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California Healthline Original Stories
Helping a loved one overcome addiction isn’t easy. Start by listening to people who have been through it. They can help find effective treatment and avoid unethical or incompetent operators. (Bernard J. Wolfson, )
Good morning! Here are your top California health stories for the day.
California Braces Itself As Fears Of Coronavirus Spread: Though the Bay Area has no confirmed cases, concerns about the virus are spreading as schools, public officials and health officers work to tamp down rumors and provide up to date information. It’s likely just a matter of time before the virus hits the Bay Area, said Santa Clara County Public Health Department Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody, “given the demographics of Santa Clara County and just the amount of travel we have to Asia and every other corner of the world.” Meanwhile, the Chinese New Year Culture Association has chosen to postpone a Lunar New Year celebration in Sacramento that had been set for early February due to the outbreak. The announcement comes two days after the city of Elk Grove announced the cancellation of its own local Lunar New Year celebration. As of Wednesday, Sacramento County had not any reported cases of the virus. Read more from Ethan Baron, Rex Crum and Fiona Kelliher of The Mercury News, and Michael McGough of the Sacramento Bee.
Meanwhile, a UCSF is busy at work creating a quick diagnostic test for the virus. Dr. Charles Chiu has partnered with San Francisco company Mammoth Biosciences to create a simple test that could diagnose the new coronavirus within several hours. The only way to currently diagnose the virus, officially known as 2019-nCoV, is a six-hour molecular test conducted in laboratories by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Chiu said. But the overall turn-around time can be up to 24 hours when transport time is included. Read more from Anna Bauman for the San Francisco Chronicle.
In related news from the Sacramento Bee: U.S. Evacuees From China Coronavirus Zone Being Monitored After Landing In California
Newsom Vows To Continue Fight Against Trump Administration’s Public Charge Policy Change: The administration’s “public charge” rule would make it harder for immigrants to get a green card if they have received federally-funded public benefits like Medicaid— or are likely to depend on them. Gov. Gavin Newsom and advocates this week promised to continue fighting against the shift in policy. But California is already using state funds to expand public benefits, such as full-scope Medi-Cal, to insure some populations of undocumented immigrants living in the state. Angela Stillwell, a program manager with the Fresno County Department of Social Services, said those benefits are paid for by the state and wouldn’t count as a public charge. The same goes for recipients of the California Food Assistance Program. The rule only applies to federally funded public benefits. “I think that’s super important that people understand,” she said. Read more from Yesenia Amaro of the Sacramento Bee.
Below, check out the full round-up of California Healthline original stories, state coverage and the best of the rest of the national news for the day.
More News From Across The State
The Mercury News:
Bill Forbidding Lies In Rehab Marketing Re-Introduced In California Senate
Addiction rehabs and similar health businesses in California shouldn’t be allowed to lie to consumers with impunity, according to state Sen. Pat Bates, R-Laguna Niguel. Bates said Wednesday that she has re-introduced a bill to forbid false advertising and misleading marketing in the addiction and mental health treatment industry. Bates saw similar legislation vetoed last year. Dubbed “Brandon’s Law” after Brandon Nelson — a who committed suicide two years ago at a San Clemente mental health home where he’d been told he would get state-of-the-art care — Senate Bill 863 seeks to hold accountable rehabs and marketers “who knowingly and willfully make materially false statements, whether in advertising or by direct communication, with current or potential patients,” according to a statement from Bates’ office. (Sforza, 1/30)
San Francisco Chronicle:
California Senate Defeats SB50 Denser-Housing Bill
A contentious bill to increase the housing supply in California by boosting dense construction around public transit and in wealthy suburbs was defeated in the state Senate on Wednesday, potentially capping a yearlong battle over its fate. The Senate rejected SB50, by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, on a vote of 18 “yes” to 15 “no,” following a nearly two-hour debate in which lawmakers split along geographic rather than partisan lines. The measure needed 21 votes to pass the 40-member house. (Koseff, 1/29)
Sacramento Bee:
Sacramento To Spend $100 Million On New Affordable Housing
Faced with a dearth of affordable housing for low-income workers, California’s capital city will offer $100 million to developers willing to spark what the mayor and others at City Hall say is a sorely needed renaissance in housing construction. But not just any kind of housing. Mayor Darrell Steinberg says he wants to create a “Silicon Valley moment” in Sacramento, using city money to help developers mass-produce new types of “efficiency” housing that cost less to build than traditional housing. (Bizjak and Clift, 1/30)
Los Angeles Times:
Homeless HHH Housing Map: Where Is It Being Built?
