Latest From California Healthline:
California Healthline Original Stories
Wildfires Provide Another Reason to Mask Up
As the long U.S. fire season gets underway, it’s even more important for Western residents to have a good face mask. Unfortunately, most of the masks we’re wearing for COVID-19 aren’t great for smoke. (Bernard J. Wolfson, )
Dual Crises Stress California's Health Workers: Exhausted doctors and health care personnel treat respiratory hospitalizations and displaced people caused by the state's three raging wildfires -- and they're doing so during already-strained conditions from the pandemic. News outlets offer up a variety of stories that describe the difficult working conditions, and their impact on care:
San Francisco Chronicle: Wildfires Force Evacuations At Bay Area Hospitals And Nursing Homes Already Strained By COVID-19
NBC News: Amid Coronavirus Surge In California, Hospital Workers Say They're Not Protected
Salon: Wildfires, Coronavirus Collide In California To Create A "Perfect Storm"
Becerra Wants Hospital Merger Oversight Measures: The state Legislature is expected to consider a bill this week that would give the California attorney general power to block hospital mergers. Xavier Becerra says the increased number of acquisitions can limit competition and drive up prices. He can already block or modify the sale of nonprofit hospitals in California. Hospitals are fighting the legislation. The Associated Press' Adam Beam has more detail.
More News From Across The State
The Associated Press:
Big California Wildfires Burn On As Death Toll Reaches 7
Three massive wildfires chewed through parched Northern California landscape as firefighters raced to dig breaks and make other preparations ahead of a frightening weather system packing high winds and more of the lightning that sparked the huge blazes. There were hundreds of other wildfires burning Sunday across the state and nearly 250,000 people were under evacuation orders and warnings. (Mendoza and Antczak, 8/24)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Trump On California Wildfires: ‘You Got To Get Rid Of The Leaves’
President Trump renewed his criticism of California’s forestry practices Thursday as wildfires burned up and down the state, saying “many years of leaves and broken trees” are contributing to the disasters.“I see again, the forest fires are starting. They’re starting again in California,” Trump said at a campaign event in Old Forge, Pa. “And I said, you’ve got to clean your floors. You’ve got to clean your forests.” (Byrne, 8/20)
Redding Record Searchlight:
'A Culture Shift': How California Evacuation Centers Are Dealing With Fires And COVID-19
The thousands of people evacuating from the wildfires burning across California are seeing something new this summer, and as with nearly every other aspect of their lives, the coronavirus drives it. Pushed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for social distancing, shelter managers can no longer rely on large assembly halls at schools, fairgrounds and community centers to house wildfire evacuees. (Arthur and Rocha, 8/21)
Stateline:
Pandemic Precautions Are Protecting Wildfire Fighters — So Far
When it comes to on-the-ground firefighting tactics, officials in several states say not much has changed. It’s in the staging areas, where firefighters used to assemble by the hundreds for meals, briefings and camping, that everything looks different. “I think we're just as effective as we were before because our tactics haven't changed,” said Lucas Spelman, battalion chief of southern operations for California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire). “But there may be a point where we don't have the amount of people we'd like to put on those fires.” (Brown, 8/24)
CalMatters:
Central Valley Suffers Searing Heat, Smoke And Virus Hot Spots
Californians, particularly people with serious health conditions, are caught in a collision of crises: Fires are churning out dangerous smoke amid a record-baking heatwave and the relentless coronavirus pandemic. The crises are particularly acute in the Central Valley, which is a hotspot for triple-digit temperatures, billowing smoke and ash from lightning fires, unhealthful smog and rising infection rates. (Becker, 8/21)
Los Angeles Times:
It’s Deja Vu In The Bay Area As Fires Again Force Evacuations And Cloud The Skies
Fires across California continued to expand Thursday, most critically in the North Bay and Santa Cruz mountains, propelled by erratic winds near the coast and hampered by resources stretched thin by dozens of blazes. From the Salinas Valley to wine country, smoke as thick as fog in some places made it feel as if flames were everywhere. Thousands fled to shelters and hotels, the pandemic ever present but posing a distant risk compared to fire. In the Sonoma County town of Healdsburg, under an evacuation warning, residents prepared to leave, some for the third time in four years. (Chabria, Mozingo and Serna, 8/21)
San Francisco Chronicle:
64,600 Displaced By Raging Fires In San Mateo, Santa Cruz Counties
