Patients who were already victimized once by California’s forced sterilization program — and who are running out of time to claim state compensation — were nearly victimized again.

This time, it’s because of a data breach that exposed their personal and medical information.

Last December, a researcher looking into the sterilization of thousands of female patients and inmates — a practice that was sanctioned since the 1900s and had only ceased in 2013 — was viewing records from the California State Archives. Records 75 years and older are publicly accessible, but a digital copy of microfilm the researcher viewed was mislabeled and actually included more recent information, from 1948 to 1954.

The records were eventually pulled and redacted from the state Archives after the researcher told officials. But personal information, including patients’ full names, birthdates and family medical histories were exposed, as well as medical information such as diagnoses and dates of sterilization.

California’s secretary of state office, which oversees the state Archives, quietly posted a notice on its website on March 10 about what it called a “privacy incident of historical health records” and has been notifying those who have been affected. For those who suspect they are part of the breach, the secretary of state offered a FAQ with a few tips on identity theft. An office spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

These kinds of records are used by researchers to help verify victims and estimate the number of living survivors.

• Nicole Novak, co-director of the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab research team: “It’s remarkable that these archival records exist. When used appropriately and under the correct security standards and ethical guidelines, they are a really powerful resource for documenting the scope and scale of the state’s eugenics program.”

By 1979, long after the peak of the 1930s eugenics movement, California sterilized an estimated 20,000 people, deemed unfit to reproduce, without their consent. The practice ended in 1979 for state hospitals and in 2010 for state prisons, when eugenics laws were finally repealed. 

An exposé from The Center for Investigative Reporting in 2013 revealed 148 women were sterilized without proper approval from 2006 to 2010, and a separate state audit found that the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation oversaw the illegal sterilization of 144 inmates from 2005 to 2013.

In 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a compensation program that pays as much as $25,000 per patient. The program is budgeted at $7.5 million and ends Dec. 31. Despite public outreach to contact more patients, plus radio and TV ads, it’s unlikely that California will find and compensate all victims. Through February, about 60 claims had been approved, totaling $915,000.

• Lynda Gledhill, chief executive of the California Victim Compensation Board, to Capitol Weekly: “This is a very hard to reach population. The estimates are that there are maybe 600 of those people still alive. And as you can imagine, they are quite elderly. And if they were in state hospitals or were incarcerated, their relationship with state government is not that great so they can be very hard to reach.”

Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo, a Los Angeles Democrat who authored the compensation law, said in an emailed statement to CalMatters that the disclosure of personal information is “concerning because we do not want to impose any additional trauma on these survivors whom have suffered enough.” 

But safeguards should prevent more problems, she added, and this incident should not distract from the compensation program itself.

• Carrillo: “As we set out to rectify these past wrongs, it is essential that we take all necessary steps to find and compensate survivors.”

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Other Stories You Should Know

1
Who drives EVs in CA?

Electric vehicles parked at a home in Atherton on March 16, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters

Who buys electric cars in California?

In the latest installment of CalMatters’ series “Race to Zero: California’s bumpy road to electrify cars and trucks,” environmental reporter Nadia Lopez and data reporter Erica Yee analyzed statewide data to reveal a strikingly homogenous portrait of who owns electric vehicles in California. 

The highest concentrations of electric cars are in ZIP codes where residents are at least 75% white and Asian. And they are congregated in Silicon Valley cities and affluent parts of Los Angeles and Orange counties. In contrast, electric cars are nearly non-existent in Latino, Black and low-income communities.

• Kevin Fingerman, an associate professor of energy and climate at California State Polytechnic University Humboldt: “It makes sense why we would see way more concentrations of EVs in densely urban areas or populated areas. The barriers to people owning electric vehicles across the demographics in the state are real. But they’re solvable.” 

The portrait reveals the enormous challenge that California faces to electrify the fleet. If people who buy electric cars are largely white or Asian, highly educated, wealthy suburbanites, will they be accessible to all Californians — no matter their race, income and location — in the coming decade? 

California’s ambition to battle climate change and clean up air pollution hinges on its ability to electrify its 25 million gas cars to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. The next decade will be telling for the state as it enforces a historic mandate that requires 35% of cars sold in California, beginning with 2026 models, to be zero-emissions, ramping up to 68% in 2030 and 100% in 2035. 

As part of the report, Nadia highlights the good and bad experiences of drivers in California, offering a glimpse into the challenges the state faces to meet the mandate.

• Urvi Nagrani, 35, an EV owner in Los Altos: “People living in Silicon Valley have home chargers. But we need to have better options for renters because it hasn’t gotten much better for me as a renter.” 

Her reporting indicates that state leaders face an array of obstacles that are causing the wide gaps in electric vehicle ownership: High upfront vehicle costs, lack of chargers for renters and inadequate access to public charging stations in low-income and rural communities.

• Christopher Bowe, 48, a Hayward EV owner: “The average person can’t afford to buy (an electric car) if early adopters like me don’t buy it. But by 2035? That’s a great aspiration, but it’s crazy. There’s no practical way it’s going to happen. The reality is that there is going to be inequity and that inequity is inherent.”

Have questions? Nadia and Erica’s story is the third in a series on California’s road to electrify cars and trucks. Starting in 2035, no new gasoline-powered vehicles will be sold in the state. Do you have questions about this transformation? Submit them here.

2
Tax board on chopping block?

State Assemblymember Phil Ting speaks at San Quentin State Prison on March 17, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters

From CalMatters state Capitol reporter Sameea Kamal:

State lawmakers have already stripped the state Board of Equalization of many of its powers. But doing away with it entirely — and abolishing four elected positions in the process? 

That could prove a heavier lift. 

On Tuesday, Democratic Assemblymembers Phil Ting from San Francisco, Jacqui Irwin from Thousand Oaks and Cottie Petrie-Norris from Irvine proposed a bill that would ask voters to disband the board via a constitutional amendment in 2024. To get on the ballot, it would require two-thirds approval of both the Assembly and state Senate. 

The board was established in 1879 to make sure the then-powerful railroad industry paid its fair share of taxes. As Irwin noted during the Tuesday press conference: “The BOE is a vestige of the 19th century that existed before most people had indoor plumbing.” 

In recent years, the board has been plagued by a series of scandals and mismanagement. (Among the most notorious: The time former member Jerome Horton spent $130,000 on office furniture — or when actor Rob Lowe accused Horton of using an anti-Semitic slur during an income tax dispute).

In 2017 and 2018, the Legislature created two new tax agencies and gave them many of the board’s taxpayer advocate duties. Ting said the two agencies —  the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration and the Office of Tax Appeals — have been more efficient. 

The board’s remaining duties are to oversee property taxes, alcoholic beverage taxes and insurance taxes, as well as the 58 county assessors’ offices. Under the proposed legislation, the remaining duties would be absorbed by other agencies. It currently employs 500 people.

