Bay Area School Absences Soar Amid Tripledemic: In San Francisco, roughly 38% of the 49,000 students missed not less than in the future of faculty in the primary two weeks of December — up from 29% last yr and 27% before the pandemic. Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle. Keep scrolling for more covid coverage.
Amid Commotion, LA Council Passes Latest Mayor’s Homelessness Declaration: The Los Angeles City Council approved Mayor Karen Bass’ declaration of a homelessness emergency at a fraught four-hour meeting Tuesday, giving the brand new mayor a potentially critical tool for addressing the town’s humanitarian crisis. The vote must have been a straightforward procedural step, nevertheless it was thrown into jeopardy by the tumult at City Hall. Read more from the Los Angeles Times.
Below, take a look at the roundup of California Healthline’s coverage. For today’s national health news, read KHN’s Morning Briefing.
The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat:
Sonoma County, Bay Area Health Officials Recommend Masking Indoors In Public
Sonoma County Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase has joined other Bay Area health officials in supporting a forthcoming regional advice for people to wear masks in indoor public settings. (Murphy, 12/13)
Bay Area News Group:
Q&A: With COVID Cases Spiking, What Latest Mandates Are Around The Corner?
It’s been greater than nine months since California required face masks indoors in public places to slow the spread of COVID-19. But with cases spiking again through the winter holiday season, is there anything that would trigger a return of the mask mandate? (Woolfolk, 12/13)
Los Angeles Times:
Coronavirus Cases Are Starting To Drop In L.A.
The variety of newly reported COVID-19 cases has ticked down in Los Angeles County, a reprieve following weeks of increases. Regardless of the wider prognosis for the winter, this dip will almost surely delay the return of a public indoor mask mandate within the nation’s most populous county. (Money, Lin II and Reyes, 12/13)
Sacramento Bee:
Can I Still Cancel My Flight If I Get COVID Or The Flu?
Flying through the holidays could be of venture — especially with COVID, the flu and other viruses still circulating. Because the pandemic began, most airlines have adjusted their cancellation policies for unexpected travel mishaps. There is no such thing as a hard and fast rule for cancellation as a result of illness. You’ll must work together with your airline. When you’re concerned about needing to cancel, most airlines offer trip insurance that protect the associated fee of the flight. (Pinedo, 12/13)
Sacramento Bee:
California Airport COVID-19 Restrictions 2022: What To Know
California airports have been relaxing their COVID-19 restrictions, as we near three years because the start of the pandemic. As an illustration, since June, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recalled its requirement that travelers coming into the USA must show documentation of a negative COVID test or recovery, no matter citizenship or vaccination status. (Truong, 12/13)
Los Angeles Times:
U.S. Death Toll Tied To Long COVID Exceeds 4,000, CDC Report Says
The health challenges that a bout of COVID-19 sometimes leaves in its wake could be troublesome, scary and quite mysterious. Latest research confirms they could be deadly as well. A study released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that between January 2020 and June 2022, long COVID was implicated in not less than 3,544 deaths in the USA alone. (Healy, 12/13)
Stat:
Lawmakers Tell Pfizer CEO To ‘Back Off’ On Covid Vaccine Price Hike
A pair of U.S. lawmakers wrote Pfizer chief executive officer Albert Bourla that he should “back off” from plans to charge Americans as much as $130 for the corporate’s Covid-19 vaccine, a move they described as “pure and deadly greed.” (Silverman, 12/13)
Military.com:
VA Seeing A Resurgence Of COVID-19 Amongst Patients, Urges Veterans To Get Boosted
COVID cases within the Veterans Affairs health system have nearly doubled up to now month, prompting the department’s top doctor to induce veterans to get essentially the most recent coronavirus booster shot. Based on data kept by the Department of Veterans Affairs and Military Times, greater than 12,156 patients had lively cases of COVID-19 as of Tuesday, nearly double the 6,425 it had on Nov. 1. (Kime, 12/13)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Latest COVID Infections Amongst US Veterans Have Doubled In 1 Month
Latest COVID-19 cases within the Veterans Affairs health system have nearly doubled up to now month, in accordance with data from the Department of Veterans Affairs and Military Times. Greater than 12,156 patients had lively cases of COVID-19 as of Tuesday, nearly double the 6,425 on Nov. 1. There have been 267 deaths reported in that point. (Vaziri and Beamish, 12/13)
Bay Area Reporter:
Biden Signs Marriage Bill
President Joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act Tuesday, marking the primary significant piece of LGBTQ rights laws to change into law in a decade. … The signing ceremony included Vice President Kamala Harris, first lady Jill Biden, and second gentleman Doug Emhoff. Gay Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was in attendance, as were members of Congress.
