Please see the weekly update on the EBGTZ website and highlights below. Click here to download the PDF version.
This will be the last HIV+COVID-19 email update for 2020. We will take a break for the next month as we get through the surge and winter holiday. The next emailed update is planned for January 20. We plan to update the EBGTZ.org/COVID webpage with the most critical COVID-19 news on Wednesday afternoons.
On December 4, 2020 in commemoration of World AIDS Day, 100 people came together to celebrate our collective resistance, resilience, strength and beauty with music, poetry, song and dance; honor people in the East Bay HIV community; and to share our draft of the 5-year East Bay HIV strategy. Please click here to learn more and watch videos of the performances and town hall.
Deep gratitude for the 200+ community advocates, leaders, organizers and front-line workers who have helped us develop and write the plan… and for all the artists who have fed our spirits and kept us true to our values of equity and healing!
The first COVID-19 vaccinations began this week as we hit our worst surge and COVID-19 deaths surpassed 300,000 people nationwide. New case rates in California have nearly doubled in the past week as ICU capacity dwindles and deaths rates have climbed to nearly 300 per day. The Bay Area now has more than 200,000 cumulative cases. The East Bay continues to have rapid increases in new cases and hospitalizations. Hospitalizations in Alameda County have quintupled (5x) in the past month.
Vaccines roll out! The Pfizer vaccine has undergone extensive FDA review and received Emergency Use Approval (EUA) on December 11. Pfizer has shipped 2.9 million doses to receiving facilities this week, including hospitals, research centers and pharmacies with ultracold freezers. The Moderna vaccine is undergoing final FDA review on December 17. If approved, 6 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine will be shipped across the nation over the weekend and arriving at local facilities next Monday through Wednesday, December 21-23.
The first vaccination in California was given to Los Angeles ICU nurse Helen Cordova on December 14. Vaccinations rolled out in Contra Costa on December 15 and will arrive in Alameda County on December 18. Vaccinations are starting with health care workers at the highest risk of exposure, with residents and staff at nursing homes expected to get vaccines via Walgreens starting December 28.
Phase 1a (now!) health care workers and first responders: Persons at risk of exposure to SARS-CoV-2 through their work in any role in direct health care or long-term care settings, including people in non-clinical roles such as environmental services, patient transport, interpretation and others. People working in acute care, nursing homes and emergency services at highest risk are prioritized over people working in outpatient settings.
Phase 1b: Residents in nursing homes and similar long-term care settings. People with underlying conditions that put them at significantly higher risk, such as people with organ transplants on immunosuppressive therapies.
Phase 2: People living with HIV and other underlying conditions, teachers and other essential workers, people in shelters or group homes, people who are incarcerated, and older adults not in Phase 1.
Phase 3: young adults, children, other workers.
Phase 4: everyone else.
People living with HIV and COVID-19 vaccines
Currently all people living with HIV who don’t have severe allergic reactions to components of the vaccines are recommended to get the COVID-19 vaccine once we are in Phase 2. We don’t know yet when there will be enough vaccines for Phase 2 but may have an estimated timeline next week. There is currently no recommendation to check antibody levels for people living with HIV after completing vaccination, but providers may consider doing so.
“African-Americans have suffered quite the repercussions of COVID-19,” said Dr. Sylvia Owusu-Ansah, 42, an emergency physician at the UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, who is Black and was among the first people to be vaccinated, as reported in the New York Times. “I wanted to share with my community that it is OK, that this vaccine is the thing to do to keep us safe, to keep us healthy and to keep us alive.”
Help educate our community and get ready for vaccines! Here are some resources:
Bay Area Shelter-in-Place order
On December 4, the Bay Area Health Officers, including Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, and Santa Clara Counties and the City of Berkeley jointly announced that they are implementing the State’s Regional Stay Home Order early.
The main message is to stay home as much as you can.
Current estimated transmission rates (Re) are 1.37 in Alameda County, 1.29 in Contra Costa and 1.25 in Solano County, compared to 1.15 statewide. Our goal is to support community measures around masking, staying outdoors, avoiding gatherings and vaccinating to get transmission rates back down to less than 1.
