Latest From California Healthline:
California Healthline Original Stories
Companies Pan for Marketing Gold in Vaccines
Some assisted living facilities, pharmacy chains and health care providers are luring new customers with covid shots. (Sarah Kwon, )
California To Provide $600 Covid-Relief Checks: Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday that low-income Californians will receive a $600 state stimulus payment to help them weather financial hardships during the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more from the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and AP.
Fewer Positive Covid Tests: California’s coronavirus numbers continue to show signs of improvement. The percentage of coronavirus tests that came back positive over the past seven days — a closely watched indicator for reopening the economy — has dropped to 3.5%. That’s down from over 11% a month ago. Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times.
Also —
Have you tried to get a covid vaccine? Confusion over eligibility, technical glitches and shortages are just a few of the issues people face when trying to set up an appointment to get vaccinated against covid-19. Submit your stories.
Below, check out the roundup of California Healthline’s coverage. For today's national health news, read KHN's Morning Briefing.
More News From Across The State
San Diego Union-Tribune:
Winter Storms Freeze Region's COVID-19 Vaccine Supply
San Diego County officials said Wednesday that nationwide winter storms will force a temporary shutdown of some local vaccination clinics. County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher said during a weekly COVID-19 update that the supply lines to the places where Pfizer and Moderna make the doses that the entire nation are relying on are simply frozen at the moment. The main manufacturing facilities for the nation’s two coronavirus vaccines are in Massachusetts and Michigan. (Sisson, 2/17)
Sacramento Bee:
Coronavirus Updates: Will Arctic Blast In US Delay Vaccine Shipments To California?
There’s no formal definition for when a surge of COVID-19 starts or ends, but California’s numbers are dwindling toward where they were before cases began to skyrocket in early November. The two-week case rate on Wednesday fell below 10,000 per day for the first time in nearly three months. The state reported just 4,090 new cases, the least in a single day since late October. (McGough, 2/17)
Bay Area News Group:
Santa Clara County Teachers, Other Essential Workers Soon Eligible For COVID-19 Vaccine
Various Santa Clara County essential workers, including teachers and farmworkers, will be eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the month, health officials said Wednesday. Starting Feb. 28, those who work in the agriculture and food, education and childcare, and emergency services sectors may sign up for their first dose of the coronavirus vaccine, Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody said in a news conference. Appointments for that date and thereafter can be made online as soon as Monday. (Kelliher, 2/17)
LA Daily News:
LAUSD Officials Call For Vaccines To Be Prioritized For School Employees
Prioritizing school employees for vaccines was the theme of the day on Wednesday, Feb. 17, as Los Angeles Unified School District officials and representatives from some of their labor employee groups gathered at the Roybal Learning Center near downtown LA to mark the opening of the district’s first vaccination center. District officials also used the occasion to announce plans to run a second, much larger vaccination center at SoFi Stadium, in partnership with the Los Angeles Rams, Hollywood Park, the city of Inglewood and Anthem Blue Cross and Cedars-Sinai. (Tat, 2/17)
LA Daily News:
LAUSD To Open 10K-Shots-Per-Day COVID-19 Vaccine Site At SoFi Stadium
L.A. Unified announced a collaboration Wednesday with the Los Angeles Rams, Hollywood Park and the city of Inglewood to operate a large-scale vaccination site on the grounds of SoFi Stadium that could serve teachers and school staff in L.A. County. In an announcement Wednesday morning, the district said it plans to work closely with the county on this program and seek approval to begin operating “as soon as possible. ”The site would have the capacity to vaccinate up to 10,000 people a day, the LAUSD said. (2/17)
San Francisco Chronicle:
California Prioritizes Cannabis Workers, Veterinarians For Vaccinations
Medical marijuana workers now have priority access to the coronavirus vaccine, under revised California guidelines. The state’s Department of Public Health recently appeared to allow some medicinal cannabis workers into the top slot — known as 1a — of vaccination priorities. (Williams, 2/17)
San Francisco Chronicle:
S.F. Says It Will Soon Start A Mobile Program To Vaccinate Homeless People, Regardless Of Age
In recent weeks, San Francisco has opened vaccination sites in neighborhoods that have been hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic. Next, the city hopes to bring vaccines directly to homeless people, regardless of their age. When it has enough vaccines, the city will start a mobile program to vaccinate some of its 17,000 homeless people, according to Dr. Deborah Borne, who is overseeing San Francisco’s vaccine rollout to people experiencing homelessness. It could happen as early as next week. (Bobrowsky, 2/18)
LA Daily News:
Public Defenders Plead For COVID-19 Vaccination Priority As Criminal Trials Begin To Resume
As courthouses across Southern California begin to resume jury trials to tackle a backlog of criminal cases, public defenders are pushing state and county health officials to move them up the priority list for coronavirus vaccines. Since December, public defenders in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Clara and San Luis Obispo counties, among others, have banded together and sent letters to Mark Ghaly, secretary of the state Health and Human Services Agency, pleading to be included on the same priority tier as jail inmates for COVID-19 inoculation. Thus far, they say, their requests have fallen on deaf ears. (Nelson, 2/17)
Capital & Main:
California's Vaccine Push Excludes Its Community Clinics