During her remarks, Harris recalled marrying same-sex couples when she was San Francisco district attorney at City Hall over Valentine’s Day weekend in 2004 through the Winter of Love, after then-mayor and now Governor Gavin Newsom ordered city officials to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. (Laird, 12/13)
The Latest York Times:
Biden Signs Bill To Protect Same-Sex Marriage Rights
President Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law on Tuesday, mandating federal recognition for same-sex marriages and capping his own personal evolution toward embracing gay rights over the course of a four-decade political profession. In an elaborate signing ceremony on the South Lawn, complete with musical performances from Cyndi Lauper and Sam Smith, Mr. Biden told hundreds of supporters and lawmakers that the brand new law represents a rare moment of bipartisanship when Democrats and Republicans got here together. (Shear, 12/13)
Los Angeles Times:
Women And Trans Students Fear Harassment And Hate At CSU Campus
The outrage and frustration had been constructing for years at California State University’s Maritime Academy, an elite training ground for college kids sure for work on the ocean. It reached a peak last yr, when student cadets publicly confronted the varsity’s president, a retired rear admiral. Dozens of cadets gathered on the Quad that day to protest what they said was widespread sexual misconduct, racism and hostility toward women and transgender and non binary students. (Lopez and Shalby, 12/13)
Axios:
Report Details Online Harassment Of Trans Health Care Providers
Anti-transgender campaigns resulted in the web harassment of 24 different hospitals and health care providers in 21 states over a recent four-month period, in accordance with a report from Human Rights Campaign shared first with Axios. (Fried, 12/13)
CIDRAP:
Studies Show Mpox Viral Clearance Time, Impact Of Pre-Exposure Vaccination
A recent study based on 77 mpox patients from Spain shows that the time from symptom onset to viral clearance for 90% of cases was likely 41 days in skin lesions and 39 days in semen. The study was published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. In the primary study, participants had essentially the most viral DNA in skin lesion swabs, followed by rectal swabs, whole blood, oropharyngeal swabs, and semen samples. And different body parts had detectable DNA for a spread of durations, with blood containing detectable virus DNA for five days, in comparison with 25 days for skin lesions. (Soucheray, 12/13)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Nurses At Alta Bates Summit Plan To Strike, Sutter Officials Say
Nurses on the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center have notified their employer that they intend to strike starting Dec. 24, in accordance with Sutter Health. “The nurses’ union at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center has called a 9-day strike from December 24 – January 2, its third strike of the yr,” in accordance with a Sutter, which released a press release on Tuesday night. Alta Bates Summit has hospitals in Oakland and Berkeley. (Parker, 12/13)
San Diego Union-Tribune:
Price Charities Leads $3.5 Million Push To Train More Mental Health Care Employees
A coalition spanning government and personal philanthropy took a step toward solving the region’s mental health staffing shortage Tuesday with the unanimous approval of a $3.5 million project that goals to coach a broad range of mental health care employees. (Sisson, 12/13)
East Bay Times:
Eye On The Hills: CityHealth Location Coming To Montclair
“I desired to create a house for health — where everyone could get consistent world-class healthcare in an accessible, respectful, and caring way,” says Parkin. “Our locations are designed to feel like relaxed and alluring spaces that you just actually wish to visit.” (Prior, 12/14)
Stat and The Markup:
‘Out Of Control’: Dozens Of Telehealth Startups Sent Sensitive Health Information To Big Tech Firms
Open the web site of Workit Health, and the trail to treatment starts with a straightforward intake form: Are you in peril of harming yourself or others? If not, what’s your current opioid and alcohol use? How much methadone do you employ? Inside minutes, patients searching for online treatment for opioid use and other addictions can complete the assessment and book a video visit with a provider licensed to prescribe suboxone and other drugs. But what patients probably don’t know is that Workit was sending their delicate, even intimate, answers about drug use and self-harm to Facebook. (Palmer, Feathers and Fondrie-Teitler, 12/13)
Capital & Important:
Treating Farmworkers On Their Terms
Gloria Merino got here to the Salinas Valley from the Mixteca region of Oaxaca, where she’d learned the right way to help women deliver babies. “My cousin was a curandero [a practitioner of traditional medicine] and he taught me the right way to heal,” Merino recalls. “The Virgin, God and San Marcos all told me that I’d heal people and make a living that way, so I learned to assist deliver babies.” In Greenfield, within the Salinas Valley, she became a partera, or midwife, to women who desired to deliver at home, using methods their communities had trusted for generations. She had to start out growing her own herbs, since she couldn’t find them in stores. “Triquis [the Oaxacan indigenous group to which she belongs] began to hunt my assist in healing or for trouble of their marriage,” she recalls. (Bacon, 12/13)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Federal Officials Fail To Hold Prison Employees Accountable For Sexual Abuse, Senate Report Finds
