Latest From California Healthline:
California Healthline Original Stories
Your Out-of-Pocket Health Care Costs Need Not Be a Mystery
A new California law requires health insurance companies to notify consumers how much remains on their deductibles and how close they are to their annual out-of-pocket spending limits. (Bernard J. Wolfson, )
About 4% of California Younger Kids Received Covid Vaccine In First Week of Eligibility: Close to 150,000 California children ages 5 to 11 have received a first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine since young children became eligible for it last week, new state data show. More than half those doses were administered Monday through Thursday of this week. The state estimates it has about 3.5 million children ages 5 to 11, which means 4.2% of the newly eligible population has been vaccinated so far. Vaccination rates among children vary widely from county to county. Read more from the The Sacramento Bee.
LA’s Police Chief Says He’ll Fire Any Employee Who Defies City Vaccine Mandate: Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said he is prepared to fire any of the department's 12,000 employees who defy the city’s mandate for municipal employees to get vaccinated against covid-19 by Dec. 18. Moore said the LAPD's goal of having a fully vaccinated workforce is to ensure the safety and welfare of the department's officers and civilian workforce, as well as their families and the public. Read more from CBS News and the Los Angeles Times.
More News From Across The State
City News Service:
Coronavirus Hospitalizations Inch Upward Again In LA County
Los Angeles County’s coronavirus-related hospitalizations climbed a bit on Thursday, Nov. 11, up to 633 — an increase of 16 from Wednesday, according to the state dashboard. Of those patients, 169 were being treated in intensive care, an increase of seven. The county’s public health officials announced 1,441 new infections on Thursday, for a total of 1,507,736 to date and 18 new fatalities, bringing the county’s death toll to 26,814 since the pandemic began. (11/11)
Los Angeles Times:
L.A. Getting Influx Of Federal Money To Keep Using Hotels To House Homeless People
Throughout the pandemic, the city and county of Los Angeles have rented thousands of hotel rooms for homeless people at risk of contracting coronavirus. This massive effort was partially made possible by the federal government’s willingness to reimburse local governments for each dollar they spent renting the rooms and repurposing hotels into temporary housing. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s reimbursement of costs associated with sheltering people in individual rooms was slated to run through the end of the year. (Oreskes, 11/11)
Bay Area News:
Cal COVID Chaos: Berkeley's Strict Rules Leave Bears In Lurch
In the middle of the football season, a brouhaha has broken out in Berkeley. On one side: The city’s public health department, which insisted on testing the entire Cal football operation — even asymptomatic, vaccinated individuals — after a few players were found to be COVID-positive. On the other side: An infectious disease specialist from UCSF who roasted Berkeley’s response and downplayed the need for the mass testing during a television interview Wednesday night. (Wilner, 11/12)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Behind California's New Tune On COVID Boosters: Fear Of Waning Immunity And A Winter Surge
More widespread uptake of COVID-19 booster shots would help lessen a potential winter surge of the coronavirus, say health officials, who are advising with increasing urgency that anyone who can get a booster do so before the holidays. If everyone eligible to get a vaccine booster got one today, “it’d have a significant blunting effect,” on a swell in new cases, said San Francisco Health Director Dr. Grant Colfax. (Ho, 11/12)
Los Angeles Times:
California Turbo-Charges Push For COVID-19 Booster Shots
Faced with growing worries over a potential winter coronavirus surge, health officials in California and other areas are turbo-charging the push for COVID-19 booster shots in hopes of getting more adults the extra dose as soon as possible. The move comes amid initial sluggish demand for boosters, which has sparked concern that more people who got their initial vaccinations nearly a year ago will see their immunity wane further into the pivotal holiday season. In California, only 34% of fully vaccinated seniors age 65 and over have received a booster, as have just 14% of fully vaccinated adults. (Money, Lin II and Martinez, 11/12)
Bay Area News Group:
California Urges COVID Booster Shots For All Adults
California officials are urging COVID-19 vaccine providers to give booster shots to pretty much any adult who wants one. It’s a messaging shift toward a looser interpretation of federal guidance, which appears to recommend boosters only for those 65 and older, in poor health or who live or work in a high-risk setting. Alarmed by the latest case rates, state health officials don’t want to be restrictive. (Woolfolk, 11/11)
Los Angeles Times:
No Eligible Californian Should Be Denied Booster, Officials Say