Ting, chairperson of the Assembly budget committee who led the previous effort to weaken the board, said the move would save $27 million to 35 million a year, as the state is facing a projected $25 billion budget deficit.

• Irwin: “California no longer needs three taxing agencies.”

Ting made clear that the move was not in response to any of the current board members, just elected in November: Ted Gaines, Antonio Vazquez, Sally Lieber and Mike Schaefer, who won a second term despite being disbarred, convicted of spousal abuse and sued for being a slumlord. 

“Many of them are new and have only served a very, very short time,” Ting said. “This is about structurally what needs to be done.”

• Vazquez, the board’s chairperson: “This proposal would silence the voices of taxpayers and the underserved and underrepresented communities of color, replacing the elected Board accountable to all Californians with unelected bureaucrats.” 

Both the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and the California Taxpayers Association also oppose the idea. 

• CalTax President Robert Gutierrez, in a statement: “This misguided proposal would force California’s property tax system into the shadows, reduce accountability, and give a dangerous level of power to political appointees. Our current system provides taxation with representation, and there is no need to eliminate Californians’ right to vote on these important positions.”

The last time California eliminated elected posts was in 1911, when the clerk of the Supreme Court, the state Printer and the Railroad Commission (later renamed the California Public Utilities Commission) became appointed offices, according to Alex Vassar, communications manager for the California State Library.

3
‘Dream,’ for some

A sale sign in front of a home in the Tower District in central Fresno on June 28, 2022. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local

More Californians are leaving, well, California. The Public Policy Institute of California reported Tuesday that the main driver of recent population losses is the exodus to other states: 7.7 million left from 2010 through 2021, while only 5.8 million moved here from other states. The net loss is across all ages, education and income levels.

The report listed employment, family and — not surprisingly — housing costs as the top reasons people move away. Since 2015, 500,000 who left cited housing as the primary reason, according to Census surveys. 

And buying a home in California could get tougher if the state goes through with plans to scale back its loan program for first-time purchasers, reports CalMatters’ Alejandro Lazo.

Known as Dream For All and launching on March 27, the program aims to help low- and middle-income buyers by providing loans that pay for most upfront costs, such as down payments. Along with a full repayment of the initial loan, the state will also get a share of profits when the home is sold, refinanced or transferred.

The proceeds go back to the state, but will also help fund other borrowers down the line. The system works, but only if home prices keep climbing.

That’s a big but.

Thanks to a perfect storm of declining home prices, rising mortgage interest rates, a volatile housing market, a decline in personal income and a projected $22.5 billion budget deficit, Newsom is proposing to reduce funds for the program, which was supposed to be a 10-year, $10 billion investment. Instead of kicking it off with $500 million, it would now have $300 million — enough to help 2,300 buyers. 

Despite the proposed cuts, Toni Atkins, the Senate president pro tem who championed the program, remains optimistic.

• Atkins, a Democrat from San Diego: “Our state is about to launch a program that will help change people’s lives for the better, and make the dream of homeownership a reality.”

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California bill would ban police dogs from arrests and crowd control // Fox News

Newsom gives green light to S.F. housing tower delayed by supervisors // San Francisco Chronicle

Are kids collateral damage in California culture wars? // EdSource

Fight over ethnic studies spreads as requirement in California looms // San Francisco Chronicle

Strike shuts down LA Unified as families grapple with disruptions // EdSource

Balboa Park organizations oppose safe campsite for homeless residents // Voice of San Diego

Bay Area unemployment spikes to highest levels since pandemic // San Francisco Standard

LA police accidentally release photos of undercover officers // Los Angeles Times

In Los Angeles, a friendship grows out of housing strife // Capital & Main

How San Jose could save $23 million // San Jose Spotlight

UC San Diego to spend $1.1 billion on student center and housing // San Diego Union-Tribune

Families in Stanislaus County won’t get FEMA assistance for storm damage // Modesto Bee

The post Extra ache for compelled sterilization sufferers appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Mutations showed the virus was “running like hell.”

Tracking microbes through a foul-smelling network of sewers led virologist Marc Johnson to the source of unusual coronavirus mutants.

After months of sampling sewage, the microbiologist from the University of Missouri School of Medicine found out exactly where the mutants came from: from a regular user of the toilets at a certain Wisconsin company.

Although Johnson could not identify this individual, he was able to use genetic data to see that virus particles had been freshly made and expelled for more than a year – many times longer than a typical two-week Covid infection.

And during that time, the mutations showed the virus was “running like hell,” trying to evade the person’s immune system, Johnson said. Laboratory analysis of his sewage samples revealed the battlefield in the patient’s body where the virus was rapidly evolving to claim a stronghold.

“You can find a lot of chronic infections — people who have probably been infected for over a year — where the virus hasn’t changed at all,” he said. “And I don’t understand why it just goes crazy in some patients.”

As the scourge of Covid-19 enters its fourth year, patients like the one Johnson discovered by being traced through miles of drainpipes and drains are bringing researchers closer to answers to key questions: Where do worrying new mutants come from? And what role do they play in Long Covid, the mysterious post-infection disease that affects more than 140 million people worldwide?

Scientists are studying the possibility that some of the most contagious versions of the coronavirus — Omicron and its descendants — came from chronically infected individuals whose immune systems were weakened by illness, drugs, or both. Research published in December shows the virus can persist in the body and brain for months. That suggests it may be hiding in human cells and tissues, similar to HIV and the chickenpox virus that causes shingles.

Fascinating autopsies

Traces in the blood and stool of patients with long-lasting symptoms indicate that SARS-CoV-2 could be stored in the intestines, fat or other tissues that offer protection against the body’s immune system. Researchers from the US National Institutes of Health, who conducted painstaking autopsies on the bodies of 44 Covid victims, found viral genetic material in the bodies and brains of the patients up to 7 1/2 months after symptoms began. In one case, virus particles isolated from the brain were grown in a laboratory dish, proving that they were fully functional and capable of replication.

“The predominant damage still seems to be in the lungs,” said Daniel Chertow, who led the research in the NIH’s Emerging Pathogens Division, “but oh man, we really need to better understand what kind of damage is happening with all these others.” is done sets.”

Most of those autopsied were elderly and ill before contracting Covid, and all died before vaccines became available. And while no one was known to have had Covid for long, the findings, published in the journal Nature, still require follow-up.

“It is imperative that we try to understand in great detail what role persistence of viral RNA and other viral components might play in long-Covid,” Chertow said.

No one knows if the coronavirus or its remnants are still present in everyone who has had Covid, or if it’s just a group of patients, said Timothy Henrich, an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

“We all hypothesize that it’s a driver of Long Covid, but we really haven’t shown that definitively,” Henrich said. “This is still something that needs to be done.”