Sunshine bathed the cheery town of Pescadero on Thursday afternoon, even as a plume of gray and orange smoke rose ominously over the ridge to the east. “Warning! Prepare to evacuate!” sheriff’s deputies repeated over a loudspeaker as they drove up and down Stage Road, Pescadero’s main street. (Moench, Cassidy and Fracassa, 8/21)
Santa Cruz Sentinel:
50,000 Acres Burn In Santa Cruz Mountains, Scotts Valley And UCSC Evacuate
Thursday evening, Scotts Valley residents were given the official notice to evacuate after Santa Cruz County Sheriff Jim Hart warned earlier in the day it would come. “Now, as the city of Scotts Valley was warned, we’ve moved into a mandatory evacuation in the city of Scotts Valley and we’ll be systematically evacuating folks there, Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Chief Chris Clark said. (York and Ibarra, 8/20)
Los Angeles Times:
UC Santa Cruz Evacuates Amid Fires; Students Urged To Shelter At The Beach
A raging and unpredictable complex of wildfires forced authorities Thursday to order the evacuation of UC Santa Cruz, one of the few times students and faculty at a top California learning institution have been forced to flee from flames. State and local authorities ordered the campus to evacuate late in the day after previously warning that evacuations might be necessary. (Leavenworth and Lin II, 8/20)
KQED:
Map: Here's Your Current Air Quality Report For The Bay Area
A series of wildfires is blazing across the Bay Area and affecting air quality. The map below, updated hourly, shows air quality levels across broad areas in the region. (8/24)
San Bernardino Sun:
Amid Coronavirus Pandemic, California Health Professionals Brace For Flu Season
Bracing for a collision between the novel coronavirus and influenza, health care professionals across California are beginning to stockpile flu vaccines and preparing to launch public outreach campaigns encouraging everyone — children, adults and the elderly — to get their shots this fall. The upcoming flu season threatens to tax hospitals just beginning to thin the ranks of COVID-19 patients after coping with an early-summer surge. (Nelson, 8/24)
Los Angeles Times:
Orange County Closing In On Removal From State's Coronavirus Monitoring List
Orange County is on the brink of its removal from the state’s COVID-19 monitoring list. Data provided by the Orange County Health Care Agency indicated that the county has met the thresholds set forth by the state since Wednesday. A county must meet the state thresholds for three days before it can be taken off the monitoring list. The county was expected to come off the state watch list on Saturday. Due to a one-day delay in posting by the California Department of Public Health, the county healthcare agency said in a tweet that it anticipates the county will be removed from the list on Sunday. (Turner, 8/22)
City News Service:
San Diego County Reports 291 COVID-19 Cases And Eight Deaths
As San Diego County awaits guidance on the effects of its removal from the state's coronavirus watchlist, public health officials reported 291 new COVID-19 cases and eight additional deaths Saturday, raising the region's totals to 36,203 cases and 660 deaths. Four women and four men died, officials said Saturday. Their ages ranged from mid-40s to mid-90s. All had underlying medical conditions. (8/22)
Santa Rosa Press Democrat:
Enhanced Enforcement For COVID-19 Scofflaws Appears Weak With Coverage Gaps
Alarmed by this summer’s galloping rates of COVID-19 infections in the county, and prodded by Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase, supervisors agreed on a new approach to help bring those numbers down. They passed an ordinance to set up a dedicated citizen phone line and email address, which went live on Aug. 8. Before that, the county’s sole recourse to stop health order violators was a misdemeanor charge brought by law enforcement. The new program allows for more aggressive enforcement of the health order. In theory, at least. (Murphy, 8/23)
Oakland Tribune:
Lack Of Nurses Another Worry For California Schools
A minor cough that last year would have gone unnoticed will earn a trip to an isolated room, a speedy return home and a mandated test for COVID-19. But more than half of California school districts don’t have a nurse on staff to help them implement their plans to reopen safely. In many other districts, a single nurse is responsible for multiple schools and thousands of students. (Kathan, 8/24)
Sacramento Bee:
Sacramento Co. Nursing Facility Reports Outbreak
Coronavirus activity has exploded in recent weeks at two different Sacramento-area nursing homes, one of them with more than 10 deaths among nearly 100 resident cases. Whitney Oaks Care Center in Carmichael, a licensed skilled nursing facility, says on its website that 94 residents and 75 employees have tested positive for COVID-19 since the pandemic started. Nine of the staff cases and 13 of the resident cases were considered active as of the Thursday update, the facility wrote. (McGough, 8/21)
California Sunday Magazine:
What Happened In Room 10?