No fully vaccinated adult should be denied a COVID-19 booster shot, the California Department of Public Health says. The move comes as health authorities are trying to increase the number of Californians getting the booster shots, fearing that slow early demand could increase the chances of another winter coronavirus wave. (Lin II and Money, 11/11)
Fresno Bee:
Fresno, California Region Sees Progress On Kids’ COVID Shots
Almost 112,000 Fresno County children between the ages of 5 and 11 became eligible last week to start receiving doses of vaccine against COVID-19. And one week into the vaccine rollout, more than 2,500 of those kids – or more than 2.2% of the age group – have received their first dose of the two-shot Pfizer BioNTech vaccine that received emergency-use approval from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control on Nov. 2. By Nov. 3, some providers were already offering the shots to to youngsters. (Sheehan, 11/12)
CNBC:
Moderna Says Covid Vaccine Has Fewer Breakthrough Cases Than Pfizer's
Moderna defended the use of its covid-19 vaccine Thursday, saying the protection it offers against severe disease, hospitalization and death outweighs the risk of myocarditis, a rare heart condition seen in a small number of young men who received the shot. The company announced last week that the Food and Drug Administration needed more time to decide whether to authorize its two-dose vaccine for use in children ages 12 to 17 as the agency looks into reports of myocarditis, or the inflammation of the heart muscle. (Lovelace Jr., 11/11)
The Bakersfield Californian:
Clinica Sierra Vista Offers Pediatric Doses Of COVID-19 Vaccine In Kern County
Clinica Sierra Vista announced that it is offering the pediatric dose of the COVID-19 Pfizer vaccination to patients between the ages of 5-11 effective immediately. The organization said in a statement that it has hundreds of vaccinations for pediatric patients and supply is expected to meet demand. (11/11)
City News Service:
LA City Council To Consider Changes To Its Proof Of Vaccination Law
The Los Angeles City Council on Friday, Nov. 12, will vote on enforcement measures and modifications for its new law requiring Angelenos patronizing indoor restaurants, gyms, entertainment and recreational facilities, personal care establishments and some city buildings to show proof of full vaccination against COVID-19. (11/11)
San Diego Union-Tribune:
Job Platform For Unvaccinated People Is Silent On COVID-19 Dangers
Helping employers and potential employees find one another sounds like a good idea. If that effort seeks to match businesses and workers of like minds beyond the actual job, all the better, it would seem. But what if those mutually agreeable views potentially threaten public safety? That question is pertinent concerning a new local online platform that offers to pair up businesses that don’t require COVID-19 vaccines with workers who don’t get them. (Michael Smolens, 11/12)
CBS News:
FDA Recalls 2.2 Million Ellume COVID-19 Home Tests Due To False Positives
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced the recall of 2.2 million home COVID-19 tests made by Ellume, the first company to get FDA approval for over-the-counter COVID tests, due to "higher-than-acceptable false positive test results." The recall is an expansion of last month's recall of 200,000 kits for the same issue. About 35 false positives through the Ellume COVID-19 Home Test were reported to the FDA, with no deaths reported, the agency said. But false positives could lead to negative outcomes such as getting unneeded COVID-19 treatment from a health care provider or a delayed diagnosis for the person's actual illness, the FDA added. (Picchi, 11/11)
San Diego Union-Tribune:
Officials Say San Diego's New Ambulance Provider Is Ready To Take Over Nov. 27
San Diego’s new ambulance provider is in a strong position to take over Nov. 27 thanks to significant progress in recent weeks on a long list of city requests, officials said this week. After raising significant concerns about the takeover in September by failing to meet some city demands, Falck USA has rallied to satisfy nearly all the city’s three dozen criteria. (Garrick, 11/11)
AP:
Johnson & Johnson To Split Into Two Companies
Johnson & Johnson is splitting into two companies, separating the division that sells Band-Aids and Listerine, from its medical device and prescription drug business. The company said Friday the move will help improve the focus and speed of each company to address trends in their different industries. The company selling prescription drugs and medical devices will keep Johnson & Johnson as its name, the company said Friday. That company will include treatments such as Darzalex, Erleada, Imbruvica, Stelara and Tremfya as well as medical device solutions across interventional solutions, orthopaedics, surgery and vision. (Chapman, 11/12)
CBS News:
One Way Americans Feel Inflation's Pain: Health Insurance Premiums
As experts debate whether inflation gripping everything from winter heat to holiday gifts to American Thanksgiving tables is temporary or likely to endure, Americans are facing another relentlessly rising cost: health insurance premiums. Getting health insurance through work now costs more than $22,000 a year for families, who pick up roughly $6,000 of that tab, the Kaiser Family Foundation found in its annual benefits survey, with employers picking up the rest. (Layne, 11/11)