Still, Chertow’s research has already inspired the experimental use of antiviral drugs like Pfizer Inc.’s Paxlovid to see if it can eradicate viral reservoirs and relieve long-term symptoms. Even a relatively small number of infected cells could trick the immune system into causing inflammation, blood clots, and other problems associated with long Covid, according to Amy Proal, co-founder of the PolyBio Research Foundation, a Boston-based nonprofit that facilitates research into chronic, infection-associated conditions .

It’s “the most logical explanation because it pretty much explains everything else,” she said.

Scan hideouts

Henrich, who has helped develop sophisticated imaging techniques capable of locating HIV in tissues, plans to use the same approach to find Covid’s hiding places. Dozens of patients will undergo a series of full-body scans looking for signals of viral protein production or persistence. These will be compared to symptoms to see how the continued presence of the coronavirus correlates to a long covid.

The group has started scanning patients to look for protective T cells that could indicate an aberrant immune response to SARS-CoV-2. They examine biopsies of the participants’ digestive tracts for traces of the virus, Henrich said.

A particular focus is on lymphoid tissues, which produce, store and transport T cells that fight infection, and antibody-producing B cells. The coronavirus could also be hiding in long-lived nerve cells and heart muscles, where it can bring on chest pain, brain fog, fatigue and other long-standing Covid symptoms, said Diane Griffin, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore who has been studying for more than 50 years studying the body’s response to viral infections.

“We have pretty good information from acute RNA virus infections that RNA persists and that it has consequences,” said Griffin, who is vice president of the US National Academy of Sciences. “Basically, it’s difficult to get rid of viruses.”

Proving that prolonged viral infection causes long-term Covid will be difficult, Griffin said. Viruses in stealth mode suppress replication so as not to damage their host cells. Despite the extensive distribution of coronavirus RNA in the patients’ bodies, Chertow’s team saw little evidence of inflammation or that the immune system had attempted to destroy infected cells outside of the airways.

Viral Evolution

Interestingly, when the NIH scientists analyzed the genetic makeup of virus samples collected from six patients, they found versions in the lungs that differed from those collected in other tissues. In one patient, the viruses found in two brain regions – the thalamus and the hypothalamus – were significantly different, suggesting that certain mutations favored the pathogen’s persistence there.

“We know that these RNA viruses have the potential to evolve within a host,” Chertow said. “The more they can replicate and the longer the time they have to do so and the higher the level of replication that takes place, the more opportunity these viruses have to evolve.”

This raises an interesting possibility: as the virus evolves to inhabit different organs and tissues, the process can produce more and more infectious and immune-evasive variants. Nobody knows yet whether this is the case, but Johnson’s wastewater analysis at the University of Missouri gives the first indications.

Out of control pathogens

Since the early days of the Covid pandemic, researchers have known that Covid is capable of infecting the digestive tract, causing stomach upset and causing patients to shed traces of the virus in their faeces. Johnson routinely scans around 100 sewer networks in the Midwest for unusual SARS-CoV-2 strains, called cryptic lineages because their source is unknown.

“They’re rare, but they’re out there,” he says.

When Johnson started work in March 2021, he had no idea where the journey was going. Then, after more than a year ago, omicron drove US Covid cases to a record high, he began actively looking for strains with pronounced genetic changes.

He discovered one that came from a drain in Wisconsin that served 100,000 people. Its genetic signature was much more different than previous versions of Omicron, but it had not been reported in any patient. Importantly, its mutations appeared in newer versions of omicron. It was almost as if Johnson saw where the virus was going — evolutionarily speaking — before it arrived.

“So we started saying, let’s find out where it’s coming from,” he said.

Black Swan

For four months he and his colleagues went from one shaft to the next in an unknown metropolitan area. Then they discovered that the samples came from a building. Then one side of the building. Then half a dozen toilets, regularly used by about 30 people.

There, the investigation had come to a standstill, said Johnson. Despite this, he was able to deduce that the cryptic lineage came from an individual who was infected nearly two years ago, as it evolved from a strain last discovered in Wisconsin in April 2021.

In August, the concentration of the variant was 1.5 billion copies per liter of wastewater. For comparison, at the height of a massive Covid outbreak in a Missouri prison, a liter of sewage contained just 100 million copies of the coronavirus.

“It’s insane how much virus this person is shedding,” Johnson said.

In December, the same variant appeared in the toilet installation in Wisconsin for the 13th consecutive month.

“Whoever this person is, they still seem to be going to work every day and have been for a while,” Johnson said. “It seems they don’t know they are infected. It can’t be good for her.”

The line hasn’t appeared anywhere else, suggesting it’s not spreading, Johnson said. But there’s no question that it can grow, as evidenced by long-standing high concentrations in toilet drains.

“The question is why?” he said. “We assume something like this happened with omicron and that there was some sort of black swan event that allowed the virus to get out.”

Johnson says studying cryptic lineages challenged his thinking about the coronavirus’ ability to lodge itself in human tissues, particularly outside the respiratory system, and its potential to cause prolonged illness.

“I’m particularly open now to the idea that there are secondary infections that we just don’t know about,” he said. “And maybe that helps explain some of these very weird long Covid symptoms.”

(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and was published by a syndicated feed.)

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Tracking microbes through a foul-smelling network of sewers led virologist Marc Johnson to the source of unusual coronavirus mutants.

After months of sampling sewage, the microbiologist from the University of Missouri School of Medicine found out exactly where the mutants came from: from a regular user of the toilets at a certain Wisconsin company. Although Johnson could not identify this individual, he was able to use genetic data to see that virus particles were freshly made and expelled for more than a year – many times longer than a typical two-week COVID-19 infection.

And during that time, the mutations showed the virus was “running like hell,” trying to evade the person’s immune system, Johnson said. Laboratory analysis of his sewage samples revealed the battlefield in the patient’s body where the virus was rapidly evolving to claim a stronghold.

“You can find a lot of chronic infections — people who have probably been infected for over a year — where the virus hasn’t changed at all,” he said. “And I don’t understand why it just goes crazy in some patients.”

As the scourge of COVID-19 enters its fourth year, patients like the one Johnson discovered when traced down miles of drainpipes and drains are bringing researchers closer to answers to key questions: Where do worrying new mutants come from? And what role do they play in Long COVID, the mysterious post-infection disease that is affecting more than 140 million people worldwide?

Scientists are studying the possibility that some of the most contagious versions of the coronavirus — Omicron and its descendants — came from chronically infected individuals whose immune systems were weakened by disease, drugs, or both. Research published in December shows the virus can persist in the body and brain for months. That suggests it may be hiding in human cells and tissues, similar to HIV and the chickenpox virus that causes shingles.

Exciting autopsies

Traces in the blood and stool of patients with long-lasting symptoms indicate that SARS-CoV-2 could be stored in the intestines, fat or other tissues that offer protection against the body’s immune system. Researchers from the US National Institutes of Health, who performed painstaking autopsies on the bodies of 44 COVID-19 victims, found viral genetic material in the bodies and brains of the patients up to 7 1/2 months after symptoms began. In one case, virus particles isolated from the brain were grown in a laboratory dish, proving that they were fully functional and capable of replication.

