Sixty-two Berkeley residents have died of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to city data. That puts Berkeleys COVID-19 death rate 53 per 100,000 residents among the lowest in California.
Only two counties the rural Alpine and Mono counties on the Nevada border have lower death rates than the city of Berkeley, which has its own health department and publishes its COVID-19 data separately from Alameda County. In the rest of the county, the COVID-19 death rate is more than twice as high as in Berkeley, with 124 deaths per 100,000 residents.
In Berkeley, COVID-19 was the seventh-leading cause of death in 2020 and was tied with accidents as the sixth-leading cause of death in 2021, according to state vital records data. In both years, cancer was the leading cause of death, followed by heart disease. In the United States, COVID-19 was the third-leading cause of death in both 2020 and 2021.
Lisa Hernandez, Berkeleys health officer, attributed the citys low COVID-19 death rate to its high vaccination rate, first and foremost, as well as to a healthier and younger population that is more likely to wear masks than in many other parts of the state.
Almost 80% of Berkeleys COVID-19 deaths came in the first year of the pandemic, before vaccines became universally available. Forty-nine people died by the end of February 2021. Since March 2021, at least 11 more people have died.
The latest surge, driven by omicron sub variant BA.5, has led to a notable uptick in hospitalizations in Alameda County, but there has not been a corresponding rise in deaths in Berkeley, at least at this point in the surge.
Berkeleys data show only people who died from COVID-19, not those who happened to be infected with the virus when they died.
The demographic breakdown of COVID-19 deaths in Berkeley has remained similar since Berkeleyside last analyzed the data in January 2021.
Forty-four of the 62 people whove died in Berkeley since the start of the pandemic were over 70 years old. Fourteen were between 51 and 70 years old. And two were between 31 and 50. No one aged 30 or younger has died from COVID-19 in Berkeley.
Black people are overrepresented in Berkeleys COVID-19 deaths. While Black residents make up just 8% of the citys population, they account for 33% of deaths from the virus.
Latinos are evenly represented in the citys COVID-19 fatalities. About 15% of residents are Latino, and they make up 14% of fatalities.
White and Asian people are underrepresented in the citys deaths. White people make up 50% of Berkeleys population but only 38% of the citys COVID-19 deaths; Asian people, at 20% of the population, make up just 8% of deaths.
Our data shows that we are weathering this pandemic better than many communities in our region, Lisa Warhuus, the citys health director, wrote in an email to Berkeleyside. But, she added, some groups have borne the brunt of serious illness and death.
Berkeley is one of the most vaccinated communities in the state. Ninety-four-percent of residents are vaccinated with two doses of the vaccine and 84% of residents have received at least one booster shot.
The most important thing is that we have a very good vaccination rate overall, and we also have a very high booster rate, said Hernandez. The vaccine and the booster are especially protective against severe disease.
Across California, unvaccinated people were 10 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than vaccinated people. Berkeley has not published data on the vaccination status of those whove died from COVID-19.
Hernandez said Berkeley has run numerous outreach campaigns to increase access to and knowledge of the vaccine among communities with lower vaccination rates, including door knocking in South and West Berkeley, offering seniors of color rides to get vaccinated, running vaccine clinics at schools with the help of Berkeley Unified School District and recruiting young people to appear on social media ads promoting vaccination, among other strategies.
Ninety-eight-percent of Latinos in Berkeley have received two doses of the vaccine, the most of any racial or ethnic group in the city. Across California, just 56% of Latinos have received two doses.
Ninety-two percent of Asian people, 87% of white people, 79% of Black people and 46% of multi-racial or Native American people have received two doses of the vaccine.
Featured photo: Tracey Taylor
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President Joe Biden speaks on the phone with his national security team on July 22 from the White House in Washington. Adama Schultz/AP hide caption
President Joe Biden speaks on the phone with his national security team on July 22 from the White House in Washington.
President Biden's symptoms from COVID-19 "have now almost completely resolved," according to a letter from his physician, Dr. Kevin O'Connor.
O'Connor says Biden reports "residual nasal congestion and minimal hoarseness" after four full days of Paxlovid treatment. He also notes Biden's pulse, blood pressure, oxygen saturation and temperature are all normal.
Biden is due to remain in isolation through Tuesday. If he tests negative after that and is feeling well beyond his five-day course of Paxlovid, he may resume normal activities on Wednesday.
Charley Ding spent weeks early in the pandemic intubating patients sick with Covid-19. The 42-year-old anesthesiologist in South Barrington, Ill., said he has since watched most of the doctors and nurses he works with get infected at some point.