The Hill:
White House Expanding Health Care For Veterans Exposed To Burn Pits
The White House on Thursday marked Veterans Day by announcing expanded health care resources for individuals exposed to burn pits and other environmental hazards during their time in the military. Assistance for those exposed to burn pits has been a personal issue for President Biden, who has on multiple occasions spoken about how he believes his son Beau Biden's exposure to them may have been linked to the brain cancer that killed him in 2015. (Samuels, 11/11)
Roll Call:
Some Troops Are Driven To Suicide By Hunger, Experts Say
One of the biggest problems among U.S. troops and veterans, rising suicides, is made worse by another growing scourge in the ranks: hunger. That was the conclusion experts delivered to a House Agriculture subcommittee in a hearing Wednesday on the eve of Veterans Day. “Veterans dealing with very low food security have an almost four-fold increase in odds of suicidal ideation,” Nipa Kamdar, a health sciences specialist, told the Subcommittee on Nutrition, Oversight and Department Operations. (Donnelly, 11/11)
The New York Times:
Veterans Have Become Unlikely Lobbyists In Push To Legalize Psychedelic Drugs
Jose Martinez, a former Army gunner whose right arm and both legs were blown off by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, has a new calling: He’s become one of the most effective lobbyists in a campaign to legalize the therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs across the country. On a Zoom call this spring with Connie Leyva, a Democratic legislator in California who has long opposed relaxing drug laws, Mr. Martinez told her how psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient in “magic” mushrooms, had helped to finally quell the physical pain and suicidal thoughts that had tormented him.Ms. Leyva says she changed her mind even before the call ended, and she later voted yes on the bill, which is expected to become law early next year. (Jacobs, 11/11)
Los Angeles Times:
CDC Shifts Pandemic Goals Away From Reaching Herd Immunity
Since the earliest days of the pandemic, there has been one collective goal for bringing it to an end: achieving herd immunity. That’s when so many people are immune to a virus that it runs out of potential hosts to infect, causing an outbreak to sputter out. Many Americans embraced the novel farmyard phrase, and with it, the projection that once 70% to 80% or 85% of the population was vaccinated against COVID-19, the virus would go away and the pandemic would be over. Now the herd is restless. And experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have set aside herd immunity as a national goal. (Healy, 11/12)
Axios:
America’s COVID Future Has Arrived
The U.S. and COVID-19 are settling into a long, but hopefully manageable future together. The worst of the pandemic is likely behind us, but the virus is here to stay. We’re entering a new phase — one in which the country’s overall experience with this virus will be less like having a heart attack, and more like managing a lifelong chronic condition. Experts have been saying for a long time that there’s almost no chance COVID-19 would disappear. Rather, they’ve been expecting it to become endemic — meaning it will stick around, possibly forever, but at more predictable, manageable levels. (Baker and Beheraj, 11/11)
The Washington Post:
Top Biden Health Officials Push To Make Coronavirus Booster Shots Available To All Adults
Anxious about a surge of coronavirus infections enveloping Europe as cases tick up in the United States, senior health officials in the Biden administration are pressing urgently to offer vaccine booster shots to all adults. But support for the renewed push is not unanimous. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky has expressed caution about making extra shots so broadly available now, according to several officials familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. As a result, tension is rising among officials over how quickly to proceed and who should get the shots. (McGinley, Sun and Pager, 11/11)
Axios:
Lasting Changes Ahead For "Generation COVID"
The generation of kids and young adults who are coming of age in the midst of the pandemic will likely be shaped by COVID for the rest of their lives — and researchers are starting to offer a glimpse at how. Massive news events — most recently the Great Recession and the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks for older millennials — can be drivers for changing how generations generally view the world, spend money and form relationships. While there's no way to really know what will happen, behavioralists are trying to understand which changes might ultimately stick for Gen Z, as well as younger kids which some have started calling "Generation C." (Fernandez, 11/12)
CBS News:
Why Aren't More Pregnant Women Of Color Getting Vaccinated Against COVID-19? Doctors Point To Distrust And Poor Outreach.