It was four days into the outbreak. Or, rather, it was four days since the Life Care Center of Kirkland, a nursing home in Washington state, had publicly confirmed the existence of a coronavirus outbreak. From Room 10, where Helen and Twilla had lived for more than a year, the women couldn’t see the nurses wheeling sick residents out the front door to meet the ambulances in the parking lot — sometimes holding white bedsheets around the stretchers to shield the patients from the photographers waiting at the side of the road. Room 10 faced inward, toward the courtyard, and it was quiet there. Still, from their beds, the women could hear nurses running down the hallway. The sound was conspicuous because people don’t usually run inside nursing homes. (Engelhart, 8/23)
Los Angeles Times:
Rural California Tests Out In-Person Classes Amid COVID-19
While the vast majority of California students are starting the academic year online, something extraordinary happened in this public school district in rural Northern California: Students sat in classrooms. With the region’s low case count, school administrators and teachers said they are confident they can reopen safely and quickly adjust if infections emerge. If the district is successful, it could be a preview for other California schools, including in Los Angeles County, as infections begin to decline. (Branson-Potts, 8/24)
The Hill:
CDC Director Says Teachers Don't Need 'Critical' Label
The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Friday that teachers don't need to be formally recognized as "critical workers," a designation that would potentially exempt them from COVID-19 quarantine requirements. "I think they didn’t need to be formally recognized as critical infrastructure workers, because in fact, I think we all know they are," Robert Redfield said during a call with reporters. (Weixel, 8/21)
Ventura County Star:
Ventura County Moms Cut Back At Work For Kids While School Is Online
The transition to online school has left many families scrambling for child care options. For families with two working parents, this might mean one parent staying home from work to provide childcare. In heterosexual couples, moms are more likely to make this career sacrifice than dads, according to a recent study that warns COVID-19 is expanding the gap in work hours and employment between men and women. (Rode, 8/24)
ABC News:
Longer Wait Times Expected At US Border Under New COVID-19 Protocols
The U.S. will slow down the flow of traffic at select ports of entry on the Southwest border to further limit the spread of novel coronavirus by travelers coming from Mexico, a Customs and Border Protection official confirmed on Saturday. Non-essential travel has been limited since March, but the new measures may increase wait times at ports of entry in San Diego, California; Tucson, Arizona; and El Paso and Laredo, Texas. Reuters first reported on the additional lane closures and customs inspections that will likely delay anyone traveling for non-essential reasons. (Owen, 8/22)
Ventura County Star:
Area's Largest Evangelical Church Complies With COVID Rules
Shawn Thornton is an evangelical pastor, not a structural design engineer, not an epidemiologist. If the 10,000-plus member Calvary Community Church in Westlake Village was red-tagged because of an earthquake, Thornton as senior pastor would not dare declare the building safe before it was cleared by safety experts. It's the same with COVID-19. (Kisken, 8/23)
The Bakersfield Californian:
Program Heads To Fields, Packing Plants To Test Farmworkers For COVID-19
For the Latino immigrants who play a crucial role in harvesting and packaging produce grown in Kern County, getting a COVID-19 test isn't as easy as it may seem, even if it is free. These essential workers, many of whom are undocumented, are at high risk of contracting the virus because they work in close proximity with others and often live in large households with extended family members. In addition, heading to a test site usually requires a vehicle, which many immigrants don't have, and may also mean missing work and not getting paid. To address those barriers, a new program is underway to take the testing to the fields and packing plants for these workers. (Shepard, 8/23)