“The predominant damage still seems to be in the lungs,” said Daniel Chertow, who led the research in the NIH’s Emerging Pathogens Division, “but, oh boy, we really need to better understand what kind of damage is in all of these.” other places are prepared.”

Most of those autopsied were elderly and ill before contracting COVID-19, and all died before vaccines became available. And while no one was known to have had COVID for long, the findings, published in the journal Nature, still call for follow-up.

“It is imperative that we try to understand in great detail what role persistence of viral RNA and other viral components might play in long COVID,” Chertow said.

No one knows if the coronavirus or its remnants are still present in everyone who has had COVID-19, or if it’s just a group of patients, said Timothy Henrich, an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco .

“We all hypothesize that it’s a driver for long COVID, but we really haven’t shown that definitively,” Henrich said. “This is still something that needs to be done.”

Still, Chertow’s research has already inspired the experimental use of antiviral drugs like Pfizer Inc.’s Paxlovid to see if it can eradicate viral reservoirs and relieve long-term symptoms. According to Amy Proal, co-founder of the PolyBio Research Foundation, a Boston-based nonprofit dedicated to research into chronic, infection-associated conditions.

It’s “the most logical explanation because it pretty much explains everything else,” she said.

Scan hideouts

Henrich, who has helped develop sophisticated imaging techniques that can pinpoint HIV in tissues, plans to use the same approach to find COVID-19’s hiding spots. Dozens of patients will undergo a series of full-body scans looking for signals of viral protein production or persistence. These will be compared to symptoms to see how the continued presence of the coronavirus correlates to a long COVID.

The group has started scanning patients to look for protective T cells that could indicate an aberrant immune response to SARS-CoV-2. They examine biopsies of the participants’ digestive tracts for traces of the virus, Henrich said.

A particular focus is on lymphoid tissues, which produce, store and transport T cells that fight infection, and antibody-producing B cells. The coronavirus could also be hiding in long-lived nerve cells and heart muscles, where it can cause chest pain, brain fog, fatigue and other long-lasting COVID symptoms, said Diane Griffin, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, who has been studying for more than 50 years studying the body’s response to viral infections.

“We have pretty good information from acute RNA virus infections that RNA persists and that it has consequences,” said Griffin, who is vice president of the US National Academy of Sciences. “Basically, it’s difficult to get rid of viruses.”

Proving that prolonged viral infection causes long-term COVID will be difficult, Griffin said. Viruses in stealth mode suppress replication so as not to damage their host cells. Despite the extensive distribution of coronavirus RNA in the patients’ bodies, Chertow’s team saw little evidence of inflammation or that the immune system had attempted to destroy infected cells outside of the airways.

Viral Evolution

Interestingly, when the NIH scientists analyzed the genetic makeup of virus samples collected from six patients, they found versions in the lungs that differed from those collected in other tissues. In one patient, the viruses found in two brain regions – the thalamus and the hypothalamus – were significantly different, suggesting that certain mutations favored the persistence of the pathogen there.

“We know that these RNA viruses have the potential to evolve within a host,” Chertow said. “The more they can replicate and the longer they have time to do so and the higher the level of replication that takes place, the more opportunities these viruses have to evolve.”

This raises an interesting possibility: as the virus evolves to inhabit different organs and tissues, the process can produce more and more infectious and immune-evasive variants. Nobody knows yet whether this is the case, but Johnson’s wastewater analysis at the University of Missouri gives the first indications.

Out of control pathogens

Since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have known that the disease can infect the digestive tract, causing stomach upset and causing patients to shed trace amounts of the virus in their feces. Johnson routinely scans around 100 sewer networks in the Midwest for unusual SARS-CoV-2 strains, called cryptic lineages because their source is unknown.

“They are rare, but they exist,” he says.

When Johnson started work in March 2021, he had no idea where the journey was going. Then, after more than a year ago, omicron drove US COVID-19 cases to a record high, he began actively looking for strains with pronounced genetic changes.

He discovered one that came from a drain in Wisconsin that served 100,000 people. Its genetic signature was much more different than previous versions of Omicron, but it had not been reported in any patient. Importantly, its mutations appeared in newer versions of omicron. It was almost as if Johnson saw where the virus was going — evolutionarily speaking — before it arrived.

“So we started saying, let’s find out where it’s coming from,” he said.

Black Swan

For four months he and his colleagues went from one shaft to the next in an unknown metropolitan area. Then they discovered that the samples came from a building. Then one side of the building. Then half a dozen toilets, regularly used by about 30 people.

There, the investigation had come to a standstill, said Johnson. Despite this, he was able to deduce that the cryptic lineage came from an individual who was infected nearly two years ago, as it evolved from a strain last discovered in Wisconsin in April 2021.

In August, the concentration of the variant was 1.5 billion copies per liter of wastewater. For comparison, at the height of a massive COVID-19 outbreak in a Missouri prison, a liter of sewage contained just 100 million copies of the coronavirus.

“It’s insane how much virus this person is shedding,” Johnson said.

In December, the same variant appeared in the toilet installation in Wisconsin for the 13th consecutive month.

“Whoever this person is, they still seem to be going to work every day and have been for a while,” Johnson said. “It seems they don’t know they are infected. It can’t be good for her.”

The line hasn’t appeared anywhere else, suggesting it’s not spreading, Johnson said. But there’s no question that it can grow, as evidenced by long-standing high concentrations in toilet drains.

“The question is why?” he said. “We assume something like this happened at omicron and that there was some sort of black swan event that allowed the virus to get out.”

Johnson says studying cryptic lineages has challenged his thinking about the coronavirus’ ability to lodge itself in human tissues, particularly outside the respiratory system, and its potential to cause prolonged illness.

“I’m particularly open now to the idea that there are secondary infections that we just don’t know about,” he said. “And maybe that helps explain some of these very oddly long COVID symptoms.”

©2023 Bloomberg LP Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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James DeLange was an established Lutheran minister from Minnesota when he accepted the call to rescue St. Francis Lutheran, a charming but crumbling old church with a small, struggling congregation in San Francisco’s Castro District.

It was 1981. The AIDS crisis was starting to kill the parishioners at “Our Lady of Safeway,” as it was known, due to its proximity to the grocery store on Market Street. To fully immerse himself in the pandemic, the new pastor moved to the neighborhood and started attending AIDS walks and vigils. He had a wife and two kids, but he also became family to those who had been abandoned because of their sexual orientation.

In the late 1980s, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America had declined to ordain any minister who was openly gay and not celibate, so DeLange offered to ordain them at St. Francis. This radical inclusiveness got St. Francis suspended from the church in 1990. But it also gave the congregation strength and resolve, celebrated in its annual “Feast of the Expulsion.”

