Los Angeles Daily News: LA County School COVID Outbreaks Rise As BA.2 Gains Traction 
A sharp rise in coronavirus outbreaks at Los Angeles County K-12 schools amid building traction of the BA.2 “subvariant of concern” were among the latest signs of caution offered by public health officials on Tuesday, April 5. From March 28 to April 3, schools experienced 10 outbreaks — moving from what had been weeks of “low” levels of such outbreaks to a “moderate” level, Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer told the Board of Supervisors Tuesday in an update. (Carter, 4/5)

San Francisco Chronicle: S.F. Health Officials Return Thousands Of Life-Saving COVID Drugs, Plead With Public To Use Them
San Francisco has returned thousands of doses of life-saving COVID-19 drugs to the state because the people who could have used them didn’t know the treatment was available, public health officials said Wednesday. Now city officials are sounding an urgent alert to let people know about the antiviral drugs, which must be taken within five days after the onset of COVID symptoms. (Asimov, 4/6)

Southern California News Group: Why California, Some Counties Are Scaling Back COVID-19 Data Updates
California is scaling back how often it publicly reports coronavirus case, death, testing and other numbers on the health department website, and some counties are following suit — to mixed reaction from public health experts. As of this week, California will update those numbers only on Tuesdays and Fridays, rather than every weekday. Twice a week is one of the lowest frequencies of any state in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University, which tracks coronavirus stats from around the world. (Johnson, 4/6)

Los Angeles Times: Free Coronavirus Testing Is Reduced In L.A. County 
Despite an increase in coronavirus cases, the availability of free testing sites has been reduced due to the stalemate in Washington over approving new COVID-19 pandemic funding. The federal government has stopped offering money to fund coronavirus tests for uninsured people. After hitting a March 22 deadline, the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration is no longer accepting claims from health providers to get reimbursed for coronavirus testing under the program. (Lin II and Alpert Reyes, 4/6)

City News Service: LA County Expands ‘Test To Treat’ COVID Services, Adds Tele-Health Option
Los Angeles County health officials on Wednesday, April 6 touted an expansion of efforts to make COVID-19 treatments more accessible to residents, introducing a “Test to Treat” tele-health service. “Test to Treat” services are already available at dozens of pharmacies and other sites across Los Angeles County, allowing people to walk in for a COVID test, be immediately evaluated and potentially be offered one of the two currently available oral medications for fighting the infection. (4/6)

Los Angeles Times: Allergies Or COVID? How To Tell Spring Symptoms Apart 
Spring has arrived, bringing with it the sneezing, coughing and wheezing triggered by seasonal allergies. The Santa Ana winds expected to gust this week will cause their share of stuffy noses and scratchy eyes as well. But at the same time, a coronavirus subvariant dubbed BA.2 is gaining steam, reversing the steady decline in COVID-19 cases we’d seen since the Omicron variant caused a huge winter surge. (Healey, 4/7)

San Francisco Chronicle: How Might COVID Vaccines Change This Year? FDA Begins To Lay Out A Road Map
What will COVID-19 vaccines look like by year’s end? And in years after that? Some of the nation’s most influential vaccine scientists tried to start answering those questions Wednesday when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory committee offered a potential road map for how current vaccines may be updated periodically to target variants of the coronavirus. (Ho, 4/6)

NPR: Advisers To FDA Weigh In On Updated COVID Boosters For The Fall
In a daylong virtual meeting, a panel of experts advising the Food and Drug Administration came out in general support of efforts to develop new COVID-19 vaccines tailored to variants. The committee wasn't asked to vote on any specific recommendations to the agency but instead discussed the framework for making decisions about when to change the viral strain or strains used for future vaccines, including boosters. "I think we're in uncharted territory because with SARS-CoV-2 a lot of things have happened that have never happened before," said Dr. Arnold Monto, professor emeritus at the University of Michigan and acting chair of the committee. (Hensley, 4/6)

San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego Will Be Part Of National Clinical Trial On COVID-19 Vaccines 
Fully vaccinated and boosted San Diego County residents are among those nationwide who will be able to participate in a new clinical trial that seeks to test combinations of vaccines that target variants, including Beta, Delta and Omicron. UC San Diego is among 24 sites nationwide selected to enroll otherwise healthy residents in the COVID-19 Variant Immunologic Landscape Trial, a major nationwide effort funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. (Sisson, 4/6)

San Francisco Chronicle: Napa Doctor Convicted Of Selling Fake COVID Vaccination Cards, Remedies
A naturopathic doctor from Napa was convicted Wednesday on charges that she sold fake COVID-19 vaccination cards and phony “immunization pellets” to her patients, officials said .Juli Mazi accepted a plea agreement in February and pleaded guilty this week to one count of wire fraud and one count of making false statements related to health care matters, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. (Picon, 4/6)