But he has never gotten Covid-19, he said. Its probably a combination of being careful, maybe being blessed with a good immune system, he said. But also just luck.
Public health messages that promote COVID-19 vaccine rates may have less influence on vaccination decisions than the signals people receive from their own family and friends.
Therefore, the most promising public health interventions to promote COVID-19 vaccine uptake should seek ways to leverage social norms among close ties, according to the findings of a new study in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
One of the takeaways is the importance of peoples perceptions of the intentions of the people around them, says lead author Nathaniel Rabb, a project manager at the Policy Lab at Brown University.
It lends further credence to the idea about changing disclosure norms. Its likely given other survey data weve seen that in groups where vaccination is less common, people read the norms andtalk about itless, even if they are vaccinated. Its almost taboo.
The research team posits theres a feedback loop that needs to be disrupted, Rabb says.
It will certainly need a very different public health policy approach than putting up a billboard with how many people in your state got vaccinated, or berating people into doing it, or telling them theyre at terrible risk of peril, Rabb says.
Its going to require a long-game strategy. In our results, it seems like you have to break these taboos about talking about itand thats not trivial.
Researchers based their findings on surveys of Rhode Island respondents and the general US population in 2020 during the first year of the pandemic, and again in March 2021 once vaccines were becoming available to segments of the general population. They collected and analyzed the data in partnership with the Rhode Island Department of Health.
Participants answered questions about theirintentionsto get vaccinated and how many people they believe would get vaccinated among various groupsincluding their family and friends, neighbors, people in their city and state, and among Democrats, Republicans, and independents.
Willingness to vaccinate depended on the perceived extent to which others would vaccinate. The strongest relationship was between vaccination intentions and social norms for respondents friends and family. It weakened as the reference group expanded to people in ones neighborhood, city, and state.
The strength of the relationship goes down as the groups become more heterogeneous, Rabb notes.
The findings can help inform public health policy as well as provide a jumping-off point to explore ways to disrupt the pattern the data illuminated.
In the paper, we struggle with the implication mightily and walk through the options, Rabb says. Touting vaccination rates at the city or state level is unlikely to change anyones mind. But touting them at the friend and family level may not feel plausible or believable. The challenge is figuring out how to normalize it at the friend and family leveland that challenge puts a public health authority in a bind.
Additional coauthors are from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Boston University, and Brown. The study is part of an ongoing partnership between the Policy Lab and the Rhode Island Department of Health related to COVID-19 response.
Source:Brown University
Original StudyDOI: 10.1073/pnas.2118770119
During the COVID-19 pandemic, children and adolescents had reduced physical activity, underscoring the need to boost their access to resources related to such activity. This is the conclusion reached by a review paper appearing in JAMA Pediatrics.
Numerous physical distancing measures were put in place during the pandemic to help stop the spread of the coronavirus, said Kimberley D. Lakes, a professor of clinical psychiatry and neuroscience in the UC Riverside School of Medicine and a coauthor on the review paper. This negatively affected child and adolescent physical activity levels.
Lakes and her colleagues reviewed 126 articles published in English in 2020-2021, using sources such as PubMed, PsycInfo, SPORTDiscus, Web of Science, Scopus, CINAHL, and MEDLINE. Their meta-analysis included 22 studies that met their full inclusion criteria.
They found a decrease of 17 minutes per day or 20% in childrens moderate-to-vigorous physical activity from pre-pandemic to during the COVID-19 pandemic. The reduction was larger for physical activity at higher intensities. The reductions during the pandemic were also larger in regions at higher latitudes.
Childrens movement behaviors should be at the forefront of pandemic recovery efforts, Lakes said. There is an urgent need for public health initiatives to revive young peoples interest in physical activity during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. This is particularly important given the well-known physical and mental health benefits of physical activity.
To address the need for creating lasting physical activity behavior change, the authors call for public health campaigns to be child-centered, targeting a variety of physical activity modalities and incorporating families and the wider community.
In addition to Lakes, the investigative team included Ross D. Neville, Giampiero Tarantino, and Rosemary Beck of University College Dublin, Ireland; Will G. Hopkins of Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia; Catherine E. Draper of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa; and Sheri Madigan of the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Lakes, a psychologist, provides mentorship for Neville, a sports scientist; they have a number of ongoing research collaborations examining the mental health benefits of exercise, inclusive approaches to sport and physical activity, and the impact of sport and exercise programs on youth development.