The LEMMA hospital prediction as of December 16 is that Alameda County will exceed ICU bed capacity (median projection) by the first week of January if transmission rates don’t change. If we can cut our transmission rate by 50% with the December 4 sheltering order, the projection is that we can stay within our current ICU bed capacity with a median peak of about 150 ICU hospitalizations around January 1.
New hospital capacity data released by the Department of Health and Human Services on December 7 provides capacity reporting from hospitals in 2,200 counties in the U.S. and identifies areas where hospitals are reaching capacity. The data is downloadable as a CSV spreadsheet with a 2-day lag.
Case trends in the Bay Area show rapid increases in the past month. Trends by race/ethnicity have not been updated for Alameda County yet.
Download or turn on the new CA Notify app to get COVID-19 exposure alerts and to protect those around you! The new app goes live across California on December 10. After you activate CA Notify and keep Bluetooth on, you will receive alerts if you were in close contact with someone who tests positive for COVID-19. Your privacy is protected as your identity is not known and your location is not tracked.
COVID-19 and Mental Health: Alameda County Supervisor Richard Valle recently launched a Mental Health Series, which you can view on YouTube.
More COVID-19 vaccine news:
AstraZeneca and the University of Oxfordshared results of a pooled analysis of their phase 2/3 vaccine trials in the UK and Brazil. The Brazilian study used two full-dose vaccinations where efficacy among 8,895 participants was 62.1%.
Dr. Robert Rodriguez and Dr. Eric Goosby, two Bay Area physicians on the Biden-Harris Coronavirus Task Force, presented on the December 8 California Medical Association’s Virtual Grand Rounds with Dr. Erica Pan and Dr. Seema Jain from CDPH. They shared that the top priority for the national task force is to address public trust and fight misinformation to help increase vaccine acceptance and adoption of other preventive measures. Dr. Rodriguez’s role is to support ways to address health care worker burnout and support resilience. Dr. Goosby’s role is to support coordination and collaboration between health delivery systems for a more effective vaccine roll out and massive scale up of a national testing effort, including low-barrier and frequent testing for people without symptoms.
A new Health Affairs article on COVID-19 vaccine implementation stresses “the urgent need for health officials to invest greater financial resources and attention to vaccine production and distribution programs, to redouble efforts to promote public confidence in COVID-19 vaccines, and to encourage continued adherence to other mitigation approaches, even after a vaccine becomes available.”
The NIH AstraZeneca COVID Vaccine Clinical trial is currently enrolling in Oakland!
The Phase III study is looking at safety and efficiency of AstraZeneca investigational vaccine for prevention of COVID-19 in adults. In this study, participants will be randomly assigned (by chance) to receive 2 injections of either the investigational vaccine or placebo (4 weeks apart). Participants are reimbursed up to $100 dollars per visit.
If interested, please contact Study Coordinator: Ankita Bhalla @ bhallaA@sutterhealth.org or call/text: (510) 295-7090 or (510) 292-3714.
Other HIV and COVID-19 reports and studies
The “HIV in Alameda County, 2017-2019” report and its Executive Summary was written and released by the Alameda County HIV Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit on December 15. This report presents the most recent county-level data on the HIV epidemic and summarizes findings on new HIV diagnoses, people living with HIV, the continuum of HIV care, HIV among key populations, and social determinants of health and HIV in Alameda County from 2017-2019. Many thanks to the HIV epi and surveillance team for this important report!
A new CDC MMWR Vital Signs report found that HIV-related deaths have fallen by 48% in the U.S. from 2010 to 2017, but disparities in HIV-related deaths persist for certain populations. The authors write, “Rates of HIV-related deaths during 2017 were highest by race/ethnicity among persons of multiple races (7.0) and Black/African American persons (5.6), followed by White persons (3.9) and Hispanic/Latino persons (3.9). The HIV-related death rate was highest in the South (6.0) and lowest in the Northeast (3.2).”
On December 4th the CDC COVID-19 Response Team issued its first comprehensive guidance on public health strategies to address high levels of SARS-CoV-2 transmission and deaths, including recommendations for universal mask wearing.
A new study on COVID-19 disparities including 9,722 patients in the New York University Langone Health system found that Black and Latinx patients were more likely than White people to test positive for COVID-19. Asian and multiracial patients who tested positive were more likely to be hospitalized than White, Latinx or Black patients. Among people hospitalized with COVID-19 infection, Black patients were less likely than White patients to have severe illness and to die or be discharged to hospice. Dr. Gbenga Ogedegbe, the lead author said, “We hear this all the time — ‘Blacks are more susceptible.’ It is all about the exposure. It is all about where people live. It has nothing to do with genes.”
