Stop Partying At Lake Merritt, Oakland Officials Warn: Oakland officials pleaded with residents Friday to stop gathering at Lake Merritt as hundreds more Alameda County residents tested positive and pushed the number of coronavirus cases to more than 10,000 — the first Bay Area county to reach that milestone. Although city officials outlawed vendors and weekend parking at parks in May, they have not enforced the ban. Nearly 60 vendors sold food, alcohol, cannabis and merchandise at Lake Merritt last weekend, and people showed up by the hundreds. “It’s exploded,” said Joe DeVries, an assistant to the city administrator. He said the city will first warn, then fine, vendors who show up by slapping administrative penalties on their vehicles. Read more from Sarah Ravani of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Newsom Says More Protections Coming For Essential Workers: Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday announced more protections for the state’s essential workers, including farmworkers, truck drivers, construction workers and grocery employees. But he gave few specific details and said more information would come in the next few weeks. He noted during his daily virtual news conference that California’s essential workers are disproportionately Latino and disproportionately affected by COVID-19. Latinos account for about 55% of the state’s COVID-19 cases, despite comprising about 39% of the population. “Extinguishing COVID-19 depends on our ability to keep our essential workers safe,” Newsom said. “This is where we’re seeing the spread.” Read more from Barbara Feder Ostrov at CalMatters.
Below, check out the roundup of California Healthline’s coverage and the best of the rest of the news.
More News From Across The State
San Francisco Chronicle:
New York Versus California: A Tale Of Two Pandemics
Their journeys began at about the same time, but California and New York immediately diverged down two very different paths during the coronavirus pandemic. California started in January, with travelers from China carrying a new virus into the Bay Area. New York was probably only a few weeks behind, its virus arriving from Europe. From there, California’s trajectory was a gentle upward bend in case counts, a long plateau, and then — the surge. New York’s was the classic curve: a sharp climb in cases followed by a long and bumpy descent. (Allday, 7/27)
Sacramento Bee:
Coronavirus: 7,000 Californians Hospitalized With COVID-19
California has become the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, which itself is the nation leading in worldwide infection numbers. California now has more total infections than New York, which had long been seen as the de facto virus hotspot owing to the state’s dense population and economic import. California still has more cases than Florida as well, though that state has seen rising infections in recent weeks. (Moleski, 7/25)
Fresno Bee:
Fresno Adds 400-Plus Coronavirus Cases, Hospital Hit Hard
Fresno County reported more than 400 additional positive results for COVID-19 on Saturday, a day after a local hospital delivered an alarming update on how the coronavirus pandemic is infecting and affecting its staff. The latest 416 cases raised the county’s total to 12,564 since the first was reported in the region in March. The county has topped 300 cases in each of the past four days. (Galaviz, 7/25)
Sacramento Bee:
Coronavirus: Latest Sacramento, California COVID-19 Numbers
Sacramento County health officials announced another day of broad gains in coronavirus infections, adding close to 300 cases Sunday morning. In a morning update, the county’s official tally of total coronavirus infections rose to 8,903, up from 8,636 on Saturday, marking an increase of 267 new cases of COVID-19. (Moleski, 7/26)
Sacramento Bee:
El Dorado County Coronavirus Cases Rise, Masks Debated
For a month now, El Dorado County has been the only county in the Sacramento region that has avoided landing on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “watchlist” of counties that require tighter restrictions to fight the coronavirus. Sacramento County was first to hit the list, followed by Yolo, Placer, Yuba and Sutter counties. In all, 36 California counties were on the list as of Saturday. (Bizjak, 7/25)
San Francisco Chronicle:
This Bay Area Company Thought It Might Not Survive. Then It Started Making Coronavirus Proteins
Want to find the coronavirus’ infamous spike protein that allows it to latch onto human cells?Look no further than Atum, a 17-year-old Newark firm specialized in making synthetic genes and proteins. Like other firms in the biotechnology-heavy Bay Area, Atum has rapidly refocused on the pandemic. It’s now playing a vital role supplying cellular pieces to researchers who use them to build coronavirus antibody tests, drugs and vaccine candidates. (Morris, 7/26)
Fresno Bee:
Testing Delays A New Hurdle For Contact Tracing Teams
A surge in COVID-19 cases and a shortage of contact tracers has for weeks hampered Sacramento County’s efforts to contact and warn people exposed to coronavirus. Now, an additional hurdle is inhibiting the county’s contact tracing: testing slowdowns. Delays to get test appointments and longer waiting periods while labs turn around results mean cases land on investigators’ desks long after a person should have been told to start quarantining. (Bollag, Bizjak and Yoon-Hendricks, 7/26)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Richer, Whiter Bay Area Cities Got Coronavirus Testing Quickly. Low-Income Areas Didn’t
As the coronavirus dug into the Bay Area’s low-income Latino and Black neighborhoods this spring, doctors and community leaders pleaded for more testing sites. But even as access to testing grew in wealthier, whiter parts of several Bay Area counties, community testing sites lagged or offered only limited hours in communities of color where the virus was spreading fastest, according to a Chronicle analysis of test-site data from March through mid-July. (Dizikes and Palomino, 7/26)
Fresno Bee:
South Fresno Shows Higher Rates Of Positive COVID-19 Test