The review paper is titled Global Changes in Child and Adolescent Physical Activity During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.
State officials are looking for ways to retain teachers and make education a more lucrative career choice.
In March, Gov. Greg Abbott announced the formation of the Teacher Vacancy Task Force, made up of teachers and school administrators, to make recommendations on how to make the profession better.
The task force has met twice so far, Oeser said. Members of the task force have been split up into groups to tackle concerns such as educator preparation, pay, staffing and improving the teacher experience.
The task force will meet again in August with a more defined plan and will have a final report in February, Oeser said.
Before then, the State Board for Educator Certification, which sets the standards for teacher certifications, will continue to hold talks about the Educative Teacher Performance Assessment, know as edTPA, a more rigorous teacher certification exam developed by Stanford University.
Teachers now take a multiple-choice certification test called the Pedagogy and Professional Responsibilities exam. Critics say the test is easy and not a true measure of what a teacher can do in the classroom.
On the other hand, the edTPA requires prospective teachers to film themselves teaching, submit lesson plans and reflect on how they help their students grow academically. The edTPA exam has been on a pilot run for the last three years in about 40 educator preparation programs across the state.
The State Board of Education, a partisan elected board that sets curriculum standards for the state, initially rejected the exam after concerns were brought up. Teacher groups had been against the test, and it was scrapped in some states where it had been adopted.
But the SBOE did not want to forgo the test altogether and instead sent it back to SBEC to see if that group can iron out the kinks or if there are other test options on the table. SBEC had a workshop on edTPA on Thursday and will return with options and feedback for its September meeting.
For the TEA, SBEC and some educators, edTPA is a way to better support and retain new teachers because it allows teacher preparation programs and hiring school officials to see where teachers are lacking and how school administrators can better support them.
School districts are also looking for ways to get and keep teachers in the classroom.
Bigger districts like the Houston ISD are able to provide raises and monetary incentives to its employees. Houston, the largest district in the state, has raised the starting salary for teachers to $61,500 for this school year, up from $56,869 in the 2021-22 school year.
As of July 5, there were approximately 854 openings for certified teachers in the district. The number isnt significantly different from previous years, but it speaks to the hiring gaps that the state is seeing.
Weve attracted hundreds more candidates for teaching positions this year than last year. At the same time, HISD is not immune to the national impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on teachers and other educators, the district said in a statement.
Smaller districts that cant compete with bigger districts salary increases have instead tried to lure teachers with four-day school weeks. Some rural districts have been losing teachers to other schools that are switching to the shorter week model.
Anybody that had eyes or ears knew that this impending teacher shortage was coming, and our view was it was only going to get worse for the foreseeable future, said Chico ISD Superintendent Randy Brawner. You cant just go out and throw money at your problems. You have to think outside the box and think creatively.
Disclosure: The University of Houston and Texas AFT have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribunes journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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FARMINGTON Healthy Community Coalition is hosting six adult COVID-19 mobile walk-in vaccine clinics in Franklin County in August. Vaccines are provided at no cost and all are welcome.
Those age 18 and older are eligible to receive the vaccines.
Those attending can be administered their choice of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine and can get their first or second dose in a series, first booster dose, or second booster for those ages 50 and older, according to a news release.
The schedule is as follows:
East Wilton Village: 9 a.m. to noon Wednesday, Aug. 3, Western Maine Community Action, 20 Church St. Salem Township: 1-2:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 11, United Methodist Economic Ministry Food Bank, 1458 Salem Road. Phillips: 3-5:30 p.m., Thursday, Aug. 11, Edmunds Market, 1185 Rangeley Road. Stratton Village/Eustis: 2-5:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 18, Fotters Market, 157 Main St. Strong: 4:30-6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 23, Faith Works Community Outreach, 44 N. Main St. New Vineyard: 3-5:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 26, Maine Wood Turning, 1687 New Vineyard Road.
People over the age of 50 can now get a second booster dose 4 months after their first booster dose.
Individuals should bring their COVID-19 vaccination card with them. Those with health insurance are asked to bring their cards with them also, but insurance is not mandatory.
For additional information visit,fchn.org/hcc-covid
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The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control reported nearly 16,600 new COVID-19 cases and nine new deaths related to the virus July 17-23.