These and other recent studies suggest that Black and Latinx people in the US have higher rates of COVID-19 because they are more often exposed to COVID-19 because of social and environmental factors, not because of innate or genetic vulnerability.
A new worldwide analysis shows that men with COVID-19 are hospitalized and die at higher rates than women. The meta-analysis of 3,111,714 reported global cases shows that while there is no difference in the proportion of men and women with confirmed COVID-19, men have almost three times the odds of requiring intensive care (OR = 2.84) and have higher odds of death (OR = 1.39) compared to women.
The CDC shortens the recommended duration of quarantine for asymptomatic people from 14 days to 7-10 days: Based on updated analyses and modelling data, the CDC recently provided additional options to reduce the duration of quarantine in asymptomatic people: 7 days with PCR testing (performed on days 5-7)—or 10 days without testing. These durations should be effective for preventing most transmission (96% and 99% respectively).
A case report from a restaurant in South Korea showed that a person exposed for 5 minutes and sitting 6.5 meters (21 feet) away while ceiling air conditioners blew air around.
In an informal survey of 700 epidemiologists, half said they would keep up with personal behaviors like social distancing until at least 70% of the population was vaccinated.
Other Updates & Opportunities Funding Opportunities:
The California Youth Opioid Response (YOR California) issued a Request for Applications to improve and expand access to a continuum of youth-specific opioid use and/or stimulant use disorder (OUD/StUD) intervention, Medication-Assisted Treatment and other treatment, and recovery services for youth ages 12-24 and their families. The RFA is available at the YOR California website. Applications are due on January 15, 2021.
The National Library of Medicine has opened applications to the 2021 HIV/AIDS Community Information Outreach Program (ACIOP). They are looking for proposals from organizations and libraries to design and conduct projects that will improve access to HIV/AIDS related health information for patients, the affected community, and their caregivers. The application deadline is December 28 2:00 PM ET. Learn more and apply here.
Web events:
NASTAD will be hosting a webinar on Thursday, December 17 from 1pm-2:15pm on the topic of trans-inclusive and trans-centered harm reduction services. The webinar will cover the importance of tailoring syringe services and other harm reduction programs to transgender participants and how to assess and respond to specific community needs. To join the webinar, please register here.
Also, please join NASTAD for a webinar focused on overdose prevention and response in Syringe Services Programs (SSPs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Register here for this webinar.
PAETC is hosting session 2 of the HIV & SARS-CoV-2 Winter Webinar Series on December 17, 2020, 10am-11:30am. Learn more here and register here.
Resources for reference:
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced that the first-ever STI National Strategic Plan (STI Plan) will be released on Thursday, December 17, 2020. The plan will serve as a roadmap to help federal and non-federal stakeholders at all levels, and in all sectors, reverse the sharp upward trends in STI rates and further address this growing public health epidemic. You can learn about the STI Plan and where to find more information about it by participating in a webinar hosted by HHS. The webinar will take place on Thursday, December 17, 11am - 12noon. Register here.
Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a national survey titled ‘How COVID Changed HIV Care and Prevention: A Survey of Ryan White Providers.’ It was found that Ryan White providers, who receive federal funds to provide HIV treatment services, experienced significant disruptions and changes amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Read the issue brief here.
CDPH Office of AIDS has shared their December OAVoice newsletter. Please access it here.
Resources for community members:
Word of Mouth food pantry is offering Free fruits, vegetables and groceries. They will be out there on Saturday 12/19 and 12/26 from 11 am to 2 pm on each day for no-contact pick up. Address is: 8400 Enterprise Way, Oakland, CA. More information here.
The EBGTZ website continues to have weekly updates on Wednesday evenings, and this newsletter will be sent out twice a month on 1st and 3rd Wednesdays starting January 20th after our winter break. Please follow and share our Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Thank you for all that you do for our communities!
Sophy and Yamini
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Sophy S. Wong, MD, Director
Yamini Oseguera-Bhatnagar, Program Manager East Bay Getting to Zero