A riveting speaker with a deep, rousing voice that carried across a cathedral, DeLange was serving as guest minister at St. Marks Lutheran Church on O’Farrell Street in 2017 when he started losing his train of thought and was noticeably scattered while delivering a sermon .

Diagnosed with dementia, DeLange spent his final years at his home in Eureka Valley with a view of his old congregation, and even the Safeway sign on Market Street. On Aug. 20, two Lutheran ministers who mentored DeLange came to his home to deliver the Lutheran prayer for the dying, much as DeLange had done at the bedsides of men dying of AIDS.

An hour after the prayer session, DeLange died in bed, wearing his red-and-blue St. Francis Lutheran T-shirt and facing the view out the window. His death was confirmed by his daughter, Lynn Krausse. hey what 88

“Jim DeLange was a remarkable and uncommon individual,” said former state Senator Mark Leno, who knew DeLange through community service both in the Castro and citywide.

“He felt and believed deeply, and he had a stiff backbone when the Lutheran church challenged him and his local colleagues on his inclusivity of the LGBTQ community. He had my admiration for that,” Leno said.

DeLange’s impact transcended the Lutheran church. After the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989, he was invited by then-Mayor Art Agnos to join a committee that was forming what would become the San Francisco Interfaith Council in response to both the displacement of people from the earthquake and the growing homelessness population in the City.

“Jim was one of the first to open up his church sanctuary for people to stay during the worst of the winter,” said Agnos, “and he immediately assumed a leadership position in recruiting religious organizations of all faiths to join him in responding to the crisis for the homeless.”

Delange ended up serving on the interfaith council’s board of directors for 23 years, including a long stint as board chair, from 2004 to 2012. The winter shelter he helped launch still exists, and the council mobilizes the city’s 800 communities of faith in times of disaster, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Wherever I go in San Francisco people come up to me and tell me how important my dad was to their lives,” said Krausse. “How he’d been kind in the right moment and offered perfect advice and support. If what they needed was money he would hand them 100 bucks. He was out there doing God’s work.”

James William DeLange was born July 6, 1934 in St. Paul, Minn. where he grew up. His father, William DeLange, managed an industrial laundry service that specialized in cleaning the work overalls worn by workers at the 3M plant, which made scotch tape and other forms of adhesives. As a kid, James worked in the plant loading the washing machines and making deliveries of clean uniforms with his dad.

Salvation came through a neighbor who was the pastor at Gethsamene Lutheran Church. DeLange had been baptized Presbyterian but his mom started taking him to the Lutheran services to support their neighbor, the pastor. This led DeLange to become active in youth ministry at North St. Paul High School, where he was also involved in drama.

After graduating in 1951 he attended the University of Minnesota, but the Korean was on. Convinced he’d be drafted into the Army, he joined the Navy Reserve instead. This allowed him to transfer to Concordia Theological Seminary in Springfield, Ill. Luckily, he drew soft duty in the Navy Reserve, assigned to setting up the bowling pins in the officers club in St. Paul.

He was off duty and off base when he met Beverly Hansen, a farm girl who’d come to town to bowl. She met DeLange at the alley. They were married in 1957 and Delange was ordained in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, a particularly conservative denomination.

A year later, Delange was assigned to start a Lutheran congregation in the growing Orange County city of Huntington Beach. The flock started in the two-car garage of a house he paid $12,000 for, with a monthly payment of $85. Faith Lutheran Church, as it was named, quickly outgrew the garage and into a campus to fit a congregation that included more than 1,000 families.

In the mid-1970s a schism between facts of the Lutheran Church divided it into a doctrinaire group that wanted to adhere to biblical infallibility, and a more progressive group. DeLange was named Executive Secretary of the progressive faction which split off to form the the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches.

This cost him his job at Faith Lutheran, which remained in the Missouri Synod.

DeLange and his second wife moved to the Bay Area in 1976. Delange continued in an administrative position for the new Association until he got the position at St. Francis, which had allied itself with the more progressive faction.

When the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America came out against non-celibate Gay ministers, DeLange was a perfect representative for the opposition, having emerged as a progressive Lutheran despite his bringing up in the church’s conservative orthodoxy.

“He was seeing the cruelty to the gay community every day in San Francisco,” said his daughter. “To have the church then ostracize the gay clergy became very personal to him so he pushed back against the injustice.”

By 1985, he was leading the St. Francis contingent in the Pride Parade and soon helped organize the Lutheran Lesbian and Gay Ministries. St. Francis eventually withdrew from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Synod.

“Jim was a straight ally who invested a huge amount of his political capital in the movement for the full inclusion and participation of LGBTQIA+ clergy,” said Jeff Johnson, pastor at University Lutheran Chapel of Berkeley, near the Cal campus.

DeLange was also good with fiscal capital. When the earthquake hit in 1989, the south-facing brick facade of St. Francis Lutheran came down in a pile. That provided the impetus for a capital campaign to rebuild the landmark structure which was constructed in 1905-06. DeLange served as project manager and fund raiser and he did not stop there. He started a church endowment fund that has grown over the last 40 years to benefit organizations worldwide, according to the current pastor at St. Francis, Bea Chun.

“What Jim did for the congregation was give us a blueprint to follow,” said Chun. “We have the inspiration of his courage and his willingness to be an innovator.”

DeLange’s second marriage also ended in divorce. In 1991, he married Diane Nelson, a member of a Lutheran congregation in Mill Valley. She did her part for St. Francis by launching a senior lunch program with Nelson herself doing the cooking for 50 or 60 hungry souls every Wednesday. She died of cancer in 2011.

After retiring from St. Francis in 1999, DeLange continued to be minister and busied himself with Democratic Party politics. His Christmas Day “Green Drink” party was a standard, with people coming by to sip his secret concoction involving Creme de Menthe.

“Jim was the kind whose door was always open,” said Leno “He had such a wide range of acquaintances, from his pastoral work to his community work to his leadership on queer issues.”

DeLange is survived by his sister Rochelle Schrodt of St. Paul; daughter Lynn Krausse of Bakersfield; son Brad DeLange of San Francisco; stepson Matthew Nelson of Alameda; stepdaughter Adrienne Brown of Kentfield; and four grandchildren.

Funeral Services will be at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church on Saturday September 24th at 10:30 AM. Memorial donations may be made to St. Francis Lutheran Church 152 Church Street, San Francisco, CA 94114.

Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com

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A nursing home run by the city of San Francisco will stop discharging patients as part of a federally-mandated closure plan after at least four patients died within days or weeks of being moved from Laguna Honda Hospital, officials said.

In April, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services terminated its payments to Laguna Honda after two patients had nonfatal overdoses at the facility in 2021, and inspectors with the California Department of Public Health declared it to be “in a state of substandard care. ”

The federal agency, which pays for care for the majority of the nursing home’s 700 patients, also ordered the facility to start discharging or transferring its patients ahead of a mid-September mandated closure.