If there is a path that leads to an equitable distribution of potential life-saving doses of COVID-19 vaccines in California, it almost inevitably will end at the doorstep of the state’s battered community clinic system. Plagued by financial woes, fighting at times to keep the doors open, these clinics remain the primary point of contact for millions of low income and uninsured patients across the state. But the early returns on California’s vaccination rollout present a vivid study in contrast: The state’s better off residents are commanding a disproportionate share of the doses. And as a recent letter from the clinics’ statewide organization to Gov. Gavin Newsom makes clear, that won’t change until the clinics themselves are fully incorporated in the vaccination effort. (Kreidler, 2/17)
Fresno Bee:
Who’s Getting Coronavirus Vaccine Shots? Blacks, Hispanics Lag Others In Fresno County
Blacks represent about 6% of the roughly 1 million residents of Fresno County. But they are being left behind in the efforts to vaccinate up to 750,000 residents against the novel coronavirus. To date, about 135,000 COVID-19 shots have been administered in Fresno County, according to the state Department of Public Health. Fewer than 2% of those have been given to Blacks in the county, the state reported Wednesday. (Sheehan, 2/17)
Oaklandside:
How To Get A COVID-19 Vaccine In Oakland And Alameda County
Tens of thousands of people have come to this guide to get information about when, where, and how to find and make an appointment to get vaccinated in Oakland and Alameda County. We’re glad you’re one of them. (Lin, 2/17)
Modesto Bee:
Stanislaus County Seeks COVID Vaccine For People In Phase 1B
California is taking in a larger supply of coronavirus vaccine from the federal government, but local health officials wish it was boosting the immunity of a larger number of Stanislaus County residents. Counties like Stanislaus have set up clinics and hatched plans to vaccinate residents en masse. As of Tuesday, however, county officials didn’t know how much vaccine can be offered to eligible residents as the county clinics begin serving people in Phase 1B, Tier 1 of the state’s priority system next week. (Carlsson, 2/17)
Bay Area News Group:
Photos: Oakland Coliseum Ready As Community COVID-19 Vaccination Site
The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, along with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and partnering agencies, have opened the Oakland Arena/RingCentral Coliseum as a COVID-19 community vaccination site. (Duran, 2/17)
Fresno Bee:
Fresno Schools Pilot COVID-19 Testing On Campuses
As more students begin returning to schools in Fresno County, the area’s largest districts are working on coronavirus testing and vaccination plans they hope will keep those classrooms opens. On Wednesday night, Fresno Unified’s board of trustees approved a “flexible” agreement with United Health Health Centers of the San Joaquin Valley to provide onsite testing for school district staff beginning next week. However, the agreement provided more questions than answers. Some trustees said the pilot program was too expensive — $150 per test — and said the district needed a comprehensive plan for on-campus testing. (Velez, Dieppa and Panoo, 2/18)
San Diego Union-Tribune:
Escondido Company Developing Rapid Test For COVID-19
An Escondido company has teamed up with scientists at UC San Diego Health to develop a new rapid test for the virus that causes COVID-19, which can be scaled up to analyze as many as 100,000 samples in a day with equipment readily available in hospitals throughout the United States and the world. Menon Biosensors, Inc., developed technology called the “molecular mirror” that can analyze samples rapidly, in mass batches and at a lower cost than existing tests, said Suresh Menon, CEO and founder of the company. (Tash, 2/17)
Los Angeles Times:
Why A California Scientist Hosted Superspreader Event Amid A Deadly COVID-19 Surge
As Southern California last month reeled from a COVID-19 surge that overwhelmed hospitals, bottlenecked ambulance systems and killed thousands, a physician hosted a conference in Culver City. Peter Diamandis, who is also an engineer, executive and scientist, believed he could create an “immunity bubble” and safely host a scaled-down version of his pricey annual tech conference. Instead, the conference became a superspreader event that infected 24 people, including Diamandis, with the novel coronavirus. (Logan, 2/17)
ProPublica:
Dying On The Waitlist
In early December, Miguel Fernandez lay unconscious in the intensive care unit at a Los Angeles area hospital. A mechanical ventilator pumped oxygen into his lungs, which had been ravaged by COVID-19. The 53-year-old was dying. The best, and likely only, chance of Miguel surviving was a therapy called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, better known as ECMO. It would allow his lungs to rest while a machine infused his blood with the oxygen he needed. But PIH Health Whittier Hospital, where he had been admitted, didn’t have any ECMO machines or the highly trained staff needed to run them. Only a handful of hospitals in southern California did, and they were overrun with COVID-19 cases. (Armstrong and Allen, 2/18)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Priest At S.F.'s Sts. Peter And Paul Church Dies After Contracting The Coronavirus
A priest from Sts. Peter and Paul Church in San Francisco died Tuesday, just over a week after the church announced he was one of three priests who had contracted the coronavirus. “We are sorry to say that Fr. Bob Stein passed away early on the morning of February 16. Please pray for the repose of his soul,” the church wrote on its website. (Fracassa, 2/17)
The Bakersfield Californian:
CBCC To Host Virtual Workshop On Personality Type For Breast Cancer Survivors
Comprehensive Blood and Cancer Center is offering a unique opportunity for women diagnosed with breast cancer to discover more about themselves in 2021. The center will hold a free virtual workshop at 6 p.m. on March 2 in which participants will take the comprehensive Myers-Briggs personality test and learn about their personality type. (2/17)