New cases reported:16,570
Total cases in S.C.: 1,605,165
New deaths reported: nine
Total deaths in S.C.: 18,192
Percent of ICU beds filled (with COVID-19 and other patients):63.8percent
Percent positive:25.7percent
In South Carolina, 60.6 percent of people who are eligible for the vaccine have received at least one dose, and 52.6 percent of eligible residents are considered fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.
These numbers reflect all eligible residents in South Carolina, including young children. The latest data from DHEC shows 21.8 percent of children ages 5-11 have at least one vaccine doseand 1.6 percent of those under age 5 have received a shot.
Of the 538 COVID-19 patients hospitalized as of July 23, 77 were in the ICU and 23 were using ventilators.
At a White House conference July 26 on the future of COVID-19 vaccines, some companies said they were looking to develop a couple of painless options: one that could deliver COVID-19 vaccine intranasally, through the nose, and one that has developed a patch with microneedles that could be applied and peeled off to deliver a vaccine dose through the skin.
Reach Tom Corwin at 843-214-6584. Follow him on Twitter at @AUG_SciMed.
ASHTABULA In an ongoing effort to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19, a network across Ohio continues to study samples of wastewater to look for the presence of fragments from the virus.
An upward trend of viral gene copies has been detected in the Ashtabula sewer shed, which serves the city of Ashtabula and parts of Saybrook and Ashtabula townships.
The waste water testing showed a sustained increase from June 28 to July 17.
We have not seen elevated levels since April, City Manager Jim Timonere said. This sustained increase in viral load demonstrates that there may be community increased transmission and citizens are cautioned to follow safe COVID-19 protocols.
Residents should be on alert and remain vigilant in their efforts to social distance, wear face coverings and adhere to prevention efforts such as frequent hand-washing and sanitizing, he said.
This emerging information is being used by the Ashtabula City and the Ashtabula County health departments in conjunction with community case numbers and other COVID-19 related data to further inform decisions as officials respond to the pandemic.
The health departments have alerted healthcare providers, nursing homes and other shared-living facilities to be prepared for a potential increase in cases, said Christine Hill, commissioner of the Ashtabula City Health Department.
Our department continues to offer COVID-19 vaccinations to help folks keep up to date on their vaccination, Hill said. Vaccination is still the best protection against COVID-19.
The increase of COVID-19 cases in communities is typically tracked by testing people with symptoms, an indicator that lags behind the actual spread of the disease.
However, research has shown that non-infectious RNA (ribonucleic acid) from the virus that cause COVID-19 can be detected in wastewater as many as three to seven days before those infections lead to increases in case counts or hospitalizations.
The Ohio Department of Health reports a medium community level in Ashtabula County, meaning the ODH recommends residents wear a mask if you have symptoms, a positive test, or exposure to someone with COVID-19. You may choose to wear a mask at any time as an additional precaution to protect yourself and others. If you are at high risk for severe illness, consider wearing a mask indoors in public and taking additional precautions.
More than 2 million Ohioans have contracted COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to the ODH.
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Here's a quick wrap of each Australian jurisdiction's latest COVID-19 statistics for Wednesday, July 27.
You can get a more detailed, visual breakdown through theABC's Charting the Spread story here.
You can jump to the COVID-19 information you want to read by clicking below.
There have been16,173 new casesof COVID-19 recorded in New South Wales and a further 20 deaths.
There are now2,275people in hospitalwith COVID in the state, and56in intensive care.
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The state has recorded another 32 deaths from COVID-19.
There are 872 people in hospital with COVID, with 33 in intensive care and 11 requiring ventilation.
Victoria recorded 12,653 new cases in the past 24 hours.
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Four people have died with COVID-19 in Tasmania.
There are 170 people in hospital with the virus, and three in intensive care.
There were 1,313 new cases reported in the past 24 hours.
Another 1,104 new cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the ACT.
There are 141 people in hospital with COVID, and one person is in intensive care.
There have been no deaths reported.
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The state has recorded 19 deaths in the past 24 hours.
There have been 8,209 new cases reported, and there are 1,023 people in hospital with the virus.
There are 26 patients being treated in intensive care.
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There have been three deaths reported in Western Australia.
The state has recorded 5,422 new cases of COVID-19 in the past day, and there are 442 people in hospital.
There are 17 people in intensive care.
The state has recorded 4,197 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours.
There are 365 people in hospital with COVID, and eight in ICU. There are no patients on a ventilator.
Four people with COVID-19 have died in the past day.
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The NThas recorded another deathfrom COVID-19.
There are 76 people in hospital with the virus, including one in intensive care.
The territory recorded 491 new cases in the past 24 hours.
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