Tracking the city's progress. (1/29)
Los Angeles Times:
PFAS-Tainted Water In Colorado Foreshadows California’s Future
When Wendy Rash was diagnosed in 2005 with a thyroid disorder, chronic fatigue and other ailments, her doctor couldn’t explain her suddenly failing health.Soon, other family members became ill. Her brother-in-law contracted fatal kidney cancer. Her father-in-law developed esophageal cancer. Then her 32-year-old son began having severe kidney problems.It wasn’t until 2016 that scientists tested the tap water they had been drinking and found it was contaminated with man-made chemicals known as per-fluorinated compounds, part of a family of chemicals called PFAS. (Cloud, 1/30)
Capital Public Radio:
Mocktails, Growing Acceptance, And Health Benefits Make ‘Sober January’ More Appealing To Millennials
The “sober January” movement began in the United Kingdom in 2013 and has gained traction in the United States over the past few years. A 2019 survey from opinion polling site YouGov found 21 percent of Americans planned to participate that year, and another 21 percent supported the idea but did not have plans to try it. Millennials appear to be leading the trend, with hashtags such as #sobercurious and #dryjanuary bubbling up on social media. Sober nightclubs are opening around the country, and the beverage industry is responding with more alcohol-free options. (Caiola, 1/29)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Court Says Public Has Right To See Records Held By AG Of Police Shootings, Misconduct
News media and the public have a right to see records of police shootings and officer misconduct that the state attorney general’s office has received from law enforcement agencies throughout California, a state appeals court ruled Wednesday. Police personnel records were sealed from the public under longstanding California laws, but a new law effective last year provided for disclosure of records of shootings, use of force resulting in death or serious injury, sexual assault or findings of dishonesty by an officer. (Egelko, 1/29)
The New York Times:
As Coronavirus Explodes In China, Countries Struggle To Control Its Spread
Australians flown home from Wuhan, China, will be quarantined on an island for two weeks. Americans, also evacuated from Wuhan, will be “temporarily housed” on an air base in California. And in South Korea, the police have been empowered to detain people who refuse to be quarantined. For countries outside China, the time to prevent an epidemic is now, when cases are few and can be isolated. They are trying to seize the moment to protect themselves against the coronavirus outbreak, which has reached every province in China, sickening more than 7,700 people and killing 170. (Grady, 1/29)
The Wall Street Journal:
Trump Announces Coronavirus Task Force
President Trump announced a task force to address the fast-spreading coronavirus, which he said had been meeting daily since Monday. The task force is led by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and will include national security adviser Robert O’Brien, Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun and Domestic Policy Council Director Joseph Grogan, among others. It also includes top experts on infectious diseases. (Ballhaus, 1/29)
Los Angeles Times:
New Coronavirus Spreads As Readily As 1918 Spanish Flu
Chinese scientists racing to keep up with the spread of a novel coronavirus have declared the widespread outbreak an epidemic, revealing that in its early days at least, the disease’s reach doubled every week. By plotting the curve of that exponential growth and running it in reverse, researchers reckoned that the microbe sickening people across the globe has probably been passing from person to person since mid-December 2019. Scientists in China are also closing in on the source of the aggressive new germ — bats. (Healy, 1/29)
Los Angeles Times:
Americans Clear Health Screening After Evacuting From Wuhan, China
The plane was the only way out of the besieged Chinese city, and Americans clamored for seats. A couple with a 7-year-old daughter did not receive the coveted call from officials offering them seats on the plane. A 65-year-old man’s phone rang, but he gave up his spot because others needed it more. According to some Americans trying to escape, there seemed to be no rhyme or reason as to who was tapped by U.S. officials to board the flight early Wednesday, whisking them away from Wuhan, the center of a respiratory virus outbreak that has killed at least 170 people in the last two months. (Chang, 1/29)
