Public Health – Emergency Medical Services – Behavioral Health – Environmental Health Homeless Care & Coordination – HealthPAC – Center for Healthy Schools & Communities
Week of June 1, 2020
Alameda County Health Care Services Agency Update
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Our agency’s mission calls us to pursue health equity, foster safe and healthy communities, and promote fair and inclusive opportunities for all residents. This past week has been a difficult time for our communities and the nation as a whole. We are faced with the dual challenges of managing a pandemic and helping our residents, staff and communities safely navigate a heavy outpouring of grief and trauma. Many protesting injustice are also from communities hardest hit by COVID-19. Now more than ever, we must support each other and move forward together with a sense of light and hope and shared purpose. Thank you all for the work you’re doing in your communities to promote healing and health.
Planning for the future while serving our community today
Our Agency is preparing to manage the pandemic over the next two years by scaling our infrastructure. This includes coordinating an effective response to control the spread of disease by finding, testing, and isolating new cases and supporting care of COVID-19 patients.
We’re infusing community engagement and equity considerations throughout our work to reduce near and long-term impacts of the pandemic on disproportionately affected communities. We are bringing testing to areas with high numbers of cases, and seeking geographic diversity in our isolation housing for people experiencing homelessness. The first Operation Comfort and Operation Safer Ground hotels opened in Oakland, expanded to Alameda, and now Newark. On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors approved a new lease that adds 120 new rooms in South County, bringing our total capacity to 640 rooms to shelter our homeless.
Each week we bring you a digest of updates from presentations to the Board of Supervisors, daily and weekly calls with our stakeholders, and new information about services. We hope you find this summary useful and we appreciate your readership.
Physical distance and face coverings to prevent the spread of COVID-19
As we continue to promote an atmosphere of health and healing, we encourage everyone to practice their first amendment rights as safely as possible. This includes trying to keep 6 feet of space and wearing face coverings when outside.
We rely on our community members, businesses and organizations to follow the Health Officer Ordersas we increase allowable activities and reopen businesses during this global pandemic.
We are currently in early Stage 2 on the California State’s Roadmap to Resilience with additional Health Officer Orders anticipated this week. All businesses and organizations should follow consistent health safety protocols to:
We also continue to provide guidance to support planning including:
As parents begin to plan for school and camp, we remind you of the importance of Routine Vaccines During the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Trends in Cases and Hospitalizations
New cases have increased for the past three weeks, and hospitalizations have increased over the past two weeks with a peak of 105 confirmed hospitalized cases on May 30. Our goal is for cases to be flat or decreasing. This indicator remains downgraded from a four to a three.
  • As of June 3, there were 3,548 reported cases of COVID-19 and 97 deaths. This represents 5.9 deaths per 100,000 people, compared to 11 deaths per 100,000 people in California State overall.
  • As of June 2, there were 92 hospitalized patients (the highest was 105 on May 30), including 33 ICU patients (the highest was 46 on April 11) with confirmed COVID.
Alameda County continues to receive limited quantities of Remdesivir from the California Department of Public Health. Supplies are allocated to health care facilities for treatment of patients hospitalized with severe disease, based on our Ethical Allocation of Remdesivir for COVID-19.
Testing
We are conducting an average of 1,400 COVID-19 tests per day, which is a 40 percent increase compared to a month ago, and 40 percent of our goal of conducting 3,100 tests per day.
A new testing site at the West Oakland Health Center, located at 700 Adeline Street in Oakland, has opened with free testing available to any community member regardless of insurance and immigration status. Thank you to our West Oakland community members who stepped forward to demonstrate the testing process.
New mobile testing sites are expected next week in Alameda, Fremont, Union City, Newark, and in the Fruitvale in Oakland. La Clínica’s new partnership with Unity Council will provide testing in the Fruitvale community. We also finalized agreements to provide ongoing support for the Alameda County Fairgrounds site.
Download testing locations from the COVID-19 testing webpage and searchable in this interactive map of COVID-19 services (click to filter for COVID-19 testing). Several sites offer free tests for any community member with symptoms and all essential workers regardless of symptoms. For more information, view our testing PSA.
When testing resources allow, Alameda County COVID-19 testing guidance encourages testing all people with symptoms and all essential workers, especially those working in long-term care facilities, regardless of symptoms.
Providers are reminded to distribute isolation orders to people testing with suspected COVID. If your facility needs COVID-related supplies, please complete these forms to request PPE and request testing supplies. For providers conducting COVID testing:
Case and Contact Investigation, Isolation and Quarantine
We are currently meeting our goals to reach at least 90 percent of cases and contacts, and ensure safe isolation or quarantine for at least 90 percent of people reached.
On June 3, the Public Health Department piloted the new California State contact tracing data system. There is now a dedicated team working on the expansion of contact tracing teams in partnership with community-based organizations.
California state has launched a new comprehensive contact tracing program and public awareness campaign, called California Connected. Fact sheets to explain contact tracing to patients and community members are available for download in English and Spanish.
Project Roomkey has expanded the capacity to provide isolation housing for people living in crowded conditions in addition to isolation housing for people experiencing homelessness. Providers are encouraged to refer people and communicate the importance of isolation for keeping families and roommates safe.
Hospital Capacity and Surge Planning
As of June 3, our hospital capacity indicators are:
  • 4 percent of the patients in hospital beds across Alameda County were confirmed COVID-19 positive, which is within our goal of 50 percent or less. This indicator remains a five out of five.
  • 12 percent of the patients in ICU beds were confirmed COVID-19 positive.
  • Most hospitals are now reporting 30-day supplies of most types of personal protective equipment (PPE) but still requesting assistance for PPE procurement from the county. This indicator has been upgraded from a two to a three.
The blue line indicates the total number of people hospitalized, the red line indicates people hospitalized (not ICU), and the brown line indicates people in the ICU.