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons “fails to carry employees accountable” for sexual abuse of female inmates, a bipartisan Senate panel has concluded after an eight-month investigation. Among the many 29 federal prisons which have housed women within the last decade, assaults and other abuse have occurred in not less than 19, the Senate Everlasting Subcommittee on Investigations said in a report released Tuesday. Probably the most distinguished example is within the Bay Area, on the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, where the previous warden, Ray Garcia, was convicted last week of eight felony charges involving sexual abuse of three inmates; a former prison chaplain and two guards have pleaded guilty; and one other former guard is awaiting trial. (Egelko, 12/13)
Los Angeles Times:
California Could Receive More Than $500 Million From Walgreens Opioid Settlement
California could receive greater than $500 million from a $5.7-billion multistate agreement to settle a raft of lawsuits filed against Walgreens over the pharmacy chain’s role within the opioid crisis, officials said. “The settlement will resolve allegations that the corporate did not appropriately oversee the dishing out of opioids at its pharmacies,” the California attorney general’s office said Monday in a release. (Martinez, 12/13)
San Francisco Chronicle:
S.F. Supervisors Challenge Mayor Breed Over Supervised Drug Use Sites
San Francisco supervisors are ready for a showdown with Mayor London Breed over supervised drug consumption sites, that are stalled under her administration. Amid an ongoing drug crisis largely driven by the powerful opioid fentanyl, a majority of San Francisco supervisors back a plan to put aside hundreds of thousands of dollars to open “wellness” hubs where people can use drugs under the supervision of staff trained to reverse overdoses. Supervised sites are currently illegal under federal law, although Latest York City has pushed forward to open two sites. (Moench and Morris, 12/13)
Los Angeles Times:
Former Top Cal Fire Official Charged With Felony Conspiracy And Intent To Sell Illegal Steroids In Nevada
A former Cal Fire division chief has been charged in Nevada with 4 felonies, including possession of anabolic steroids on the market and conspiracy related to the possession and sale of a controlled substance. (Winton, 12/13)
Stat:
Addiction Treatment Would Stay Easier To Get Under Latest Rule
Addiction treatment got easier through the Covid-19 pandemic — and the Biden administration desires to keep it that way. Federal regulators on Tuesday announced a proposal to take the emergency policies enacted in 2020, in response to the emerging pandemic, and make them everlasting. (Facher, 12/13)
Axios:
Biden Admin Extends Pandemic-Era Flexibilities On Opioid Use Treatments
The Biden administration is moving to make everlasting the pandemic rules that allowed take-home drugs to assist fight opioid addiction. The proposed rule from HHS would make it easier for patients with opioid use disorder to access drugs like methadone for home use and for providers to prescribe them via telehealth for patients with opioid use disorder. (Moreno and Reed, 12/14)
AP:
US Study: Over Half Of Automobile Crash Victims Had Drugs In System
A big study by U.S. highway safety regulators found that greater than half the people injured or killed in traffic crashes had a number of drugs, or alcohol, of their bloodstreams. Also, just over 54% of injured drivers had drugs or alcohol of their systems, with tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), an lively ingredient in marijuana, essentially the most prevalent, followed by alcohol, the study published Tuesday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found. (Krisher, 12/13)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Two Homeless Individuals Dead In San Jose Due To Cold Exposure, County Officials Say
The Santa Clara County Coroner’s Office is investigating the deaths of two homeless individuals in San Jose who were exposed to extreme cold weather recently, in accordance with authorities. The deaths occurred within the 95112 area code, the county said, which roughly covers Japantown and the world just east of Downtown San Jose. (Umanzor, 12/13)
Voice Of San Diego:
SDSU Report Spotlights Downtown Restroom Shortcomings
A recent evaluation by San Diego State researchers documents lacking public restroom access downtown and the way it’s impacting the world’s growing unsheltered population. The outcomes: Research by SDSU’s Project for Sanitation Justice found lower than half of the town’s everlasting restroom facilities might be considered “truly open access” and that just two everlasting facilities were available across the clock seven days per week. (Halverstadt, 12/13)