On Thursday, regulators agreed to pause the transfers, San Francisco’s Department of Public Health said in a statement.

San Francisco Department of Public Health is working to get the nursing home recertified ahead of a Sept. 13 closure deadline but it is still required to transfer or discharge all patients, according to a closure plan.

The city, supported by San Francisco representatives in Washington, including Sen. Diane Feinstein, asked the federal Medicare and Medicaid agency to pause all transfers from Laguna Honda Hospital, saying it has been a challenge to find places that can care for the patients’ complex health care needs.

Until Thursday, Laguna Honda had transferred or discharged 57 patients, including a few to homeless shelters. At least four patients died within days or weeks of being moved from Laguna Honda, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The transfers and discharges will be paused “while an assessment occurs over the coming weeks,” US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure told the newspaper, adding that the agency posted a representative there on Tuesday.

Founded in 1866, the sprawling facility serves people who need long-term care but can’t afford private nursing homes. Many of the patients have dementia, drug addiction and other complex medical needs.

“Laguna Honda has served San Francisco’s most vulnerable residents for 150 years and we plan to do so for another 150 years,” Roland Pickens, Laguna Honda’s interim CEO, said in a statement.

Sen. Diane Feinstein in May called on Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to reverse the federal agency’s decision to terminate Laguna Honda Hospital’s participation in Medicare and Medicaid programs and force the relocation of its vulnerable patients.

Feinstein said Friday that the hospital provides services for many patients who have no other options and that she hopes the federal agency works with the city of San Francisco to make the necessary improvements at the hospital so it can rejoin the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

“If (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) does not reverse its decision, these patients would again be put at risk as they’re transferred to other facilities,” she said in a statement sent to homeless shelters ill-equipped to provide the necessary medical services.”

Pickens wrote in a letter to patients and their families that it’s not clear how long the transferring and discharging of patients will be suspended.

“We know the uncertainty is challenging but we hope this pause provides our community with relief,” he wrote.

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SAN FRANCISCO — A nursing home run by the city of San Francisco will stop discharging patients as part of a federally-mandated closure plan after at least four patients died within days or weeks of being moved from Laguna Honda Hospital, officials said.

In April, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services terminated its payments to Laguna Honda after two patients had nonfatal overdoses at the facility in 2021, and inspectors with the California Department of Public Health declared it to be “in a state of substandard care. ”

The federal agency, which pays for care for the majority of the nursing home’s 700 patients, also ordered the facility to start discharging or transferring its patients ahead of a mid-September mandated closure.

On Thursday, regulators agreed to pause the transfers, San Francisco’s Department of Public Health said in a statement.

San Francisco Department of Public Health is working to get the nursing home recertified ahead of a Sept. 13 closure deadline but it is still required to transfer or discharge all patients according to a closure plan.

The city, supported by San Francisco representatives in Washington, including Sen. Diane Feinstein, asked the federal Medicare and Medicaid agency to pause all transfers from Laguna Honda Hospital, saying it has been a challenge to find places that can care for the patients’ complex health care needs.

Until Thursday, Laguna Honda had transferred or discharged 57 patients, including a few to homeless shelters. At least four patients died within days or weeks of being moved from Laguna Honda, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The transfers and discharges will be paused “while an assessment occurs over the coming weeks,” US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure told the newspaper, adding that the agency posted a representative there on Tuesday.

Founded in 1866, the sprawling facility serves people who need long-term care but can’t afford private nursing homes. Many of the patients have dementia, drug addiction and other complex medical needs.

“Laguna Honda has served San Francisco’s most vulnerable residents for 150 years and we plan to do so for another 150 years,” Roland Pickens, Laguna Honda’s interim CEO, said in a statement.

Sen. Diane Feinstein in May called on Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to reverse the federal agency’s decision to terminate Laguna Honda Hospital’s participation in Medicare and Medicaid programs and force the relocation of its vulnerable patients.

Feinstein said Friday that the hospital provides services for many patients who have no other options and that she hopes the federal agency works with the city of San Francisco to make the necessary improvements at the hospital so it can rejoin the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

“If (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) does not reverse its decision, these patients would again be put at risk as they’re transferred to other facilities,” she said in a statement sent to homeless shelters ill-equipped to provide the necessary medical services.”

Pickens wrote in a letter to patients and their families that it’s not clear how long the transferring and discharging of patients will be suspended.

“We know the uncertainty is challenging but we hope this pause provides our community with relief,” he wrote.

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PROVIDENCE, RI (WPRI) – Rhode Island has signed a contract with Salesforce.com to develop a mobile app that connects COVID-19 patients to services and helps public health officials track their contacts, locations and symptoms, according to a target 12 review of the deal.

The agreement with the San Francisco-based software company – entered into through a reseller company called Carahsoft Technology Corp. – Provides insight into how the state is trying to automate its current system of delivering services, scheduling tests, and finding people who may be contracting the disease from the infected, a response tactic known as “contact tracing” is.

“We’re taking a paper-based system and replacing it with a more efficient one,” wrote Health Ministry spokesman Joseph Wendelken in an email. “We have to do that because the response has become so great.”

Rhode Island began contact tracing for COVID-19 when the first positive case was announced on March 1st. As of Saturday, positive cases had grown to 2,349 and the number has been trending upward faster as testing became more widely available.

When someone tests positive for the disease, Ministry of Health officials collect information about those people’s travel history and who they’ve interacted with. After collecting the personal information, health authorities try to contact these contacts to determine if testing or quarantine is required.

The Salesforce agreement marks a major shift from the state’s personal strategy to an application-based program managed by a third-party vendor.

The app-based program is designed to make the process more efficient, but the idea of ​​automating contact tracing using cell phones – a strategy already being used in other countries – has won over advocates of civil liberty, including Jennifer Sista Granick and Jay Stanley of the American Union for Civil Liberties.

“Policymakers need to have a realistic understanding of what the data generated by cell phones can and cannot do,” write Granick and Stanley in a white paper entitled “The Limits of Tracking in an Epidemic.”

“As always, there is a risk that a simplified understanding of how technology works can result in investments that are of little use or even counterproductive and invade privacy for no real benefit,” they added.

Salesforce has signed a six-month contract to set up and provide free support for the program and app. The estimated value of the work according to the contract is $ 280,486. And while Salesforce, the Department of Health, and the state IT team continue to sort out the details, the overall goal is relatively simple.

“The state of Rhode Island has hired Salesforce to support its COVID-19 response management activities and enable a nationwide system for ubiquitous testing, contact tracing and effective quarantine,” Salesforce representatives wrote in the contract. “The aim is to reduce infections by preventing exposed people from spreading COVID-19.”

Based on the contract, the app will provide public health officials with digital tools to monitor patient symptoms and track down contacts. The effort is made possible through interviews, gathering of contact information, and gathering of “related organizational and location information” as per the deal.

