Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
California: Record Heat, Fires, Smoke and COVID
The Guardian: Homeless Californians Face New Crisis: Living Outside In Smoke-Filled Air
Susana de Sant’Anna hasn’t been able to take a full breath of air since about June 2015.That was when she was hospitalized in San Francisco with severe sepsis, complicated by Lemierre’s syndrome – a rare infectious disease - and an abscess of the left lung. She underwent two lung surgeries, and in the two years it took her to recover, she burned through all her savings and became homeless. Sant’Anna has spent the last five years bouncing between shelters, transitional housing and friends’ couches. Now, with wildfire smoke choking the city, fog for weeks on end and the lingering threat of a virus that affects the lungs, she spends her days hiding in a hotel room paid for by donations that she stretches by cutting back on food, knowing that just one breath of the smoky air outside could set her recovery back. (Ho, 9/7)
The Washington Post: Creek Fire: Rescue Operation Hopes To Save About 50 People Trapped In ‘Unprecedented’ California Blaze
About 50 hikers spent a second night at a wilderness resort near Fresno, Calif., on Monday with all escape routes cut off by the growing Creek Fire in the Sierra National Forest, “an unprecedented disaster” that ravaged the state over the holiday weekend and nearly doubled in size on Monday alone, fire officials said. Fresno Fire Battalion Chief Tony Escobedo initially said in a news conference late Monday that one person had died in the fire, but the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office later clarified that an older man died due to a “medical episode” after EMS were unable to respond due to the fire conditions. (Bella, 9/8)
AP: As California Burns, The Winds Arrive And The Lights Go Out
New wildfires ravaged bone-dry California during a scorching Labor Day weekend that saw a dramatic airlift of more than 200 people trapped by flames and ended with the state’s largest utility turning off power to 172,000 customers to try to prevent its power lines and other equipment from sparking more fires. California is heading into what traditionally is the teeth of the wildfire season, and already it has set a record with 2 million acres burned this year. The previous record was set just two years ago and included the deadliest wildfire in state history — the Camp Fire that swept through the community of Paradise and killed 85 people. (Jose Sanchez and Weber, 9/8)
The New York Times: California Wildfires: Extreme Heat Turns State Into A Furnace
As California endures one of its worst wildfire seasons ever, a new rash of fires stoked by extreme heat has destroyed homes, cloaked much of the state in smoke, forced thousands of people to evacuate and threatened another round of rolling blackouts. One of the fires, a 7,000-acre blaze in San Bernardino County erupted after a family set off a “smoke-generating pyrotechnic device” to announce their baby’s sex. (Healy, Taylor and Penn, 9/7)
In other California updates —
San Francisco Chronicle: Exclusive: Under Pressure From Relatives, SF Allows Outdoor Nursing Home Visits
The San Francisco Public Health Department has issued a new health order letting nursing home residents receive visitors outdoors — a victory for hundreds of people like Teresa Palmer, who hasn’t seen her 103-year-old mother since March and feared she would never see her in person again. The city changed its policy Friday, a day after The Chronicle contacted the health department with questions about its months-long ban on such visits, one of the strictest visitation orders in the state. (Ravani, 9/4)
San Francisco Chronicle: Here’s How Many Coronavirus Cases Have Been Linked With Bay Area Child Care Centers
More than 320 coronavirus cases associated with day care facilities have been confirmed in the Bay Area, according to Sept. 3 data from the California Department of Social Services. More than 6,000 day care providers are open in the region, meaning that on average, there have been about five cases reported for every 100 facilities.But major unknowns remain. Because the state data do not indicate exactly how many children and staff are associated with each day care facility, there appears to be no way to calculate the rate of coronavirus transmission. Without that figure, it is impossible to compare the risk in a child care facility with the overall rate of transmission. (Kramer, 9/5)