Reuters:
WHO Panel To Reconvene On Thursday To Decide If Virus Global Emergency
The World Health Organization's Emergency Committee will meet on Thursday, the third time in a week, to evaluate whether the new coronavirus spreading from China now constitutes an international emergency, the WHO said. "The Committee will advise the Director-General on whether the outbreak constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), and what recommendations should be made to manage it," the WHO said in a statement issued in Geneva ahead of a news briefing by senior WHO expert Mike Ryan on return from China. (1/29)
Stat:
Limited Data On Coronavirus May Be Skewing Assumptions About Severity
Health officials in China, racing to try to contain a fast-growing coronavirus outbreak, are principally recording severe cases of disease, using a case definition that cannot capture patients with mild illness, according to experts familiar with the surveillance efforts. The approach, the experts told STAT, is likely resulting in both an underestimate in the total number of cases and flawed assumptions about fatality rates calculated by those who ignore the repeated caution that it’s too soon to do that math. (Branswell, 1/30)
Politico:
‘Block Grants’ No More: Trump's Medicaid Overhaul Has New Name, Same Goals
The Trump administration will rebrand its Medicaid block grant program and look to safeguard the policy against an expected wave of legal challenges from patient advocates, according to two officials with knowledge of the plan set for release Thursday. The forthcoming block grant program comes with a new name — “Healthy Adult Opportunity” — but retains the original mission long sought by conservatives: allowing states to cap a portion of their spending on Medicaid, a radical change in how the safety net health program is financed. (Diamond and Roubein, 1/29)
The New York Times:
As Other Democrats Feud, Bloomberg Hammers Trump On Health Care
It powered Democrats to recapture the House in the 2018 midterms: the fear that President Trump and Republicans would kill the Affordable Care Act and with it, protections for more than 50 million Americans with pre-existing medical conditions. Yet even as Mr. Trump and other Republicans continue to try to overturn the law in court, Democratic presidential candidates have not made the issue central to their campaigns. Instead they have spent much of their time on the debate stage arguing among themselves over “Medicare for all” and other proposals to expand health coverage. (Corasaniti and Goodnough, 1/29)
Reuters:
Background Checks And Bump Stock Bans: 2020 Democrats On Gun Control
With more than 15,000 people killed by gun violence in the United States last year - not counting suicides - Democrats running for their party's presidential nomination are pointing to inaction in Washington as evidence they should be chosen to run against Republican President Donald Trump. Here is a look at gun control positions taken by Trump and the Democrats vying to unseat him. (1/29)
The New York Times:
American Life Expectancy Rises For First Time In Four Years
Life expectancy increased for the first time in four years in 2018, the federal government said Thursday, raising hopes that a benchmark of the nation’s health may finally be stabilizing after a rare and troubling decline that was driven by a surge in drug overdoses. Life expectancy is the most basic measure of the health of a society, and declines in developed countries are extremely unusual. But the United States experienced one from 2015 to 2017 as the opioid epidemic took its toll, worrying demographers who had not seen an outright decline since 1993, during the AIDS epidemic. (Tavernise and Goodnough, 1/30)
The Associated Press:
Insurer Anthem Underwhelms Wall Street With 2020 Forecast
Anthem is starting the new year by forecasting earnings that could miss expectations even after the health insurer books gains from a new business. The Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurer also reported on Wednesday earnings from the final quarter of 2019 that missed forecasts, and its stock dropped in midday trading. (1/29)