On the support side, the app will help people schedule tests and give people in quarantine and isolation access to services such as food delivery and telemedicine, Governor Gina Raimondo explained in one of her daily news stories last week.

The platform could also help public health officials predict the future spread of the disease and offer other analytical tools that could help better inform the state’s response efforts and future containment strategy. Based on current state-based modeling – which has not been publicly shared – the pandemic is unlikely to peak in Rhode Island until the end of the month at the earliest, according to Raimondo.

That means leaders are still very focused on responding to the disease, but the Salesforce deal shows Raimondo is starting to focus more on developing a containment strategy for the future. With no vaccination or approved treatment currently in place, leaders across the country are struggling to find a way to both protect the health of citizens and get them out of their homes and back to work.

“If I want to reopen this economy, it has to be more automated and scalable, so we’ve worked hard to build a system,” Raimondo said on Wednesday of contact tracing.

Rhode Island’s economy is on the brink, with COVID-19-related unemployment claims exceeding 135,000 since early March.

Harvard University economist Nicholas Mankiw, who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, suggested that if the pandemic is somehow contained, employment could be restored. However, he cautioned that month-long closings would likely mean companies would close for good, which would result in fewer jobs for people looking to return to work.

“That decline could have a quick recovery,” Mankiw said last week during a discussion with Brown University President Christina Paxson. “That depends on how quickly the pandemic continues.”

Emerging strategies for opening up the economy without a vaccine or properly screened treatment include ubiquitous testing and retesting – along with some level of surveillance to help with contact tracing, quarantine, and isolation.

Harvard researchers suggest that an effective testing strategy would require retesting the entire population about every three to four days to control the disease, while another group said targeted contact tracing using technologies like Bluetooth might prove more efficient .

“There are strong arguments for using digital contact tracing in combination with other technological interventions to fight COVID-19, and there are reasons to believe that it does not require major privacy sacrifices for this technology to work,” the researchers wrote .

Other countries – including China, South Korea, Spain, and Thailand – have all implemented a mandatory and voluntary type of location tracking that has apparently worked with varying degrees of success.

Whether something similar could happen in Rhode Island in the future is not entirely clear, but leaders assure that any information that is ultimately collected will be protected by federal health care privacy laws that would also apply to Salesforce.

“The Salesforce platform is the channel,” said Wendelken. “There are confidentiality rules and requirements associated with this technology, just as there are when third parties process sensitive information or health information for the state.”

Bluetooth technology is currently not mentioned in the contract with Salesforce. And “GPS upload and automation” is outside the scope of duties that the company has taken on for the state. However, the contract makes it clear that such work can be carried out on request.

Chirag Patel, director of enterprise applications and IT for the state’s information technology division, leads development work for Rhode Island. He told The Providence Journal last week that GPS tracking is not currently part of the mission. Raimondo previously told reporters it was too early to tell. When asked for clarification, Raimondo spokesman Josh Block said both statements were true.

“Current planning does not include the use of GPS tracking technology,” Block wrote in an email. “But it is too early to say if we could look into this as this situation evolves.”

Eli Sherman (esherman@wpri.com) is an investigative reporter for WPRI 12. Connect with him on Twitter and Facebook.

Stay informed | Coronavirus updates

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When Orly Avitzur first met the patient, a 59-year-old supermarket manager who had been injured in a fall at work years earlier, he was in severe lower back pain and was on his way to spinal surgery. He was 50 pounds overweight, had poorly controlled high blood pressure, and was so out of shape that he was visibly short of breath.

Avitzur, a medical advisor to Consumer Reports, recommended pool therapy, and the patient responded like the proverbial fish to water, losing all of his excess weight and experiencing periods of pain relief for the first time in years. But his physical therapy insurance was running out and he couldn’t afford to continue. Avitzur suggested they offer to help out as a therapy assistant in exchange for free use of the pool, and the pool manager accepted the deal.

Recourse to the age-old art of bartering has helped at least some of the nearly 49 million Americans who are uninsured, and the millions more whose health benefits are so minor that they often cannot afford care. (Fortunately, the situation for many of these people will change significantly in 2014, when full implementation of the Affordable Care Act gives millions of Americans access to comprehensive and affordable health insurance.)

Not just for country folk

Although historically more common in rural areas, where it was not uncommon for doctors to be paid with chickens or wooden string, bartering occurs in other settings as well. Avitzur has looked after a patient who traded his carpentry skills for physical therapy sessions and heard stories from colleagues who traded their services for those of contractors, electricians, hairdressers and even a chimney sweep.

While much of the dealings between doctors and patients are one-off, organized barter seems to be growing. In Kingston, NY, the annual O + Festival features performances by approximately 40 bands and exhibits by dozens of artists receiving medical care over the course of a weekend. (This year’s festival is scheduled from October 11-13, with an encore in San Francisco in November.) The festival does not provide direct health care, but acts as an intermediary. It connects artists with health services, including general physical therapy; dental examinations; Blood pressure, hearing and eye tests; and psychological screenings as well as vouchers for follow-up visits.

In New York, the Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center enables eligible artists – actors, dancers, musicians, poets, writers, and anyone else who makes a living by creative means – their services for doctor visits, laboratory tests, hospital stays, emergency care, medical and surgical procedures , Dental care, prescriptions and other services. A similar program has been in place at Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn since 2005.

In Arkansas, the Bono Barter Clinic is promoting that you can trade for health care with “something you made, grown, or produced, or a service you provide.” At the Maple City Health Care Center in Goshen, Indiana, patients who cannot afford medical care can volunteer time with community organizations instead.

Exchange tips

If you want to participate in a medical barter, here are some suggestions on how you can do so safely and legally:

● As with any medical service, ensure that the doctor or clinic credentials are correct.

● Negotiate reasonable fees and make sure the values ​​are the same on both sides of the trade.

● Put your agreement in writing and keep track of all your transactions.

● Barter dollars are the same as real dollars for tax reporting. If you are in direct barter for products or services, you must include the fair market value of the business received on your tax return.

● If you work in a company or trade, you may be able to deduct certain costs that you incur in completing the work that has been swapped. You can obtain details from your tax advisor.

Copyright 2013. Consumers Union of United States Inc.

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SACRAMENTO (AP / CBS SF) – California spent nearly $ 200 million building, operating, and staffing alternative care facilities that ultimately did little good when the state’s worst coronavirus surge last winter spiraled out of control and drained Hospital workers were forced to treat patients in tents and canteens.

It was a costly way to learn that California’s hospital system is far more resilient than was thought at the start of the pandemic. Desperation and innovation have allowed the system to expand enough to cater to patients, even during the terrible surge in hospital admissions over 20,000 and dying nearly 700 people a week.

