San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Coronavirus update
BAY AREA
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CALIFORNIA
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to tell you we’re going to do it the exact same way, because that would not be accurate,” Ghaly said, “and it would not show and demonstrate the capability we have to learn not just from our own experiences, but from the experiences across the nation and the globe about how to manage this better.”
While the state is on an economic timeout, public health officials said they’re planning how to reopen again. They’ll be more cautious, even in the Bay Area where they mostly moved slower than the rest of the state. For the next round they want more resources, more and better public messaging, more consistency across counties.
Over the past few weeks, as infections blew up, testing supplies started to run low again. Contact tracing also fell short as cases outpaced the public health staff, just as they had back in March. Most counties never reached their own testing or contact tracing goals even as they moved ahead with reopening.
Public health and political leaders have launched aggressive campaigns to promote face coverings and other individual acts of responsibility, but those need to be tailored to specific groups, many ex
clinical officer for UCSF Health, said the hospital system received no usable shipments of N95 masks for months and relied on internal supplies and donations. Several weeks ago, deliveries began trickling in.
Adler said he feels better about supplies than he did — but still not great — despite having more coronavirus patients than ever before. But he pointed out that smaller doctor’s offices still feel stressed and struggle to obtain supplies.
At Good Samaritan Hospital in San Jose, chief nursing officer Mark Brown said they have a four to sixmonth supply in hand. The hospital still has at least 95,000 N95 masks left over from a county and San Jose police donation months ago and expects another 100,000 from the county next week.
“Even if it gets really bad in Northern California, we feel we have a good process
As of 8:30 p.m. Saturday
UNITED STATES
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deaths perts say. The messages to 70yearold white men may not resonate with 18yearold Black college students or thirtysomething Latino health care workers.
Tools do exist though, public health authorities say. They know how to control this virus, and what it will take to live with it: widespread use of face coverings, moving activities outdoors, maintaining social distancing as much as possible.
People can resume most of their normal work and social lives if they keep those lessons in mind.
“It’s not difficult to curb your behaviors temporarily — that’s what the lockdown did. But that wasn’t ever going to solve the coronavirus problem,” said Bela Matyas, the Solano County health officer. “The only way to solve it is to implement behavior change permanently. People want a magic bullet, but there isn’t one.”
Everyone does their part: Bishop Bob Jackson spent months preparing to reopen Acts Full Gospel Church, a 6,000person congregation in Oakland. He bought gloves and masks and thermometers, installed hand sanitizing stations and lined up a cleaning
in place with our supplies . ... We can manage them properly and protect our staff and physicians,” Brown said.
Hospitals have found ways to stretch supplies, such as switching to washable gowns and asking workers to wear the same N95 mask for a shift. They’re following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, which allow for reuse when properly removing and storing masks.
These guidelines changed and were driven by supply shortages, said Dr. David Rempel, an epidemiologist and professor emeritus at UCSF Department of Medicine and UC Berkeley College of Engineering. Past research shows reusing masks increases exposure risks, but it’s not been proven how much, he added.
Across California, 18,857 health care workers have been infected with the virus and 105 have died. Many company to disinfect the building.
“Only to find we still can’t open up. All that preparation, we still can’t open up,” Jackson said.
“People are not wearing their masks, they are not do
workers protest reusing masks they were trained to throw away after one use.
“Five months now into this pandemic, we are still rationing our (protective equipment),” John Pasha, an ICU nurse at Good Samaritan, said. “We’re still not at a place where we’re practicing the gold standard of care.”
The California Nurses Association is demanding President Trump enact the Defense Production Act and force factories to make masks.
“The United States is the richest country in the world, and we can’t get the safety equipment we need to adequately protect health care workers,” said Deborah Burger, a nurse at Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Medical Center and copresident of the union.
Some hospitals have turned to decontamination instead. National company Battelle, which has a Freing their social distancing like they should have been … and now it’s spiked up again, and so now there is a demand to close everything,” Jackson said. “We don’t know what to do. Time is going by. The longer it takes for people to as
mont site, got a contract from the federal government to decontaminate masks at no cost to hospitals. The company acknowledges reuse is not ideal.
“A new mask is best, but if there’s no mask available, this is a solution for that problem,” Brandon Wood, research statistician and Fremont site manager, said.
Battelle’s decontamination process uses hydrogen peroxide vapor, a common method for hospital sterilization. The method, tested in a twoyear study conducted before the pandemic, was authorized for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration earlier this year. Masks can be reprocessed up to 20 times without degrading the filter quality, the study said.
The Fremont site has decontaminated more than 100,000 masks since May 1, Wood said. The site, which usually receives 20 to 30 semble in the church, the more they fall away from the church.”
Public mask wearing has improved, many health officials said, but social gatherings have been a major source of cases in the Bay Area and beyond. Whether it’s Father’s Day barbecues or Fourth of July gettogethers or college fraternity parties, they have to stop, or people need to be careful about wearing masks and keeping the social distance.
Living with the virus is largely up to individuals, experts say: monitoring their own behavior and that of their friends and loved ones. And that may be the toughest lesson for everyone in this next phase of reopening. Now more than ever, the future of the community — everything from public schools resuming inperson teaching to the corner dive bar reopening — is dependent on personal responsibility.
“We can have a thriving city, with a healthy population and renewed economy, if we work together,” said Grant Colfax, director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, in a news conference a few days before the city was added to the state watch list for its rising hospitalization rates.
“We have a window to do this,” Colfax said. “Truly the power is in our hands.”
Erin Allday is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: eallday@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @erinallday
boxes a day, saw a spike to 59 on Monday.
Most Bay Area hospitals are not using decontaminated masks yet. Good Samaritan received masks back from Battelle but is storing them; UCSF has boxes ready to send off if the need arises.
Rempel, who has studied decontamination for months with a national research group, said hydrogen peroxide vapor has proved effective in removing the virus, but there are always concerns about making sure the chemical process is done correctly and how many times it’s safe to reuse.
He was shocked mask manufacturing hasn’t met the demand yet: “I think it’s nuts.”
Mallory Moench is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mallory.moench@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @mallorymoench