AP: California Naturopathic Doctor Sold Fake COVID-19 Vaccine Cards 
 A naturopathic doctor in Northern California pleaded guilty Wednesday to selling fake COVID-19 immunization treatments and hundreds of fraudulent vaccination cards that made it seem like customers received Moderna vaccines, federal prosecutors said. Juli A. Mazi, 41, of Napa, pleaded guilty in federal court in San Francisco to one count of wire fraud and one count of false statements related to healthcare matters, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement. (4/6)

City News Service: Judge Mulls LAUSD Parent’s Challenge To Student Vaccine Mandate 
A judge on Wednesday, April 6, said he is inclined to deny a legal challenge to the Los Angeles Unified School District’s student coronavirus vaccine mandate brought by the father of a 12-year-old student, but he took the case under submission after a hearing. (4/6)

CNN: Covid-19 Infections Can Set Off Massive Inflammation In The Body
From the early days of the pandemic, doctors noticed that in severe cases of Covid-19 -- the ones that landed people in the hospital on ventilators with shredded lungs -- most of the internal wreckage wasn't being directly inflicted by the virus itself but by a blizzard of immune reactions triggered by the body to fight the infection. Researchers knew that these so-called cytokine storms were damaging, but they didn't know why the SARS-CoV-2 virus seemed to be so good at setting them off. A new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature is helping to explain how these immune overreactions happen to Covid-19 patients. (Goodman, 4/6)

ABC News: COVID-19 Infection Increases Risk Of Serious Blood Clots 3 To 6 Months Later: Study 
Being infected with COVID-19 raises the risk of developing serious blood clots, a new study suggests. An international team of researchers from Sweden, the United Kingdom and Finland compared more than 1 million people in Sweden with a confirmed case of the virus between February 2020 and May 2021 to 4 million control patients who tested negative. (Kekatos, 4/6)

Fox News: COVID-19 Home Tests Have More Shelf-Life Than You Think: Report
Don’t throw away your home COVID-19 tests just because it says it’s expired, according to a recent New York Times report. Even though the test kits use similar technology to detect pieces of the viral proteins called antigens, their expiration dates may differ because of how they are regulated – not because of inherent differences in the tests themselves, said Dr. Michael Mina, an expert in home-test technology and chief science officer for eMed, a healthcare company that provides home test kits. (Sudhakar, 4/6)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Nurse Accused In Inmate's Death Will Be Allowed To Practice Nursing While Awaiting Trial 
A jail nurse accused of letting an ailing Las Colinas inmate die will be allowed to practice nursing as she awaits trial, an El Cajon judge ruled Wednesday. In November, Danalee Pascua pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the 2019 death of Elisa Serna, 24, at Las Colinas Detention Facility in Santee. She faces up to four years if convicted. (Figueroa, 4/6)

CIDRAP: COVID-19 Health Workers Suffer Combat-Type Moral Trauma
A Duke University study shows that, amid COVID-19, US healthcare workers (HCWs) had similar rates of potential moral injury (PMI)—a type of trauma-induced wound to the psyche—as military combat veterans. The study, published yesterday in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, surveyed 2,099 HCWs in 2020 and 2021 and 618 military veterans deployed to a combat zone after the Sep 11, 2001, US terrorist attacks about PMIs they may have experienced. (Van Beusekom, 4/6)

San Francisco Chronicle: Federal Judge Upholds S.F. Law Requiring SFO Employers To Provide No-Cost Health Care To Employees
Rejecting airline industry arguments, a federal judge has upheld a San Francisco law requiring employers at San Francisco International Airport to provide no-cost health care benefits to many of their employees. The ordinance, which took effect in March 2021, applied to airline employees and other workers at the airport who dealt with passengers, baggage and safety and security services — 35% to 40% of the private employees at SFO, according to the court ruling. (Egelko, 4/6)

KQED: California's New Benefits For Undocumented Immigrants Are Not Enough, Workers Say 
California Democratic lawmakers want to extend unemployment benefits to undocumented workers, a proposal backed by a new report by the UC Merced Community and Labor Center, which makes the case for why the California economy, the workforce, and families would benefit. Introduced last month by Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia, a Democrat from Coachella, and currently under review in the legislature, AB 2847 would create the Excluded Workers Pilot Program, a two-year program that would provide funds to undocumented workers who lose their job or have their hours reduced during the calendar year 2023. The proposal, estimated at $597 million plus administrative costs, would allow qualifying, unemployed individuals to receive up to $300 a week for 20 weeks. (Montalvo, 4/6)