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“Definitely some hospitals, especially in the Los Angeles area, were on the verge of the breaking point, but we didn’t see as much use of the alternative care centers compared to what was being considered,” said Janet Coffman, professor of health policy from the University of California, San Francisco. “As bad as the situation was in winter, it could have been worse.”

In the first weeks of the pandemic, Governor Gavin Newsom ordered the establishment of alternative care facilities in a former professional basketball arena, two state centers that usually treat people with developmental and intellectual disabilities, and other facilities.

It was part of an early plan to add an additional 66,000 hospital beds as California prepared for an expected crushing load of COVID-19 patients, one of many steps the governor took when imposing the country’s first statewide lockdown.

Ultimately, the state spent $ 43 million on setting up eight locations, $ 48 million on hiring contract workers, and $ 96 million on running it on a scaled-back plan, according to the The Associated Press from the Finance and General Services Departments and the Health and Human Services Agency.

The sites together treated 3,582 patients, records show, but half were in the first three months of the pandemic, when the number of infections was still low and it turned out the traditional hospital system could have handled them on its own. The sites reopened in early December and treated fewer patients over the next three months, although many hospitals were overcrowded.

The traditional hospital system came through the worst of the pandemic with little overflow into alternative care facilities because the state temporarily eased the staffing relationship between nurses and patients – to protect the sick and their carers – and because of a scramble, temporary outsiders, said Stephanie Roberson , Director of Government Relations for the California Nurses Association.

Brian Ferguson, a spokesman for the state emergency services bureau, said officials learned that it was better to align the state’s efforts with existing health facilities than to build makeshift, stand-alone hospitals.

For example, two empty hospitals reopened during a surge last summer, one each in Northern and Southern California, as the most populous state, New York, overtook most cases in the country. But she didn’t use them again during the winter wave, instead choosing to work more closely with existing hospitals.

Similarly, in early April 2020, Newsom announced that the Sleep Train Arena, the former home of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings, would be converted into a 400-bed hospital. In the end, only nine patients were treated within 10 weeks because existing hospitals in the area were treating other cases.

The state never reopened this main arena when the virus picked up again around Thanksgiving Day, instead treating 232 patients in the much smaller adjoining practice facility.

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“In hindsight, you could say, ‘Well, we would have the money we spent renting Sleep Train and we could have put it back into the hospital system or we could have put it back into PPE procurement ( personal protection (equipment) or any number of things, ‘”Roberson said. “But these are lessons we’ve learned.”

She added, “As we move forward, we need to look at all of these missteps and do better.”

Officials learned to be more flexible with opening and closing facilities and “quickly flip the location for added value or purpose” when it wasn’t needed for patients, Ferguson said.

For example, the surge centers were all closed until March when the worst wave of infections subsided. But two were shifted to other pandemic-related tasks – one was used for coronavirus testing and the other was used for antibody infusion treatments.

Likewise, contracts for medical personnel traveling at the start of the pandemic required them to work at the alternative care locations, even if they weren’t often needed. But contracts during the winter break have been rewritten so that “in cases where they are no longer needed, they can be quickly moved to a hospital” or to do other duties like administering vaccinations, Ferguson said.

State officials had planned to rely more on the newly formed California Health Corps of medical professionals, especially after 95,000 people initially answered Newsom’s call for volunteers.

But only a fraction actually qualified or registered.

“When the health corps wasn’t working as hoped, travelers were the next best option,” said Coffman, who studies health workers. “Yes, contract travelers are expensive, but at least you can rest assured that we can count on someone who will take good care of patients and have the necessary skills.”

California spent $ 612 million on contract doctors and $ 2.2 million on the health corps, most of which it hopes to get back from the federal government or the facilities they worked in.

The state has budgeted $ 74.5 million for the fiscal year beginning this month to cover late bills or if there’s another spike that needs the state to reboot.

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“If things turn for the worse – mostly Delta variant … we still want to move fast,” said HD Palmer, spokesman for the California Department of the Treasury.

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San Francisco, CA – While dental care is necessary for everyone, there are certainly some instances where a visit to the dentist becomes impossible; For people with physical or mental disabilities, visiting the dentist may not be an acceptable option as most practices are not equipped or trained to meet the specific needs of these patients.

Itani Dental – Samer A. Itani, DDS is a leading San Francisco, California dental practice known for providing home dental services to patients whose regular dental appointments are complicated. This office has served its community for many years and has been providing the same professional dental care to patients in wheelchairs, with Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, Down’s syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism, developmental disorders, or phobias thanks to their service.

Home visits include a consultation, a full oral exam, diagnostic photography, dental x-rays, a treatment plan, a follow-up exam, and other services like cleaning, fillings, extractions, dentures, emergency visits, and more.

“Gentle, careful and comprehensive care is a trademark of home dental care from Itani Dental. We strive to provide a comprehensive range of cosmetic and general dental care to all patients in a qualified and empathetic manner, including patients with special needs in their own four walls. ”Said the representative of the office about their services at home.

This practice is owned and operated by Dr. Samer A. Itani, a specialist with over a decade of experience serving patients in the San Francisco area, provides world-class dental care for patients of all ages. Dr. Itani has multiple industry recognitions and the unconditional trust of his patients and colleagues who recognize the uniqueness of his work.

During his career, Dr. Itani has accumulated a wealth of experience that has enabled him to hold many positions of authority, including President of the California Hospital Dental Group, Member of the International Congress of Implantologists, Vice President of the Kaiser Permanente Dental Division, Member of the International Congress of Implantologists, Member of the Medical Staff of California Pacific Medical Center and Marin General Hospitals and Senior Citizen and Adult Services Officer for the City of San Francisco.

Itani Dental – Samer A. Itani, DDS – San Francisco Mobile Dentist is equipped with the latest technology and resources to meet all of its patients’ needs including, but not limited to, cosmetic dentistry, whole mouth rehabilitation, routine dentistry, general dentistry, same day implants, among other restorative, cosmetic and preventive services. In addition, Dr. Itani and his team are available 24/7 to assist patients with any dental emergency that requires immediate dental treatment, including tooth or jaw trauma due to an accident, severe toothache or infection, etc.

Itani Dental – Samer A. Itani, DDS provides special group services for senior centers, residential centers, churches and other facilities, among others, and offers mobile dental screening and personalized assessments in coordination with nursing staff, case managers and senior care facilities.

Itani Dental – Samer A. Itani, DDS is located at 450 Sutter St # 2318, San Francisco, CA 94108. This office accepts most insurance providers and its multilingual team is always ready to assist patients with any questions or concerns they may have could have. by phone at (415) 685-0011. For more information on the San Francisco House Call Dentist or to make an appointment, visit the dental office’s website.

Media contact

Company Name
Itani Dental – Samer A. Itani, DDS
Contact name
DR. Samar Itani
phone
(415) 685-0011
address
450 Sutter Str. # 2318
city
San Francisco
State
THE
country
United States
website
https://itanidental.com/

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