The Desert Sun:
Riverside County Could Provide Housing, Financial Aid To Farmworkers With COVID-19
Riverside County agricultural workers who contract the coronavirus could be eligible for temporary housing and a $2,000 stipend to cover lost wages, if the Riverside County Board of Supervisors approves a proposed program Tuesday. Under the plan, individuals who work in agricultural fields or food processing who test positive for COVID-19 and are unable to self-isolate at home could be temporarily housed in a hotel or motel room, according to Heidi Marshall, director of the county's Department of Housing, Homelessness & Workforce Solutions. The county could also house individuals in one of eight travel trailers, she said. (Plevin, 8/21)
AP:
Trump Announces Plasma Treatment Authorized For COVID-19
President Donald Trump on Sunday announced emergency authorization to treat COVID-19 patients with convalescent plasma — a move he called “a breakthrough,” one of his top health officials called “promising” and other health experts said needs more study before it’s celebrated. The announcement came after White House officials complained there were politically motivated delays by the Food and Drug Administration in approving a vaccine and therapeutics for the disease that has upended Trump’s reelection chances. (Lemire and Stobbe, 8/24)
Stat:
Is Convalescent Plasma Safe And Effective?
The Mayo Clinic study showed that patients who received transfusions within three days of their Covid-19 diagnosis had a seven-day death rate of 8.7%, while patients who received plasma treatment after four or more days had a mortality rate of 11.9% (Facher, 8/23)
CNN:
Trump, Without Evidence, Accuses FDA Of Delaying Coronavirus Vaccine Trials And Pressures Agency Chief
President Donald Trump on Saturday accused, without providing any evidence, the US Food and Drug Administration of deliberately delaying coronavirus vaccine trials, pressuring the man he had picked to head the agency... He accused the agency of delaying a vaccine for the virus until after the fall election, tweeting, "Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd. Must focus on speed, and saving lives!" Trump ended his tweet by tagging the Twitter account of FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn, who he nominated last year to take up the role. (Stracqualursi, 8/23)
USA Today:
COVID-19 Quarantine: CDC Drops 14-Day Recommendation For Travelers
Travelers returning from a trip outside the country or their state no longer face recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to self-quarantine for 14 days upon return. The CDC updated its travel requirements online Friday, advising travelers to "follow state, territorial, tribal and local recommendations or requirements after travel." Previous guidelines recommended a 14-day quarantine for those returning from international destinations or areas with a high concentration of coronavirus cases. (Yasharoff, 8/23)
NPR:
Hundreds Of GOP Delegates Journey To Charlotte Semi-Bubble For Scaled-Down Convention
Delegates arriving in Charlotte for the scaled down, in-person portion of the Republican National Convention aren't being greeted by the Charlotte mayor or even business leaders. Instead, they are ushered into a purple tent outside the downtown Westin hotel. That's where they are given a coronavirus test — even though they already had to take a self-swab COVID test at home before getting on a plane. (Harrison, 8/23)
USA Today:
Coronavirus Death Toll 'Acceptable,' 57% Of Republicans Say In Poll
Americans view the severity of the coronavirus pandemic and the effectiveness of the government's response through a very partisan lens, a CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday found. More than 176,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19. According to the poll, a 57% majority of registered Republican voters consider that number "acceptable" when "evaluating the U.S. efforts against the coronavirus pandemic," compared with 31% of voters overall. Ninety percent of Democrats and 67% of independents said the death toll was "unacceptable." Republicans were also more likely to believe the official death toll is inflated. (Cummings, 8/23)