Bay Area News Group: Walnut Creek Backs Planned Parenthood With Protest Buffers
After months of fine-tuning the legal details, Walnut Creek will begin prohibiting abortion protesters from getting within eight feet of people entering or leaving the city’s Planned Parenthood clinic without their consent. The City Council unanimously voted Tuesday night to establish the eight-foot buffer within 100 feet of the Oakland Boulevard clinic, where crowds occasionally descend on the narrow sidewalk in front to protest. (Mukherjee, 4/6)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Parkinson's Association To Hold Annual Walk This Saturday At Liberty Station 
The Parkinson’s Association of San Diego will hold its 20th annual walk to raise money for its programs supporting people living with disease and their family caregivers on Saturday at Liberty Station in Point Loma. More than 800 walkers and 45 teams are expected to participate in this weekend’s walk, which is held in April each year in honor of Parkinson’s Awareness Month. (Mapp, 4/6)

Monterey Herald: Monterey County Man Sentenced To Eight Years For Selling Fentanyl Pills That Caused Death
A Seaside man has been sentenced to eight years in federal prison for distributing fentanyl that caused overdoses in two people and killed one, the Department of Justice Northern California District announced on Tuesday. Xavier Robledo, 21, pleaded guilty on Feb. 8 to two counts of distributing fentanyl, admitting that on two separate occasions in 2020 he sold counterfeit, fentanyl-laced pills known as “M30” pills, according to a press release from federal prosecutors. M30 pills are light blue with an “M” imprinted on one side and “30” imprinted on the other. (Kenny, 4/7)

CBS News: 2 Men Charged After Enough Fentanyl To Kill 4.7 Million People Found At Buena Park Home
Two men face several drug charges after police say they were busted with more than 800 pounds of methamphetamine and enough fentanyl to kill 4.7 million people, a bust that authorities say is Orange County's largest in 16 years. Edgar Alfonso Lamas, 36, and 53-year-old Carlos Raygozaparedes, have each pleaded not guilty to several felony drug charges and remain in custody on $5 million bail.  (Powells, 4/6)

San Francisco Chronicle: DEA Warns Of Fentanyl-Related ‘Mass-Overdose Events’ Across U.S.
The Drug Enforcement Administration on Wednesday warned state, local and federal law enforcement officials of a nationwide spike in fentanyl-related “mass-overdose events” in which three or more fentanyl poisonings happen in rapid succession in the same location. Fifty-eight people have overdosed and 29 people have died in recent months in mass-fentanyl overdose incidents, the DEA said in a news release. The overdoses were reported in Wilton Manors, Fla.; Austin, Texas; Cortez, Colo.; Commerce City, Colo.; Omaha, Neb.; St. Louis; and Washington, D.C. (Hernández, 4/6)

CapRadio: Ballot Measure That Would Outlaw Homeless Encampments, Force Sacramento To Build Shelters Headed To Voters 
The Sacramento City Council voted Wednesday night to place the so-called “Emergency Shelter and Enforcement Act of 2022” on the November ballot, prompting the proponent of the more aggressive ballot initiative to say he would withdraw his measure. The ordinance would outlaw homeless encampments once the city creates enough shelter spaces or Safe Ground camping sites. (Nichols, 4/6)

Sacramento Bee: Sacramento Council To Consider Homeless Ballot Measure 
The Sacramento City Council will hold a special meeting Wednesday to consider placing a homeless measure on the November ballot that would legally require the city to create shelter beds for the majority of its homeless population. Proponents have been collecting signatures for the ballot measure, called the “Emergency Homeless Shelter and Enforcement Act of 2022,” since February. But if the council votes to put it on the ballot, it will not need to gather any more signatures. (Clift, 4/6)

San Francisco Chronicle: Fox That Bit A Northern California Lawmaker Tested Positive For Rabies
A mother fox that was captured after biting several people this week — likely including a Northern California lawmaker — has been killed, according to local health officials. The fox tested positive for the rabies virus, local health officials said. (Flores, 4/6)

Los Angeles Times: Fox That Bit 9 On Capitol Hill Tests Positive For Rabies 
Rep. Ami Bera (D-Elk Grove) identified himself as one of the victims of the fox attack. Bera, a doctor, told reporters he was walking near a Senate office building Monday when he felt something around his ankle. “Yeah, I was just walking, as I often would, over by that park over by Russell [Senate Office Building] and felt something lunge — totally unprovoked, right — at the back of my leg,” Bera said, adding that he was thankful he had an umbrella with him to help fend off the wild animal. “It felt like a small dog.” (Yee, 4/6)

Fox News: What To Do If A Rabies-Infected Animal Bites You?
The fox that bit Rep. Ami Bera, a reporter, and at least 7 other people in Washington, D.C. Tuesday was euthanized and tested positive for having the rabies virus, Fox News reported. Health experts told Fox News it is vital that a person who is bitten by an animal immediately seek medical treatment and try to get the animal tested for rabies, if possible. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated on its website that rabies is a deadly disease caused by a virus. It affects the central nervous system, which consists of the brain and spinal cord. The Federal Health Agency said once symptoms of rabies appear, the disease is "nearly always fatal." (McGorry, 4/6)