott Kennelly, director of the Butte County Behavioral Health Department. “It’s like I’m turning on a fire hose and saying, ‘Start drinking.’” SF Chronicle Read more

California Schools Must Restrict Phones Under New Law Signed By Newsom

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation on Monday giving California school districts two years to begin banning or restricting cellphone use during school hours, an initiative that is intended to address rising concerns over social media and children’s mental health. The Phone-Free Schools Act, which will require schools in the nation’s most populous state to restrict cellphones by July 1, 2026, is the latest statewide effort to curb phone use by children in classrooms. More than a dozen states in a little more than a year already have passed restrictions, including Louisiana, Indiana and Florida. Calls for school crackdowns have mounted with reports of cyberbullying among adolescents and studies indicating that smartphones, which offer round-the-clock distraction and social media access, have hindered academic instruction and the mental health of children. NY Times Read more



California Voters Consider Tough Love For Repeat Drug Offenders

California voters are considering whether to roll back some of the criminal justice reforms enacted a decade ago as concerns about mass incarceration give way to public anger over property crime and a fentanyl crisis that has plagued the state since the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Proposition 36, on the November ballot, would unwind portions of a 2014 initiative, known as Proposition 47, that reduced most shoplifting and drug possession offenses to misdemeanors that rarely carried jail time. Critics say that has allowed criminality to flourish and given those suffering from addiction little incentive to break the cycle. The law also has become a political weapon for former President Donald Trump and other Republican politicians who have tried to tie it to Vice President Kamala Harris to paint her as soft on crime. As California attorney general she took no position on the issue. California Healthline Read more

U.S. Will Let More People Take Methadone At Home

The first big update to U.S. methadone regulations in 20 years is poised to expand access to the life-saving drug starting next month, but experts say the addiction treatment changes could fall flat if state governments and methadone clinics fail to act. For decades, strict rules required most methadone patients to line up at special clinics every morning to sip their daily dose of the liquid medicine while being watched. The rules, built on distrust of people in the grip of opioid addiction, were meant to prevent overdoses and diversion — the illicit selling or sharing of methadone. The COVID-19 pandemic changed the risk calculation. To prevent the spread of the coronavirus at crowded clinics, emergency rules allowed patients to take methadone unsupervised at home. Mercury News Read more

Lawmakers Push To Let Telehealth Providers Keep Prescribing Stimulants And Addiction Treatment

Two Democratic lawmakers are working to preserve health providers’ right to prescribe controlled substances via telehealth, including stimulants for ADHD and buprenorphine for opioid addiction. A new bill being drafted by Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) comes months before the expiration of temporary waivers first enacted by the Drug Enforcement Administration’s during the Covid-19 pandemic. Though the DEA is currently contemplating new regulations that would roll back many of the pandemic-era flexibilities, the lawmakers’ new bill would likely extend the current rules through 2026, according to two lobbyists familiar with the effort. The flexible rules are set to expire at the end of the year, which telehealth advocates say could threaten patient access to medications, including stimulants for ADHD and common medications used to treat opioid addiction. STAT Read more



Want To Burn Calories? Climbing Stairs Might Be The Most Effective Exercise For You

If you're trying to lose weight and want a new way to do it, stair-climbing as a regular exercise - or just adding a few flights a day - might be for you. It's accessible, and research shows it's more effective than walking on level ground. "Overall, it is a fact that stair-climbing gets you fit faster and consumes more calories," said Lauri van Houten, vice president of the International Skyrunning Federation, which oversees a wide range of disciplines that involve vertical climbing. This includes disciplines like mountain running above 2,000 meters (about 6,500 feet) or events like the Stairclimbing World Championships. These competitions are for the very fit, but we're talking here about adding a few minutes of stair-climbing as a daily routine and raising awareness about its effectiveness for all ages. ABC7 News Read more