Maria del Carmen Garcia didn't have to look far for medical advice as she considered whether to get vaccinated against COVID-19. The 39-year-old teacher from Fort Hood, Texas, who at the time was trying to have another baby, consulted her sisters who work in health care and her husband who is a former pharmacy technician. "We do a lot of research in this house," she said. "Sometimes people look at us, they say, 'You guys read too much' — but we'd rather be overly informed than not." (Bayer, 11/11)
CIDRAP:
Study Shows Cancer Patients Can Safely Receive COVID-19 Vaccines
A study yesterday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology shows COVID-19 vaccines are safe in people undergoing treatment for cancer and produce modestly impaired immune responses. Booster vaccine doses, however, enhance immunity. The study was based on 762 active oncology patients at Massachusetts General Hospital, who were compared to 1,638 healthy controls. The patients were currently receiving cancer treatments, including chemotherapy, bone marrow transplants, corticosteroids, and radiation. All three vaccines currently used in the United States were included in the study. (11/11)
CIDRAP:
Tests Reveal Much Higher COVID Rate In Unvaccinated Nursing Home Staff
Positive COVID-19 test results were more than 10 times more common among unvaccinated, asymptomatic healthcare professionals (HCP) in Veterans Health Administration (VHA) long-term care facilities than among their fully vaccinated counterparts, according to a research letter yesterday in JAMA Network Open. Researchers at the VA Boston Healthcare System tracked mandatory weekly COVID-19 test results among 1,269 HCP and twice-weekly antigen testing among 704 more from Jan 15 to Jun 8, 2021. (11/11)
The Mercury News:
California Needs Biden Vaccine Mandate On Employers
California and the nation need President Biden’s vaccination mandate on companies with more than 100 employees. The new policy, announced Thursday, is necessary to quell COVID-19 and protect workers from getting the virus and spreading it to their communities. Red states, as expected, are challenging the law’s constitutionality. The U.S. Supreme Court will likely make the final call. When it does, the court should recognize the law entitles workers to a safe workplace. Biden’s rule does just that. (11/09)
Modesto Bee/CalMatters:
Vaccine Holdouts Like NFL’s Aaron Rodgers Undermine COVID-19 Battle
For months, then, Rodgers was living a lie and putting others at risk of being exposed to COVID-19. He’s a high-profile example of the vaccine refusniks who undermine humankind’s best hope of taming a pandemic that’s already claimed 750,000 lives in the U.S. and 5 million worldwide. What gives with these people, anyway? Why are they risking not only their own lives but those of others by shunning the jab? (Dan Walters, 11/09)
Los Angeles Times:
Is The U.S. Prepared For The Next Hospital Crisis?
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed devastating cracks in the foundation of U.S. healthcare. Hospitals were unprepared for enormous challenges to staffing, resulting from burnout and absences caused by the medical and psychological costs of the coronavirus. There is another emerging crisis that could catch us again unprepared and last for decades: hospital emergencies stemming from dementia. (Carmen Black, 11/10)
Los Angeles Times:
COVID-19 Was A Pandemic For Plastic Too
COVID-19 is a plague on humanity, but it hasn’t been that kind to the planet either.Our efforts to avoid infection led to an unavoidable increase in single-use plastic. Just how much more we are only now starting to grasp. This month a team of researchers from Nanjing University’s School of Atmospheric Sciences in China and UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography published an estimate based on scientific modeling, that 8 million tons of pandemic-related plastic was produced globally as of August. Furthermore, they estimate that about 26,000 tons has or will end up in rivers, oceans, beaches and, ultimately, in the bellies of sea creatures. By the end of this year, their model projects that another 3 million tons of pandemic-related plastic waste will be used. (11/11)
San Francisco Chronicle:
We Need To Start Thinking Differently About COVID Outbreaks, Says UCSF's Monica Gandhi
Despite the team having a 99% vaccination rate, according to school officials, Cal football will not take the field this weekend against USC after at least 44 students and staff tested positive for COVID-19. Although we do not know all the details of symptoms nor vaccinations of the team, the cancellation of a highly anticipated game like this one due to COVID-19 has led to online speculation — fueled by scary headlines — about the dwindling efficacy of vaccination and a return to the conditions that led to last year’s deadly winter surge. (Monica Gandhi, 11/11)
San Francisco Chronicle:
You're Paying Too Much For Prescription Drugs. Biden's Bill Will Lower Costs - Unless Lobbyists Prevent It
Americans pay more for prescription medications than any country in the world. Three in 10 people in the U.S. have reduced, skipped or spread out doses of their medication because of cost. Clearly, drugs in the U.S. are unaffordable for patients. But why? Patients consume roughly the same number of prescription drugs per person, and the United States even prioritizes generic medications better than most. Yet it spends over two times more on average. The reason? Price. My patient’s insulin would cost $186 a month in America (after an insurance discount), but the average international market price is around $58 a month. A study from 2013 showed that drug prices were 5% to 117% higher in the U.S. on average than in all other countries studied. This problem is even worse in the Bay Area — a recent report showed prescription drug prices were 14% higher in San Francisco than the national average, with some residents even resorting to traveling to Mexico to buy insulin. (Tom Handley, 11/10)