An analysis of coronavirus cases in Fresno and Clovis indicates that areas in the southern part of Fresno not only have more confirmed infections of COVID-19 over the past few months of the pandemic — they also have a higher rate of people testing positive for the contagion than more northerly parts of the metropolitan area. Fresno County’s overall positivity rate from testing stands at about 10.8%, according to Friday’s update from the county Department of Public Health. That means for every 100 people who have been tested for the virus in the county, about 11 are confirmed to have been infected. (Sheehan, 7/27)
Sacramento Bee:
Coronavirus Surge Returns To Ca, Stresses Hospital Workers
Look at nearly any point on the map in California and you can see an area that has a hospital with a battle on its hands. Coronavirus cases are surging in the rural borderlands of Imperial County and in Los Angeles. The southern San Joaquin Valley along Highway 99 – Fresno, Kings, Merced counties – is now emerging as another hot spot. Farther north, Lodi Memorial Hospital and Stockton’s St. Joseph’s Medical Center scramble to handle the numbers of cases inundating San Joaquin County. (Anderson and Smith, 7/27)
Fresno Bee:
Fresno Doctor Describes COVID-19 Patient And Hospital Conditions
A Fresno pulmonary disease and critical care doctor for Community Medical Centers said COVID-19 patients are facing pneumonia, low oxygen levels, neurological symptoms such as confusion and clotting as hospital staff work under stressful conditions and scramble to keep medications stocked. Dr. Mohamed Fayed, who also is a faculty member at UCSF Fresno, spoke Friday during Fresno County Public Health Department’s media briefing over Zoom and Facebook Live. (Calix, 7/24)
CalMatters:
Colleges Are Walking Back Reopening Plans—But Can They Keep Campus Employees Safe?
As California colleges rethink their back-to-school plans amid a statewide spike in coronavirus cases, it’s not just their students they need to worry about protecting. Many campus employees are decades older than the students they teach and support, putting them at higher risk of complications if they contract the virus. (Ross, 7/24)
San Francisco Chronicle:
California Requires Masks, But Not Everyone Wears One. Here’s How To Fix That
Everyone in California is supposed to wear a mask these days — in stores, on sidewalks, when socializing with others. But many don’t. And that’s a problem. Lack of masks and social distancing are key reasons, experts say, that California is experiencing a surge in coronavirus cases. (Kramer, 7/25)
Sacramento Bee:
California Bus, Train Agencies Write Post-COVID-19 Plans
How can the state’s public transit authorities woo passengers back to their trains, buses and metro lines in the middle of a pandemic? Ridership across California’s major transit agencies is down. Revenues have slumped. And the state’s two biggest agencies — Bay Area Rapid Transit and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority — say they’re facing an uncertain future in the years ahead. (Kristoffersen, 7/24)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Keeping Unemployment, Health Coverage In California: Questions Answered
Questions about unemployment in California keep rolling in, so in this column I’ll answer ones on how to get extended benefits when your first 26 weeks run out, when the state will require people on unemployment to begin looking for work and what the differences between COBRA and Cal-COBRA health care continuation are. (Pender, 7/25)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Coronavirus Canceled San Quentin Prison’s Rehabilitation Programs, Closing A Bridge To The Outside World
On his first day at San Quentin State Prison in early 2006, freshly transferred from solitary confinement at Avenal State Prison, Troy Williams walked onto the yard ready for a fight. What he saw instead shocked him: hundreds of people milling around, many in street clothes, making speeches, playing music, running laps or talking in groups. After serving a decade of a life sentence in the California State Prison system, Williams thought he had landed on another planet. (Simpson, 7/25)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Coronavirus Stalls Housing Construction In SF, And Lull May Last A While
In late June, the developer Strada started construction on a major project: the first of six buildings that will add about 600 units next to the Local 38 Plumbers hall at Market and Franklin streets. While the kickoff wasn’t marked by the sort of ceremonial gathering that typically accompanies such groundbreakings, it was significant not only for the project’s size and ambition, but because it is the only major San Francisco housing development to start construction since the coronavirus shutdown began in March. And it may be the last one for quite a while. (Dineen, 7/27)
Sacramento Bee:
Yolo County Announces Coronavirus Outbreak At Davis Facility
Yolo County officials Friday afternoon announced a coronavirus outbreak at a skilled nursing facility in Davis, where six residents and four employees have tested positive. Courtyard Healthcare Center reported its first confirmed infection June 12, when a resident at the facility on East 8th Street tested positive. The facility is now among six long-term care facilities in Yolo County with outbreaks — resulting in a total of 112 people (58 residents and 54 employees) who are infected. (Ahumada, 7/24)
San Francisco Chronicle:
A Deadly Coronavirus Outbreak Seemed Inevitable At SF’s Laguna Honda Nursing Home — But That’s Not What Happened
In the early days of the pandemic, the prospect of a deadly coronavirus surge at Laguna Honda nursing home in San Francisco seemed terrifying — and inevitable. The public health department that ran Laguna Honda, the largest nursing home in the state, wasn’t equipped to handle a surge of cases at the facility. Residents felt scared. Workers, with little access to testing and protective gear, were frightened, too. Now, four months into the pandemic, not one Laguna Honda resident or worker has died of COVID-19, public health officials say. Of the 721 people living there, 19 have become infected. (Ravani, 7/27)